Chimica nella Scuola

L’anti-scienza: meglio confortanti bugie che scomode verità

Margherita Venturi, Silvano Fuso, Carmine Iorio — Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Verità e diritto; scienza, pseudoscienza e fake news

Luca Simonetti — Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In Italy, academic freedom is guaranteed by the Constitution (article 33), but it has its limits, like all other liberties. First, it has to be reconciled with the right of the schools to decide what has to be taught and how, and with the students’ right to receive the best possible instruction as well. Secondly, academic freedom faces the normal limits of all expressions of thought, and it can therefore be limited if it endangers other rights or values also guaranteed by the Constitution (as it happened during the COVID-19 pandemic).
However, the falsehood of a teaching is not per se a reason to forbid it. Consequently, it is difficult to envisage a prohibition of the teaching of pseudoscience or of the diffusion of fake news simply because they are false.

Perché l’anti-scienza ha successo?

Silvano Fuso — Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

A worrying anti-scientific attitude is quite widespread in our society. The recent coronavirus pandemic has highlighted this well. Analyzing and understanding the causes of this phenomenon is surely the first step in trying to counter it.

Chi ha paura della chimica?

Ruggero Rollini, Sara Tortorella — Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

“Chemicals are like people – some are good, some are bad, and most are in between”. Unfortunately, chemicals perception in modern society is way more complex than this excellent metaphor. Chemophobia is one of the results of this complexity. By asking and answering direct questions as: What is it? When is it born? How bad is it? Why is it so pervasive? How to solve it? A systematic literature review on chemophobia has been carried out and its results are hereby reported. We hope this review will pave the way for a better understanding of the chemophobia phenomenon, and possible measures to contrast it.

Competenze digitali e educazione: il framework europeo DigComp per proteggersi dall’anti-scienza

Giada Trisolini — Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Is it possible to say that one can protect oneself from anti-science with digital skills? The answer is yes, not only because of the training offered by schools and universities but also because of the numerous European initiatives dedicated to the development of basic digital skills and retraining. This contribution intends to provide an overview of the main funding activated by the EU within the framework of the Year of Competences 2023 aimed at giving a new boost to lifelong learning, taking the European DigComp 2.2 framework and its versions as its main reference.

Retorica del metodo scientifico o potere dell’incertezza?

Paola Govoni — Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

How can we prepare the younger generation to effectively navigate various sources, whether they are books, social media, or ChatGPT, to find accurate and verified data and information? What strategies should we employ to instill confidence in their ability to engage in independent and exploratory learning, while cultivating skepticism towards jargon, authoritative figures, and ideological viewpoints? How can we adopt an approach to understanding reality that not only embraces uncertainties, doubts, and inevitable dead ends but also acknowledges the profound social and cultural complexities inherent in science? How can we liberate ourselves from obsolete narratives, including those associated with the rhetoric of the scientific method? In these times, questions seem to outweigh answers. Moreover, whether in the classroom or the laboratory, progressing through thoughtful inquiries is perhaps the most reliable path to navigate a reality that is increasingly unfolding in digital spaces.

Insegnare le scienze per costruire un pensiero critico e combattere l’anti-scienza

Eleonora Aquilini — Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The study of science should promote openness and a critical spirit, while especially today in science teaching the trivialization of academic knowledge is increasingly evident as the educational level is lowered: specialized language is used, and the important steps that lead to understanding the problem are omitted. Science teaching is thus reduced to the reproduction of sentences that often have no meaning for the student. Dogmatism, which accompanies this way of teaching and disseminating science, is the main cause of the success of anti-scientific ideas. Schools have an important role in changing the image of science in the citizen’s perception of it. Acquiring the way of thinking, which is called scientific, also means perceiving doubt as a value and not as a destabilizing uncertainty from which to escape.

Il decalogo di Paolo Attivissimo

Lucia Baldassarri — Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000