Many decades ago, when I attended the Berchet classical high school in Milan, an Italian teacher assigned the theme “Lucia Mondella”. One of our companions delivered, as a development, a single phrase: “Inept to live”, and obviously took zero. I must confess that to the request to give an opinion on guidelines for the reopening of the school, immediately followed by a re-closure for electoral purposes and, I suppose, by a re-reopening and perhaps a re-re-closure for the ballots, etc., the temptation to imitate that now remote companion was very strong. But tiremm innanz, since I live in Milan, and let’s try to gather some ideas.
1) The first feeling is that there are neither lines nor guide. Contrary to many of the comments that have been made, I am entirely in favor of decentralizing operational decisions to schools and regions, within a very precise defining framework (you have in mind the concept of autonomy, of which the twenty years occur right in these months?). The problem is that, on the one hand, the definitive framework is completely missing and, on the other, the subjects on which the decision-making has been loaded are not in a position to exercise it, because they do not control any type of resource. When an attempt was made to match the status of manager with some increased decision-making, the narrative of the “sheriff principal” was unleashed. And here the silence is beautiful.
2) On resources, very well that they are increased, who would not agree? Two observations. The first: that resources are fundamental to carry out a project, but in addition to resources there should be the project. Which, for a change, is not there. Safety is not a didactic goal, but if ever a condition, and the ministry makes two mistakes, it legislates in a sector that is not its own and totally unpredictable, and as usual thinks about starting all together passionately without taking into account the circumstances and the resources available.
The leopard-spot distribution of the virus should be an incentive to flexibilize, to cope with changes in a short time, and also to empower schools, without the fear of the criminal consequences. Investing the extra money to hire new teachers without any concern to evaluate their actual adequacy (and besides there would be no time to do it) does not (repeat: not) improve the quality of the service. This could be an opportunity to rethink in an operational way the whole long-standing story of the training, recruitment and career of the teachers, not to resolve it by September 14, but to arrive within a year or two to a system with some guarantees to work.
3) Parents, students and teachers in the square have multiple reasons to protest, and they have had them for many years, but two that are the most popular are out of place. The chicken coop classes have not existed for years and years, if only for reasons of demographic decrease, if not in very rare exceptions, and it has been demonstrated to the point of exhaustion that within certain limits not (I repeat: not) they constitute a significant element of improvement of the quality.
The problem of buildings, which are too often inadequate or dilapidated (there are actually also brand new buildings lavishly imagined in years of baby boom and then destined for something else) does not (repeat: not) be resolved by September. Here too, an excellent opportunity for a survey of needs – one of the positive points of the guidelines – and a medium-term planning that does not just put a patch on it, but starts a definitive solution.
4) Families who want guarantees on the return to school of children should aim for something else. What is this “other”? Once again, safety is fundamental and must be managed by those who know it, providing for the necessary adjustments, but you don’t go to school only with the certainty that everyone has his or her mask and sits a meter away from his neighbor (or better , from its “buccal rhyme”, a very useful term for Scarabeo players). The series of articles by Carlo Verdelli that points out the irrelevance of the school among the priorities of the political decision-makers, and at the same time its centrality in the life of society, should be considered for a long time. When I was at the OECD-Ceri, it was very evident that the nations with the greatest economic development (the Asian Tigers, for example) had invested in training even more than in the immediately productive sectors, but in Italy people continue to think about education funds as an expense, not an investment.
“Other” then means a serious reflection on the professional profiles requested and expected at the exit; the knowledge, skills and competences that make a boy a person, a citizen and a responsible worker, with a critical sense and motivated to participate; on the organizational and governance characteristics that a school should have to identify and achieve its objectives; on the characteristics of the teaching professionalism and on the way to obtain them.
A lot of time was wasted, unloading the responsibilities on the families, and also on the many schools (state and equal) that have tried to continue an educational project and not only of care, without having a formal recognition of the possibility of action: the Italian school is among those closed longer, but this does not seem to have produced any kind of reflection, much less consequently operational.
Perhaps one of the few positive outcomes of this period has been the awareness of many schools, many more than in the past, which can be autonomous, and therefore can claim that autonomy they have on paper. To change in this sense, if you want the return to school to also be the restart for a different perception of the school, of which families and public opinion today seem fortunately more aware than in the past, a strong, consistent political decision-making is needed and wide-ranging, not the attempt to exploit discontent.
The development of relations with the Regions is not particularly promising from this point of view, but the minister says “I am not alone, my party is with me”. Better alone…?
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