Schools: Italian Protestants concerned about reforms

Nicola Pantaleo, President of the Association "31 October for a lay and pluralistic school" speaks of a counter-reformation of the Italian schools. In the face of recent proposals from the Minister of Public Education, Mariastella Gelmini, Panaleo, who represents an association started by people within the Federation of Protestant Churches in Italy, fears a "new, strong offensive against the public schools by Vatican politics, in the light of their attempts to harmonize the educational goals of the public schools and the church." Speaking of the particular proposals, Pantaleo said: "In the name of populist common sense four decades of good education could be cancelled in an effort to restore instruction based on homogenizing (the use of an apron), on submission to authority (grading on conduct), on the apparent simplification but with substantial cultural superficiality (grading by numbers)". Unacceptable for Pantaleo is the restoration of only one teacher for each grade in the elementary school. "Having only one educator, contradicting a consolidated pedagogical practice, responds to a type of school based on a triad of authority: the parent, the teacher, the parish priest."

Luciano Zappella, Vice-president of the "Association 31 October" deplores the lack of a serious pedagogical project: "a wider vision that takes into account the changed ethical, social and cultural conditions in which we live is lacking; even, for example, the consideration that the school is no longer the only source of transmission of knowledge and is no longer the only educational agency. What Minister Gelmini is proposing is a cosmetic operation in the etymological sense of the term: she wants to put 'order' and 'discipline' in the student body when we should put order and discipline in our heads, not filling them with notions, but getting in the habit of thinking in an autonomous and critical way (therefore emptying our heads of prejudice). Why not then invest more in teachers, improving their abilities and not only their salaries? Why has scholastic politics become the terrain of ideological battles when there should rather be a common effort in view of an agreed project with a wide breadth? On this, and not on aprons, we would like to see a serious confrontation."

Strong doubts on scholastic reforms were expressed by the Committee of Evangelical Italian Teachers. In a communique entitled "The school of shame", they expressed the opinion that the cuts in personnel and in resources do not respond to pedagogical motivations, but to a "purely economical logic of reducing public spending."

From press service NEV - Notizie evangeliche, 30 September 2008