Teaching Restoration TO (or FOR) International Students?

Abstract

Internationalization, both in research and in teaching, has become a highly sought-after process in academia. In particular, and especially in the past few years, the rewards introduced by the Italian Ministry for University and Research have encouraged the programming of university courses taught in English, the stipulation of an increasing number of student exchange agreements with foreign universities, and the scouting of international students for all university education levels: undergraduate, graduate, and PhDs. This surge in teaching opportunities for international students did not go together with the necessary reflexion on how teaching should be delivered and what peculiarities each discipline has in relation with the diverse cultures of the new audience. This is a very complex issue, particularly in the field of restoration, a primarily cultural discipline, whose evolution in Europe required several centuries of theoretical elaboration, before the technical one. Today, as it also happens for other disciplines, university level teaching of the evolution of restoration has a mostly Europe-centric point of view. This paper therefore will focus on pointing out the limits of such "colonialist" teaching, aimed at exporting a supposedly “superior” culture, rather than understanding and adapting its own teachings to different cultural contexts. Some experiences will be described, in order to attempt at providing some useful ideas to foster a broader and deeper reflection on a delicate and complex topic.