Multiple Ignorances and Low Performers: The Elephant in the Classroom and the Erosion of Democratic Competence

Due to inappropriate use, the term ignorance has progressively acquired a semantic aura so broad that it has become difficult to define its conceptual limits and attribute a single characterisation to it. In colloquial language, as well as in some media and educational simplifications, the term is often conflated with notions that do not belong to it either linguistically or scientifically. It is no accident that, since the early 2000s (Proctor, 2004; Proctor & Schiebinger, 2025), agnotology has become established in the humanities sciences, as a field of study dedicated to analysing the historical, cultural, political and educational conditions that determine not only “the things” we do not know, but also “why” we do not know them, “what” – or even “who” – impedes access to knowledge, and “how” ignorance tends to consolidate and reproduce itself over time (Occhini, 2026, in press). This contribution fits into this theoretical framework and analyses the issue of ignorance on the basis of the most recent data on the level of preparation of Italian students provided by ISTAT (2025), OPENPOLIS (2025), OECD (2025) and INVALSI (2024), relating them to the objectives of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (United Nations, 2015). Comparative analysis shows that the Italian education system is marked by persistent and interconnected phenomena such as implicit early school leaving, educational segregation, a high percentage of ELET, familily’s educational carelessness, implicit tracking, and the progressive simplification and narrowing of school and university curricula (Occhini, 2022; Occhini and Giampaolo, 2021). These phenomena are interpreted not only as critical outcomes of the structural system, but also as both the cause and effect of a progressive increase in levels of ignorance among the general population. Here, the attention to the relationship between these processes and the increase in acquired illiteracy, functional and relapse into illiteracy, which transforms ignorance into a cognitive and behavioural dimension that permeates large sections of the population, influencing individuals' interpretative, critical and decision-making skills. However, it is in the field of democracy that the effects of ignorance and illiteracy take on a particularly alarming significance. A population in which epistemic vices and forms of cognitive obstructionism extend from the individual and psychological to the collective and institutional levels is a fragile population, less able to distinguish between slogans and political programmes, impulsive choices and political consensus, and simply didactic knowledge and the effective internalisation of knowledge. From this perspective, ignorance is not only an educational question, but also a factor of democratic vulnerability, which can compromise the quality of participation, judgement and civic responsibility.