Advisor to the Prime Minister, about the Romanian curriculum for the 9th grade: “It seems rather tailored to the needs of the students at the Faculty of Letters”

Luciana Antoci, state councilor in Ilie Bolojan's team, said that “the school must come up with a strong and immediate response” in the face of a functional illiteracy that has reached an “alert level”, according to the international PISA tests applied in the 9th grade, which evaluate the skills formed in the gymnasium.

Luciana Antoci, who stated that she has been teaching Romanian to high school students in Iași for almost three decades, said that she “followed with particular interest the diversity of points of view and critical opinions” in the context of putting the Romanian Language and Literature Program for the 9th grade into public debate.

“Knowing thoroughly, through the lens of direct experience, the profile of the students we have in the banks today, I also join the voices advocating for a modern, lively, flexible program, oriented both towards the cultivation of aesthetic taste and the pleasure of reading, but also towards the accumulation of relevant knowledge that the students can understand both synchronically, by comparison with similar literary manifestations from other cultural spaces, and diachronically, by understanding, in general lines, without specialized data developed in depth, of the process of evolution of Romanian literature”, declared the state councillor.

“Functional illiteracy has reached an alert level”

Antoci highlighted the importance of “contextual data” in program development.

“The age segment to which the curriculum under discussion is addressed overlaps perfectly with the cohort of students who are subject to the international PISA tests applied in the ninth grade, but which evaluate the skills formed in the secondary school years. The results of these evaluations reflect a worrying reality: functional illiteracy has reached an alert level,” she added.

The State Counselor believes that “the school must come up with a strong and immediate response to reduce and, over time, control this phenomenon whose effects have more and more reverberations on a social level as well.”

“However, as it is designed now, the Romanian language and literature curriculum seems rather tailored to the needs of first-year students from the Faculty of Letters who are starting on an in-depth specialization route, than to that of teenagers who, barely crossing the threshold of high schools, vibrate in relation to themes that are consonant with the concerns and turmoil specific to their age and level of psycho-cognitive and affective development”, continued Luciana Antoci.

What is the “main stake”

Luciana Antoci believes that “the main stake of studying the Romanian language and literature in the 9th grade is, above all, preparing students in the spirit of curiosity to discover the world through reading and thorough study, in the spirit of a solid general culture and the desire to learn continuously and meaningfully”.

“The benchmarks that we have referred to in recent years, and which can of course bear recalibration, have allowed the teacher to attract the students in captivating readings and in interesting debates on topics of interest such as Adolescence, Love, Travel and adventure, School, Literature and cinematography or Ethical confrontations through which the perspective on the study of the texts of some authors from different eras and literary currents has been opened, but also the exploration of some reading techniques through which they are strengthened the abilities of skilled readers, able to do exercises to deconstruct the text and recompose the messages and deep meanings from the subtext, but also to develop their highest cognitive ability – critical thinking”, she added.

In addition, the state councilor said, “a modern didactic perspective of the discipline can correlate, in a consolidated manner, the study of the Romanian language with the exploration of the literary text, through coherent and relevant applications for understanding the language as an element of expression of language functions, on the one hand, but also as a tool of artistic expressiveness, on the other.”

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