The unhappy fate of Music in the Italian school

When a country forgets to educate listening, it also stops listening to itself.

By Marialuisa Veneziano

29 June 2026

Is there a question that silently crosses the Italian classrooms, often covered by the noise of the bells, the bureaucratic urgencies, the programs to finish, the checks to be administered, the grids to be compiled: what place really occupies the music in our school?

Not the place that is recognized in ministerial documents, in solemn declarations, in late-year projects, in colorful inns of essays. Not the rhetorical, decorative, celebratory place. But the real place. What is measured in daily consideration, over time allocated, in the resources available, in the formation of teachers, in the perception of families, in the cultural dignity that a school community recognizes in a discipline.

The answer, if said without infinity, is painful: music in the Italian school often lives an unhappy destiny. It is present, but not always recognized; nominated, but not always understood; required when it serves to "make a feast", but forgotten when speaking of knowledge; celebrated as a universal language, but treated too often as an accessory, light, side matter. A kind of graceful sound upholstery of formation, useful to move to the rituals, to rejoice ceremonies, to cover the institutional gaps, but rarely placed at the center of a deep educational vision.

Yet, this marginality is one of the greatest cultural misunderstandings of our school system. Because music is not a pastime. It's not entertainment. It is not the aesthetic fiocchetto to affor on an educational building already built elsewhere. Music is thought organized over time. It's mathematics. It is philosophy embodied in sound. It is historical memory, discipline of listening, body education, exercise of relationship, grammar of emotion, construction of form. It is one of the oldest and most refined ways in which the human being has learned to give order to chaos.

Already in the Greek world, mousiké did not only indicate what we call music in a narrow sense, but a broader horizon: word, rhythm, poetry, education of the soul. Plato, though with all his cautele towards the perturbanized power of sounds, knew well that music forms the character before even the intellect can defend itself. Aristotle recognized music as an educational, ethical, cathartic function. In the Middle Ages, it belonged to the quadrivius along with arithmetics, geometry and astronomy: it was not an ornament, but a science of order. Boezio distinguished the mundane music, human music and instrumental music, reminding us that sound is not just what it odes, but what structure the cosmos, man and practice.

It is curious, and tragic, that a school civilization descended from this tradition ended up reducing music, in common perception, to "practical matter", often opposed to "series" disciplines. Like doing didn't think. Like the body didn't know. As if playing, singing, listening, reading a score, understanding a form, distinguishing a timbre, recognizing a harmonic function, placing a song in its historical context were minor activities than the analysis of a literary text or the resolution of a mathematical problem.

The truth is that music contains all this: text, number, history, logic, gesture, memory, interpretation. A boy who learns to play with others learns a very high form of citizenship. He must listen, wait, enter the right moment, respect the common time, control his own impulse, agree, correct, support the part of others. In a school orchestra, even small, even imperfect, there is already a model of society: no one can shout over others without destroying the form; no one can silent completely without impoverishing the whole; no one is really alone, because every voice exists in the relationship.

That is why the fate of music at school is not just about musicians. It concerns the democracy of listening. It concerns the human quality of formation. It concerns the ability to educate generations not only to produce, compete, respond, perform deliveries, but also to hear, interpret, distinguish, inhabit silence, give meaning to time.

The Italian school, on the other hand, often seems to be a prisoner of a contradiction. On the one hand, in general principles, it recognizes the value of humanistic culture, creativity, artistic and musical heritage. On the other hand, in ordinary practice, it does not always build conditions because that declaration becomes daily life. Music is expected, yes. There are musical paths in the first degree secondary school, musical high school, design, art plans, possible collaborations with conservatives, institutions and associations. But the system still appears fragmentary, discontinuous, entrusted too often to the good will of the individual teachers, to the sensitivity of a manager, to the geographical fortune of being born in a culturally equipped territory.

The result is an unequal geography of musical education. There are schools where music becomes living experience, orchestra, choir, laboratory, sound thinking theatre. And there are schools in which it remains confined to a few residual activities, perhaps carried out in unsuitable classrooms, with insufficient tools, seamlessly design. There are students who meet teachers who can open worlds, and students who go through years of school without really understanding what a musical form is, because Bach is not only "old music", because jazz is a revolution of time and freedom, so that rock has told the twentieth century more than many manuals, so that Gregorian chant is not a museum powder, but a cathedral of breath.

The first knot is cultural: music is often perceived as an emotional experience, but not as knowledge. This is the original sin. Of course, the music excites. But he's excited about organizing. He switches because he builds. Turba because he has a deep grammar. No one would say that the Divine Comedy is important only because it "makes emotions"; no one would reduce Caravaggio to the fact that he "culpts the eye"; no one would evaluate Euclide on the basis of "likes" or "I don't like". For music, it happens all the time. It remains to the surface of the taste: beautiful, ugly, cheerful, sad, relaxing. As if the school's task was to confirm the immediate impressions and not to educate them.

Education in music means teaching to move from undivided emotion to awareness. From "I like" to "because he talks to me." From rapid consumption to critical listening. From the background to the shape. We live in a time when music is everywhere and, precisely for this reason, it risks not being listened anywhere. Accompanies shopping, phone wait, videos, advertising, social media, gyms, travel. It has become environment, noise, permanent soundtrack of existence. The boys listen to a lot of music, but they are rarely guided to understand it. They have access to an ocean, but often without a compass. And a school that does not provide guidance tools let the algorithms educate taste.

This is a decisive point. Today musical education cannot be limited to the necessary theoretical literacy, nor can it take refuge in a museum nostalgia. It must be measured with Spotify, YouTube, TikTok, with digital production, with rap, with trap, with soundtracks, with sound design, with music in video games, with artificial creative intelligence. But measuring does not mean giving. It means interpreting. The school must teach that every sound language has a history, a technique, a social function, a rhetoric, an aesthetic. It must make it clear that Beethoven and Kendrick Lamar, Monteverdi and Morricone, Hildegard von Bingen and Björk, Bach and the Beatles are not in the same shelf for banalization, but they can enter into dialogue if there is a mind capable of listening to structure, context, invention, breakage, memory.

The second node is pedagogical. Too often school music oscillates between two equally dangerous extremes: sterile notionism and depthless entertainment. On the one hand, dates, names, definitions, instruments studied as figurines; on the other, pleasant but unstructured activities, in which "making music" simply means occupying time with something pleasant. In the middle should be the true musical teaching: guided listening, vocal and instrumental practice, movement, invention, reading, analysis, history, technology, improvisation, critical reflection.

Music you learn by doing, but doing must be thought. You learn by listening, but listening must be educated. You also learn by studying, but the study must return to sound, gesture, experience. An effective lesson in music is neither a conservative conference nor an hour of animation. It's a sensitive intelligence lab. It is the place where an African rhythm can open a reflection on the community, a Bach escape can show the beauty of logic, a protest song can become historical education, a rap song can introduce metric, rhetoric, identity, social marginality, rhythmic word. This is where the teacher's competence becomes decisive: it is not enough to "know a little music". You need to know music, pedagogy, history, contemporary languages, evolutionary psychology, group management, interdisciplinary design.

The third knot is professional. Music, to be taught well, requires specific skills. This should be obvious, but it's not enough. No one would entrust the teaching of mathematics to those who "love numbers" or to those who "read novels". For music, however, it sometimes survives the idea that a generic artistic sensibility can suffice. That's not enough. Sensitivity is precious, but without competence becomes educational impressionism. The primary school, in particular, would need a more stable and structured musical presence. It is right there, in the early years, that the child builds the relationship with voice, rhythm, body, listening, coordination, sound memory. Late intervention often means correcting what has not been cultivated before.

A serious country should consider basic musical education not as a luxury, but as a formative right. Just like linguistic and mathematical literacy. Because there is also a sound illiteracy: the inability to listen, distinguish, appoint, recognize, respect the acoustic landscape. It is a less visible illiteracy, but not less serious. It produces citizens exposed to noise, incapable of concentration, poor hearing memory, weak in perception of time, less trained in fine cooperation. A noisy society is not necessarily a musical society. In fact, it is often the opposite: the more noise there is, the less listening remains.

The fourth knot is social. Music at school could be an extraordinary instrument of equality. Many children and boys will never enter a conservatory, they will not take private lessons, they will not possess a tool, they will not have families able to bring them to concert, they will not spontaneously meet the musical heritage. For them the school is the only door. If that door remains closed, musical culture becomes privilege. And when culture becomes privilege, the school failed a part of its constitutional mission.

Music, on the other hand, can reveal invisible talents. He can give voice to those who struggle with the word. It can help fragile students find a place in the group. It can offer those who live economic marginality or affect an ordered, shared, non-competitive beauty experience. It can transform a difficult class into a possible ensemble, at least for a few minutes: and those minutes, sometimes, are worth more than many disciplinary predictions. Musical practice does not eliminate problems, does not perform miracles as a pedagogical saint, but creates different conditions: it forces the group to breathe together. And breathing together for a class is already a small revolution.

But for all this to happen, we need choices. Not enough slogans. It is not enough to invoke "creativity" as a magic word, good for every financial project. Creativity is not pretty chaos. It is freedom in a form. It is ability to generate something new knowing constraints, materials, techniques. In music, nobody really improvises if they don't have a vocabulary. Jazz, which seems to be pure freedom, is also a fierce discipline of listening, harmony, time and response. The school should teach this: not opposition between rule and invention, but their alliance.

The proposals, then, must be concrete.

The first: progressively introduce teachers music specialists in the primary school, at least through structural and continuing modules, not episodic. The voice, rhythm, listening and basic instrumental practice must soon enter the formation of the child. Not as an extracurricular activity for those who can, but as an ordinary part of school experience.

The second: build a real vertical curricle, from childhood to second degree. Today the music is likely to proceed for fragments: a bit of song, a little flute, a bit of history, a project, a essay. On the other hand, it serves a clear trajectory: sound exploration, voice, rhythm, movement, listening; then reading, overall practice, tools, language history; then analysis, technology, composition, critical interpretation. Each segment should know what it receives and what it delivers to the next.

The third: strengthen the paths to musical address in the secondary school of the first degree, ensuring territorial balance, adequate spaces, tools, continuity of the chair and centrality of the music of the whole. The musical address should not be a happy island for a few, but a workshop of good practices capable of contaminating the entire school.

The fourth: creating stable networks between schools, conservatories, musical high schools, theatres, concert associations, bands, choirs, operatic bodies, festivals, musical libraries. The school cannot carry on its own all the weight of artistic training; but it must be the intelligent center of an educating community. Not occasional visits, not one-time events, but lasting cultural pacts.

The fifth: renew the contents without denying the heritage. Tradition does not defend itself by embalming it. He's defending himself by speaking to the present. Bach does not need to be "simplified" until he becomes harmless; he needs to be told as living architecture. Verdi is not a national statue; it is political theater, popular breath, scenic word. Gregorian is not an ecclesiastical reperto; it is experience of suspended time, of sacred as a sound form. Similarly, rap should not be liquidated as a lower youth product: it should be analyzed, understood, discussed, even criticized, but with serious instruments. The school should not pursue students' tastes; it must take them seriously to expand them.

Sixth: educating listening as a transversal competence. Listening to music means learning attention, memory, forecast, comparison, suspension of judgment. In a time of notifications and fragments, long listening is almost a political act. Bringing a class to really listen to a piece of five, ten, fifteen minutes is a huge challenge. But that's why it's necessary. He is not only educated by speaking to the boys; he also educates them by teaching them to stay within a duration.

The seventh: enhancing music in evaluation and exams, not as folklore appendix, but as a discipline capable of dialogue with history, literature, art, technology, civic education, science. An interdisciplinary interview that crosses the 20th century without music is mutilated. To talk about totalitarismi without hymns and sound propaganda, of migration without popular songs, of cultural industry without song, of cinema without soundtrack, of technology without digital production means to tell the world with a stopped ear.

The eighth: investing in teacher training. The school changes if the living skills of those who live there change. We need serious paths on labs teaching, inclusion through music, sound technologies, vocality, overall music, guided listening, history of contemporary repertoires, interdisciplinary design. A music teacher today must be together musician, historian, educator, director of collective processes, cultural mediator. A complex figure, not an entertainer with an electronic register.

The ninth: rethink the spaces. Music needs places. Soundproof classrooms, accessible tools, digital devices, sound libraries, environments for overall practice. You can't preach the centrality of music and then relegate it to unsuitable rooms, where every sound becomes trouble for the next class. Even school architecture says the value we attach to knowledge.

The tenth: publicly recognize the cultural role of music in the formation of the citizen. This is perhaps the deepest point. As long as the music is thought as an accessory, every reform will remain fragile. You have to change imagination. Music does not serve to "make all musicians", as mathematics does not serve to become all mathematicians and literature does not serve to make all writers. It serves to form a part of human intelligence. It serves to give tools to understand the world.

The unhappy fate of music in Italian schools is therefore not a fatality. It is the product of choices, omissions, mental habits. And what was produced can be transformed. But the courage to say that a school without authentically lived music is a poorer school. It can also work, compile documents, achieve goals, produce measurable results. But she will miss something essential: the ability to educate invisible complexity. Because music teaches this: that not all that matters is seen. Time can't be seen, but it governs us. Harmony cannot be seen, but it holds relations. Listening is not seen, but decides the quality of a community. A wrong note, in a set, is not only an individual error: it changes the landscape of all. Maybe the school should start from here. From this simple and dizzying evidence: we are always part of a common score.

Restoring dignity to music means giving back depth to the school. It means remembering that educating does not only mean transmitting information, but to grant the human being with himself, with others, with memory, with the future. A society that musically educates its children does not only produce better performers: it produces better listeners. And a good listener, in civil life, is already a less ferocious citizen, less manipulated, less alone.

Music, in the Italian school, is still waiting to be taken seriously. Not like luxury. Not as a range. Not like a year-end party. But as one of the highest forms of knowledge.

And perhaps the task of those who teach, play, study, write and still believe in the human power of art is precisely this: to prevent music from remaining a kind presence on the edge of the school. It is necessary to return it to the center, where it has always been in civilizations that have been able to think in great: next to the word, to the number, to the memory, to the formation of the soul. Because a school that does not teach to listen can also educate. But it'll be much harder to educate.