A provision - the one on the extension of the 24-hour working hours - withdrawn by the Government, a bill - the belated one on the reform of collegial bodies and on the self-government of schools - which will hardly be approved by a Parliament now close to dissolution , a set of public spending cuts that affect not only schools but the entire country, with public debt reached 126% of GDP: here are the claims that are shaking Italian schools these days with protests and, above all, occupations sometimes fomented by some nostalgic parents or some professor who hopes to amplify the voice of his own discomfort and to find support in the participation of students.
Mind you, protest, if democratic and peaceful, is always legitimate, but we have never seen such a heated protest mount on such flimsy foundations. Once we protested to ask for reforms, today not to do them. But the school can die of conservatism. Looking at the occupied schools and the claims on the banners hanging from the windows, it seems to be at the beginning of a new '68. But it is also understood that, as in recent years, the celebration of what has rightly been defined as a conformist rite, school employment will deflate.
What is most surprising, in all this uproar, is the fury against the self-government bill of the schools, against which we persist in railing, moreover calling it "ddl Aprea" even if the first signatory of one of the numerous bills that was later merged into a unified text, has not been a parliamentarian for a while. Furthermore, not irrelevant aspect, the current bill was dismissed by the 7th House Commission on October 10 with the approval of all political forces.
It is understandable that students may not know the content and genesis of a legislative text, but that their teachers, exponents of Cobas and those who allow themselves to be seduced by the siren of protest against everything and against everyone, wave it like a bogeyman and artfully deformed, appears only a guilty and clumsy attempt to unleash disorder and conflict by adding confusion to the real discomfort that the country - and therefore also the school - experiences.
These improvised tribunes mainly thunder against three points of the so-called Aprea bill: the recognition of the statutory autonomy of schools, the alleged elimination of student participation and the introduction of external subjects in the governing body who, according to them, would pulverize the schools in a variegated mosaic and would favor their privatisation.
Perhaps there is room for improvement for the matter contained in the bill, but these allegations are false and unfounded. The statute is inherent to the autonomy with which the schools have been endowed since 1997. The student component, like that of the parents, remains in the governing body in the same proportions as the current one. The participation of representatives of the territory, in a maximum number of two, is purely consultative and decided on the basis of the statute. What then is the need for these rules? The modernization and streamlining of the functioning of the school, its easing of the bureaucratic burdens that hinder its progress so much.
In reality, this bill has a fault and that is that it is so late that it will almost certainly not be able to see the light, especially if the dissolution of the Chambers is brought forward. The governing bodies of the schools could still remain stuck to the delegated decrees of 1974, while the schools have become autonomous institutions since 1997. School autonomy has so far encountered a thousand obstacles and its full implementation is still awaiting. In 2012 we celebrate fifteen years of delay. But it will not be the conformism of the occupations that will fill it. The delays are also others. Merit, evaluation and consequent enhancement of the teaching profession are still waiting to find space in the school.
