Dear readers,
to anyone interested in the problems of education, I suggest reading a letter written by my colleague Paolo Conti.
those working in schools will find it hard not to recognize in his words, beyond the bitterness, hiding a truth that is not at all or not yet so clear and obvious.
Working with and for children means to understand a dimension that goes beyond the present.
Some might think that to be happy, the teachers would need to Merlin, can predict the future.
Faced with a future as never before now unknown, who does not feel inadequate?
This general feeling is probably what brought together teachers from different periods, at least since education has become public.
Each period had, however, a horizon of reference and an idea of \u200b\u200bthe function of the school. You can easily rely on that certain "horizons" could and should be avoided but it is certain that the school can not help it, just simply because it is with and for the future that works. A future that, in the premises, promises to be rather disturbing
Or is dead or does the teacher
Dear Minister,
I begin by saying that the school has problems other than the restoration of the apron, but I will not just respect for those problems. Like his recent predecessors, she too made an error of perspective: Minister Moratti thought of having to deal with the families, the Minister Fioroni believed to bother the boys (driven by the numerous episodes of the news) Do you see your duty think of us teachers. And who thinks the school? Excuse me if I remember, but there are your colleagues that we should deal with these subjects (Minister of Public Service, the youth policy, social affairs). She is first of all, the Minister of the school is that it must think it works, its organization, its quality. And if by doing this, it is sometimes necessary to upset some families, a part of students, the class teacher: patience! You can not please everyone. When you try to do it, you typically create only trouble. So the Minister Moratti has set up the advance, trying to respond to demands and needs of the alleged parents and doing irreparable damage to the school, so his immediate predecessor has issued a series of circulars and rules aimed at restoring order and seriousness (recovery debt, additional evidence in the exams ...) that have created only confusion and bewilderment, so she, in his initial statements, it requires more commitment to the teachers, claiming for them at the same time, greater recognition of career and salary. Forgive me the direct way by which I tell him, but "giving up". You know better than us that there are no economic resources to maintain certain intentions. We say that they will be found from savings made by reducing staff and streamlining (closure of sections, classes, schools) is like a shovel to give a person sentenced to death and the grave can announce that the size he wants to spend more comfortable. What I would do with a few euro more in salary (if it was that were used really well) against an increase in the ratio teacher / pupil, the chronic lack of facilities, materials, instruments, the increase in social problems which have to cope without any support? She gives interviews in which he declares that the presence of many foreign children in our classes does not worry as there sees a resource rather than a problem. Even I think so. But because the prophecy come true we need resources, human and material. We need to simultaneously present in those classes because those children can be traced from the early stages of their integration, we need to build bridges of cultural mediators relationships with families, we need tools that facilitate the communication of knowledge. She is really convinced that we can do this in sections of 28 children of kindergarten or primary school classes of 25 or secondary school that will reach up to 35 students? And together, plans to extend the hours spent and to send the advance in the primary school system without increasing the workforce, without assessing the existing facilities? Think about it, Minister, when he wrote the inscriptions on the next round.
But she insists on talking about the role of the teacher and re-rating in conduct as a tool to regain control over the class, to restore that order which seems inevitably lost, if only we are facing many exposed sites in the network. Does not it seem a bit 'simplistic an answer? Plautus, in his comedy, referring to a guy who is no longer, does a character say: "O dead or makes perfect." Yes, because at the time of Plautus to the master was a slave labor and then was allowed to approach his existential situation to that of a deceased person, someone who, socially, did not exist. Then there were times when it passed a master (or even a teacher) in the street, people waved and doffed his hat to show respect and consideration. Who has driven back into the house of bondage? Who is to blame for this decline inevitable? All and only the teachers? You may focus, in virtue of the case in this category with all the ignorance, incompetence, lack of professional ethics of the universe the world? No, dear Minister, can not be and it is not. All of this is the result of wrong policies, choices made by offenders who would have a duty to safeguard the integrity of the class to defend the school of the Republic. But ten years have not announced a competition for ordinary tests and qualifications and continue to recruit on the basis of arbitrary criteria, successful, non-transparent. She objected that the competition not in itself guarantee the employment of good teachers, and this is true. But establishing a principle of equality of opportunity between those who aspire to the profession, fixed (through a program of study), some indicators of competence that are required, states that we should study and be prepared. In recent years it has taken everything from casual "historical" religion teachers (who invariably, after moving into the role, gave up teaching to enter the common roles) and so on and so forth. Among them there are definitely people of value, but it's a completely random, unwanted, unnecessary. It gives the impression that is, (but it is not just an impression), which is enough for a teacher to enroll in a list and then wait patiently for more or less the fortune turns in your favor and that is unpacked in the year you have worked on more . But this is a trade up, complex, difficult and requires a solid theoretical and an equally strong inclination to research. The school teachers are not: they are out of school. More of managers, inspectors, ministers. They are projecting their future to individuals, who are focusing their choices, to educate the intelligence targets initially suspected. Or at least, it should be. Of course we do not expect much from slaves, confused by shadows, jerking all, searching in vain for a horizon of sense to hold onto. Yes, Minister, because it is missing, and indeed we do everything to make it fail. I read today that schools will teach Lombard cardiovascular resuscitation. Bravo! And then? Why not a tracheotomy or prevent the onset of warts? The boys crashed the car on Saturday night? It is the fault of the school and that she must overcome with the appropriate course in driver education. Teenage girls get pregnant? The responsibility of the school and has started a project of education in sexuality aware? Fires break out in the summer? Why not propose a fantastic journey of environmental education? We do not know where to put the children two years because they lack the nests? Mandiamoli to school! To this we must add the constant succession of reforms and reform more or less momentous and historic raining from the sky without anyone feel the need or necessity. What is the point of all this? These are really the job of teachers? We have turned into amateurs, in bricoleurs more or less enthusiastic, in desperate souls always looking for "magic tricks are able to" entertain "an audience distracted for a few hours and hostile to continue to offend without understanding, without having to insult never even tried to listen. Why children or parents should have respect for us, if the ministers for the first insult us and say publicly that we are a bunch of incompetent slackers without any professional conscience? What can serve the seven conducted in a climate like this?
In his keynote address to the Cultural Commission of the Chamber, you asked us a burst of pride. Has inspired us to demonstrate that it is not "bad" as we draw. Dear Minister, I work in the nursery school for twenty years and in these twenty years I have done is this: be proud of my work and try to demonstrate in practice, day by day, that the work had meaning and value. Now just: I'm tired. I do not care to prove anything to anyone. Mind you: I did not say that no more desire to work in the school. This, inexplicably, has stayed with me. I will continue to go to school every morning, to work with and for children, and families, as I always have. But without rhetoric and without thinking (naively as I did in those years) that my work can have a more general sense, it can go beyond and above those children and families who have before. But I propose a challenge and it is something simple, believe me. She has benefited from its predecessors because I do not expect anything from you, and then even the smallest gesture, would be sufficient. It amazes me, Minister: have you for a first burst of pride, show me that the school is in the heart as much as me, who has accepted an appointment as prestigious just to be nice backdrop to the press conference of the Prime Minister together with your colleagues success. As I said, I can live a little. Try to say (for example) that the rules contained in Article 64 of the Finance Bill is good all except the increase in the ratio of pupils per teacher because you can not work with thirty children from three to six years, you can not teach reading and write to thirty-two children of primary school, you can not fight the dispersion in classes of thirty adolescents. Be angry, raise your voice, threatened to resign if it does not change the norm. We both know that not listening and I do not claim that maintained the threat (in this country no one ever resigns) but would be nice gesture, a sign of life that I would collect the bitterness that comes over me. I wonder, Minister, or shut up, accept your role as a "tissue blank" and do not try to help. We need only to be left alone.
Paola Conti
Nursery School Teacher
