I want you to know in which kind of country I live: Italy. Yesterday, while our Prime Minister was visiting George W. Bush, telling the world how much he loves the american President, the italian Parliament was discussing and approving an important new law on the organization of the primary school. The Lega Nord party proposed that all the children that can’t properly speak italian, mainly sons and daughters of inmigrants, should attend special separate classes. In the opinion of the Lega Nord’s politicians this should help to integrate the children in the italian population. What? Are they saying the school have to integrate by separating? Excuse me?! I can’t see the logic behind it. This is racist. Period. The problem is that the Parliament approved the modification to the current law.
Sorry for this post, which is not on science, technology or communication, but this morning I’m angry with my government and I think that you should know this kind of things.
Well written, Marco. It kinds of give us some sense of solace when we can at least inform our foreign friends on what goes on in such an odd, awkward country that ours is.
Well, we complain, but the center-right got the majority of representants in the parliament and do what they want. What is difficult to accept, is to have funding cuts made on education, mainly, and not on the cost of: politic parties, politic journals, national journals and director salaries, regional governments, local administrators, etc…
It is not acceptable that only a part of the contributors (prohibition of opening short term contract positions, university cuts, researchers in public Institutes becomed aged without new forces) must bear the costs of the restoration of the country’s economy.
I completely agree with you guys.
It would not work in my daughter’s class. She is in the largest minority, being a native English speaker (in an English school) but fewer than half the children in her class fall into this category. The other 18 or so fall into about 10 different groups of other native-language speakers. So would they have to have eleven separate classes if this were a school in Italy? ;-)
That’s not exactly what Lega Nord suggested. Their idea is to have an italian native speaker’s class and a different class for all the others who learnt italian after they reache Italy. This should help in keep them at pace with the rest of the students. In my opinion this help the separation between differnt cultural groups.
What I really can’t understand is why other languages native speaker should slow down the learning process while this should not be true for children with mental problems, for example.
It’s clear to everybody that what Lega Nord is aiming at is saying that foreigners ar bad, aren’t able to speak, theri are the people who steal your job, who commit all the crimes in your backyard.
I can certainly see the difference!
In the official (OFSTED) report of my daughters’ school, it has been noted that the average overall standard in the various English examinations has fallen since the last inspection, probably due to the very large number of students who have joined the school in the past few years from different nations. This isn’t intended to be a racist comment, but it is a reflection on the difficulties of maintaining the standards under these circumstances. There should be lessons for children at schools if those children have difficulty speaking the native language of the country, I think – but this is different from what I think you say is happening in Italy, which is a proposed total segregation – not a good idea I agree wholeheartedly!