One who left. Comment about student demonstrations in Italy.

“You are such a colony here”, said a girl I have met on Thursay, while waiting for a lecture. By saying you, she meant “Italian students at Soas”. I thought: if you can, you run away. Since the Italian Educational System does not work. Nevertheless Italy – even though there are a lot of families which can barely cope with the life cost increase- has been and continues to be one of the G8. And some of us, the richest or the most determined, leave their cities and towns, to benefit the UK Educational System.

At the moment all the Italian universities are in revolt: professors have suspended any didactic activity, demonstrations are spreading over the country, students decided to stage a sit in the most of buildings  otherwise destined to lectures and conferences. But what will it bring to? Let me say: nothing.

All the decrees issued by the government have only a reason and an effect: reduce the educational system costs, as much as possible, even if impossible. It’s a way to solve out the biggest Italian problem:  budget. What matters if thousands of theachers are to be fired? And who cares if hundreds of research students or new graduates will lose any hope to be absorbed into the University system? Those are some of the questions the Italian Students draw to the attention of the Government and of the current Minister for Education, Mariastella Gelmini. Questions which will not be answered.

A friend of mine, which is organizing “Open-air Maths Lessons” in Florence, states one of the problems which concretely affect the students of her faculty. At the Faculty of Maths of the University of Florence there are, indeed, many research students which have spent the last years teaching without having any compense, only in the prospective of a future academic career. But now they have been told that there won’t be new engagements, even a part of the old teachers has to retire. They have to look for something else. That is only an example, but the decrees related to the Educational System are many and in a wide range of fields.

The problem is even deeper than it appears. The cutting of implies that the Italian Educational System will be freezed. The Italian theaching staff has poorly been renewed during the last decades. Now the situation will get worse. Even if there are good professors, they are esponents of an old way of thinking which creates graduate students, already outdated. The most of the Italian students, which remain in Italy, are affected by a lack in dinamicity and sense of efficacy. They will discuss, arguing about everything and nothing, without achieve a form of constructive protest, which will remain purely theoretic. Until everyone will get tired and hopeless.

That’s the reason which made me say: it will be nothing, as usual. Everyone got used to the manifestation outspread which follows any new decrete. But the Student movement is fragmentized, as it’s the rest of the indignated people. Fragmentation inside and outside. The matter is not defined, as the scopes aren’t. There is only a vague idea of what is right and what is not, only an utopian desire about what it should be. And if generic ideas are weak, desires are more. Passion will pass away and be sure: “our colony” will encrease. What about the others? Among the states of Europe, is Italy bound to freeze and sink?

Tags: Italy

Category: Student News, Travel