The Italian education ministry has vowed to change the way it sets exam texts after a string of embarrassing blunders including a howler about Italy's most famous modern poet, Eugenio Montale.
High-school students were asked to comment on the ''female figure'' who ''saves'' the poet with her smile in a celebrated 1925 poem which was inspired by a male Russian ballet dancer.
They were asked to discuss other examples of the ''saving and consolatory role of women'' in the work of the 1975 Nobel prize winner.
''I've already set the ministry to work to prevent recurrences,'' Education Minister Mariastella Gelmini said Friday.
She said the mistakes were due to an ''outdated'' process that left the final word to one person, who has now been removed.
The selection of texts would now be made by a board and ''thoroughly vetted,'' Gelmini said.
Wednesday's Montale blooper was followed by another two cases on Thursday - a missing pronoun in a text from the ancient Greek writer Lucian and a tourism school English text containing typos like 'budges' instead of budget and a puzzling reference to ''a visit worth a visit''.
The Italian press has been having a field day with what one commentator dubbed ''this latest comedy of errors''.
Friday's Corriere della Sera listed past examples including, last year, the incorrect attribution of Dante's famous praise of St Dominic in the Paradiso and, in a 2005 geography exam, the ''migration'' of the celebrated Renaissance city Urbino from the Adriatic Marche region to Umbria.
