They have been heavily discussing the Italian school education system compared to others for several years. This article speaks particularly about the secondary school system and the university education system. The examples mentioned below will refer, in particular, to the “Sandro Pertini” state high school and to the Polytechnic School of the University of Genoa. At “Sandro Pertini" high school you can take the following courses: humanities (a social-economic option is also included ); reading languages and choreography. This section of disciplines seem to be quite traditional even if, for example, the ‘scientific’ course is missing. In all Italian high schools you can take many courses such as reading languages (English is almost always mandatory), Italian literature, history, philosophy, geography, maths, chemistry, biology and many more, then you can learn specific high school subjects if there are any such as psychology and sociology or business course. Thanks to these several subjects, Italian students seem to be cleverer than Australian ones but, on my own experience, I can clearly claim that Genoa’s secondary education system is quite obsolete because of a lack of resources compared to the Australia one. However, university education system seem to be as worthy as a lot of Australian universities.
Although studying subjects that can provide a fundamental knowledge of the world around us is very ethically correct (I’m talking about humanities ones), you could wonder why we are still struggling on learning by heart a lots of dates (in history for example) and on learning obsolete languages such as Latin or ancient Greek especially because they are no longer spoken around the world. It also seems that some people (both attending students and citizens) are asking to ‘remove’ the classical high school where you study, for the most, the ‘useless’ subjects. The propose to increase the hours of maths, economic sciences and chemistry instead of Latin or ancient Greek (mentioned above) even if a lot of students are not particularly interested in them but, as Mariangela Vaglio says (a famous writer known for writing and editing books about Italian scholar system), “removing classical high school is, some way, the same as locking the stable’s gates after the bulls are already gone. We have to start by improving education system from primary and middle school”. I think she is right, Italians need to support their interest in learning humanities topics. After talking with a lot of Pertini’s students, it was clear for me that the most of them think a good knowledge in history, literatures and languages is still worthy. This is quite different from Australian way of thinking in high schools, that has been focusing on studying “STEM” subjects for years. I think the way of studying in Italy is way obsolete, especially if we compare it to the Australian one, that is much more progressive. Even if “Pertini” high school seems to be static in his way of teaching, there are a lot of outstanding projects, the most remarkable of is called “Studying in Supported Autonomy”, powered by Silvia San Martino, whose project’s aims are: making a school inclusion through a coordinate planning of school services with healthcare, social-environmental, cultural and sportive ones; taking part in school life and in training of students with disabilities and last, going on study trips. These programs are getting very popular in Italy but there aren’t enough resources to support them.
During the 2016/2017 school years, students with disabilities were 69.000 (4% on total), 3.000 ca more than the previous year. Despite support teachers are more than 88.000 (6.000 more than previous year), the estimate shows a link slightly less than 1 teacher every 2.000 students, according to an ISTAT research in 2018. I saw this situation in “Pertini” high school, these projects can be done only if there are the necessary resources. We have similar projects in Australia but they are more funded and well equipped. By the total of students with disabilities (7,6%), 81% of them attend school, according to Australian health institute in 2017. Instead of making a stable connection between support teacher and students, Australian schools examine the level of disability and then they delegate teachers to students. These projects make the most of these resources and, as a good consequences, they work better. Due to lacks of fund and of resources for the secondary school system, at least for high schools, I was expecting the same situation for the Polytechnic School of the University of Genoa. Actually, despite all my expectations, I saw robotics department is as well-equipped as Queensland university, the robots seekers are working with are very cutting-edge. Nevertheless, robotics lab at Unige could represent in some wrong way the level of university resources in general in Italy, given that, two years ago, Unige won the Navigation Prize for the “European Robotics League Emergency” projects. As part of this prize, Unige won 2.1 billion of euros to assist robotics lab in Europe but it can be that success of the seekers is to be attributed, partly, to their education got in their high schools and universities. Maybe they made it because they attended a private school that offers a more ‘personal’ training. The response of the provate schools to the overcrowded classes of public schools is small number (with an average of 10 students a teacher) classes with teacher chosen on they CV, on they talent at teaching, on their knowledge of the topic they teach. I could never judge the post- high school success of students that attended public school and provate school but I’d like to find out it there is any connection between high schools and the post-degree career of every students. There are the settlements to improve Italiano scholar system; maybe it will be up to our generation to find them.
Recently, the Italian Government made a huge change to the “maturità” exam, a state examination every student have to take, but Genoa’s student are really against it. In fact, during my stay in there, there were a lot of ‘school meetings’ and a demonstration called “Im-maturità 2019” claiming that student’s future is not a game (La Voce di Genova, 2019). The time I spent in Genoa made me understand that I’m more favoured about my education system, for the financing for both public and private schools and for universities too! But the feature Italian students have and Australia ones don’t is that they have a wide knowledge of all subjects: this feature prepare them better to live in the world and to know it better.
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