Istituto Tecnico

Growing up in Italy, at 13 years old you must take a decision that will decide your future job, social circle, and how you will be perceived from society. The choice is apparently simple: if you’re smart and capable you go to a classic high school “Liceo”, if your slightly dumber you go to a technical high school, and if you’re very dumb you go to a trade school.

This hierarchy is widely accepted by middle school teachers, parents, and most Italians. I believe it is misguided and outdated. For many bright, curious students, a technical high school is a better choice than a traditional liceo.

I was a solid middle school student, and my teachers strongly pushed me toward a liceo, convinced it was the only path worthy of my potential. But I knew exactly what I didn’t want: years of Latin, ancient Greek, and philosophy. What I did want was hands-on learning, to understand how the physical world actually works and to get my hands dirty in the process.

When I chose a technical high school specializing in mechatronics, teachers and family friends were horrified. They thought this relatively bright kid was throwing away his future.

The classic defense of liceo is that Latin, Greek, and philosophy “broaden your horizons” and forge a true “forma mentis” (way of thinking). Technical schools replace much of that with applied subjects. In my case: thermofluidodynamics, metallurgy, industrial automation, design for manufacturing, and more.

But why can’t studying entropy, control systems, or real engineering principles broaden your mind just as much, if not more, than memorizing verb conjugations in dead languages?

In reality, they do, and in ways that feel far more relevant today. Yet in Italy, technical and scientific knowledge continues to be treated as inferior to humanistic studies.

This bias has cultural roots in Italy’s immense humanistic heritage, but it was also deliberately reinforced by a political decision. The Gentile Reform of 1923, under Fascist-era minister Giovanni Gentile, elevated the liceo classico as the ideal education for forming the intellectual elite. Humanities were positioned as “superior knowledge,” while technical and vocational paths were relegated to lower status. More than a century later, that mental hierarchy remains deeply ingrained, even though the actual curriculums have evolved.

The irony is that technical high schools still include Italian literature, grammar, history, and civics; they simply dedicate fewer hours to pure humanities and more to specialized technical subjects.

Technical high schools have major advantages that many liceos lack. The teachers are often practicing engineers who run their own companies and teach part-time out of genuine passion (even though a guaranteed state pension is a good incentive),). This creates an outstanding learning environment:

Professors treat you like an adult in a professional setting: real responsibility, zero tolerance for bullshit excuses.

You genuinely respect and look up to them because you see their real-world success.

Their industry experience lets them show exactly why concepts like differential equations or thermodynamics matter in real life scenarios.

Even more useful were the years of high school spent learning manufacturing methods, including summers working in workshops machining real parts. That experience gave me a practical sense of manufacturing constraints when designing: things like realistic tolerances, how materials behave under tools, setup challenges, and cost implications of certain choices.

Ask most engineering graduates to design a part and you’ll quickly see how university failed them. Having that foundation early has been genuinely helpful for me in engineering, and I’m grateful for it.

Italy’s bias against these paths wastes talent and undervalues exactly the technical skills modern economies need most.

The guy at the top is Enrico Mattei, one of the most known figures that went to a technical highschool in Italy. Here's a few more:

A few more just because: Ferruccio Lamborghini, Nicola Romeo (Alfa Romeo), Nerio Alessandri (TechnoGym)