AGTA, the Association of Licensed Tourist Guides, has expressed strong disapproval of the official syllabus for the professional certification exam published by the Ministry of Tourism. The reason for the protest concerns in particular the content setting of the exam, which is considered to be notional, dispersive and above all disconnected from the real needs of the profession.
According to the association, the current syllabus risks turning the exam into a mnemonic test rather than a real tool to assess the skills needed to play a key role in the reception and enhancement of Italy’s cultural heritage. This is a missed opportunity, which could have marked a positive change for the sector and instead, in AGTA’s opinion, comes across as yet another bureaucratic exercise lacking in concrete effectiveness.
The Ministry of Tourism has released a syllabus divided into three sections (plus a fourth on legislation) for a total of 537 sites throughout Italy, knowledge of which is required of all candidates regardless of where they will practice their profession. The written and oral tests will be based on the 455 sites listed in the first two sections, while the technical-practical test-simulating a guided tour-will focus on the 82 sites in the third section. The approach, they explain from AGTA, completely ignores the reality of the profession, in which guides, despite having a license valid throughout the country, operate in almost all cases in only one region, often in a single city or province. For this reason, the association argues that it is necessary to focus on specialized and local training, enabling those who work in the field to know their area in depth, not only from a historical-artistic point of view but also from a practical point of view, including schedules, regulations, transportation and tourist logistics.
“In Italy,” AGYA explains, “there is a clear distinction between the two professional figures, the escort, who has more practical tasks and often travels with the group, and the guide, who illustrates the monuments. As an association, we believe that in order to provide quality services, the guide must be local and specialized on the area in which he or she works, prepared not only from a cultural point of view, but also on practical everyday issues (schedules, tickets and rules for monuments, transportation, bus schedule, strikes, etc.), all things that only those who live there can know and that make the local guide a point of reference for tour operators as well.”
“When the exams were provincial and regional,” the association continues, “the exams, at least in various parts were of extreme difficulty and one had to learn every site and work of art, even the less significant ones, in the entire area of responsibility, but at least the guides had the meager consolation of studying the area in which they would later work. Since the qualification is now national, for many reasons the Ministry felt it was not possible to include the mandatory specialization in the examination (it would have greatly complicated the Ministry’s preparation and lengthened the examination time and opened the door to appeals). On the other hand, it would be objectively impossible to really know the thousands of sites throughout Italy. Since the purpose of the exam is to qualify guides from all over Italy who will then each practice in a specific territory of their choice, in our opinion it would have been essential to set the exam on questions related to the three subjects-history, art history and archaeology-that form the common basis of every guide’s preparation. By way of example, if one knows Caravaggio thoroughly, one will be able to comment on one of his paintings whether he is in Naples or Sicily; if one has studied the civilizations of ancient Italy, he will have the basis for then delving in detail into the collections of the museums he is going to illustrate, whether those of Villa Giulia or the Archaeological Museum of Cagliari; not to mention history, which is interwoven in every region and is the backbone of every guided tour.”
For AGTA, then, the current exam setting not only does not reward cultural preparation, it actually hinders it. Rather than providing the foundation on which to then build a local specialization, it forces candidates to memorize hundreds of pieces of information about places they will probably never visit and that have no relevance in their future work. Instead, the association proposed an exam setting focused on the three disciplines that form the indispensable basis of the profession: history, art history and archaeology. Studying these subjects would provide cross-curricular tools that can be spent in any context.
“It is useless to delude oneself that this exam is a point of arrival and that it will bring out people who are already ready to work: preparing for the exam should provide a base and tools for future years; as soon as they are licensed, they will have to rush to study or delve into the sites of the city/region in which they will work,” AGTA argues. “Instead, the exam syllabus presented by the Ministry is based on 537 sites in 20 regions of Italy, 90 percent of which are useless completions for candidates and can be erased from their memory immediately after the exam because they relate to the other 19 regions where they will not be working. So it is unnecessarily notational, because it requires them to memorize information about hundreds of places where they have never been and where they will never go, without logic and without providing data and tools that are useful for the purpose of carrying out the profession. What’s more, even against the provisions of the law, the primary source, which for the written and oral examination clearly provides for ’subjects,’ not sites. Of course, each site is a museum or monument, etc., so it allows questions on archaeology, art history, history and geography. However, it is negative that the tests are similar, all three based on a list of sites.”
AGTA then clarifies that from the outset the association has appreciated and praised the idea of the third test, the technical-practical one, while it has something to say about the oral: “at least in that test,” the association argues, “it would be necessary to verify the candidate’s preparation precisely on the fundamental subjects that a guide must necessarily know: artists, artistic currents, archaeology, history. It is not true that this would take too much time, because if the examiner is good and experienced, he or she does not need much to verify preparation; and in any case the candidate has the right to be able to have several questions available, different ones, because after 10 years one cannot gamble everything on one site, like Russian roulette.”
Then among the most serious elements pointed out by the association is the list itself. Indeed, some of the sites listed in the program are now inaccessible to licensed tour guides. They can only be visited and explained by volunteers, in-house guides or members of local associations. Others, on the other hand, have simply been closed to the public for years: emblematic examples are the Mitrei of Santa Prisca and Barberini in Rome, which have not been open to visitors for some time. Finally, a great many of the included sites are off the tourist trail, places that will never be the subject of a guided tour “except perhaps by a cultural association if one is lucky.” This, according to AGTA, “seems to have been a choice of the Ministry, to give a signal and enhance little-known sites. We recognize that the Ministry is doing a lot to enhance little-known sites, but as far as we are concerned we suggest that they be included in the mandatory refresher courses for already licensed guides. It would be better for future guides to study the most important sites first and make sure they know how to illustrate those.”
“It is regrettable,” the association concludes, “that this announcement is yet another example of the distorted system applied in Italy in any kind of competition and selection, whether it is the tour guide exam, a test for admission to a university faculty or a public competition for a job. However, we would like to clarify one last important thing, especially for candidates: since these are multiple-choice quizzes, the written test on the sites will not necessarily be difficult or very selective; in fact, it may even be very easy. It depends on the level of questions the committee decides to ask. What is certain, however, is that having wanted to base all tests, including the oral, on sites is extremely limiting and is a missed opportunity, for candidates and for the field. We risk having future guides who will have memorized the Archaeological Park of Ocriticum and the Botanical Garden of Padua (just to give an idea of the breadth of skills required), but who may not know International Gothic or the difference between Greek originals and Roman replicas, i.e., the basics. A great opportunity was missed that the Ministry said it would give to qualify the field. Those with memory and lots of luck win. And passing the exam is no guarantee of solid preparation, which is what the world of tourism needs.”
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| Tour guide exam, AGTA protests, "This is how you reward memory, not competence" |
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