«Leggi sempre scrittori di indiscutibile valore». Riflessioni sulla didattica delle scuole nello specchio degli antichi filosofi

Seneca, together with Alcinous, Apuleius, Albinus, Taurus and an anonymous Neoplatonic author – as I try to show in this paper –, encourages us to think that studying is essential not so much in order to acquire an education, but in order to learn how to live. According to these testimonies, to achieve this aim we must take into consideration several aspects and problems related to teaching, which are still discussed today and for which the ancient philosophers have their own solutions. Ancient philosophers’ debates and reflections on schools and teaching, on reading programs and on the nature of students can be useful to reconsider certain limits of current Italian schools and of the country’s educational system, which in “modernizing” education seems to have lost sight of the very purpose of teaching.