Article 34 of the Constitution, “School is open to all” printed on the desk
At the Comprehensive Institute 10 in Vicenza, there are 636 students; 48 percent are foreigners. «Even if “foreigner” is a generic category» underlines the manager Maria Chiara Porretti. «In fact, 90% were born in Vicenza. We must distinguish between students “with a foreign surname” and NAI, i.e. those who have just arrived in Italy, who number around twenty in the entire institute. Two arrive a month: they are the only real foreigners because they don’t speak Italian.”
Which, then, upon closer inspection, this need to go into the linguistic details of the matter arose only after Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, in light of the closure of the Pioltello school on 10 April to allow the children to participate in the end of Ramadan partyasked to put a ceiling of 20 percent of foreign students in classes. Closely followed by the Minister of Education, Giuseppe Validatara, who tweeted: “If it is agreed that foreigners assimilate on the fundamental values written in the Constitution, this will happen more easily if the majority of classes are Italians.”
Well, in the IC 10 of Vicenza the Constitution is not a study, “the Constitution” explains the vicar Laura Trentin, «lives among the desks, is printed on the desks. We have chosen more than 20 articles which are always before the eyes of our students, they are discussed, explored and argued with the teachers. Values that we do not study in the abstract, but that we try to put into practice.” In addition to many other choices of responsibility they have made: «primarily that of the disciplinary classrooms. Each class does not have its own classroom, but in lower secondary school – the old middle schools so to speak – we work on learning environments. The children, therefore, are responsible for the hours they attend and learn civic education by putting it into practice. Already from the lower secondary level, we introduced class representatives. Every month there is a class assembly. A way to make them responsible and give them confidence.”
From left, the vicar Laura Trentin, 62, and the school director Maria Chiara Porretti, 49
Outside the institute, it may be a coincidence or perhaps not, there is a mural dedicated to Antenore, an exile from another country, after whom the school is named: «this is why we implemented the musical literacy project to overcome linguistic differences. But then, let’s face it, we adults create the problems. For our students, their classmates are just classmates, whether Italian or foreign. And this is why the question of a maximum ceiling does not exist: what do you do, send the student from the building next door to another school? Furthermore, it is thanks to their peers that they quickly learn Italian.”
Of course, such an international reality requires a strict organization and dedicated resources who deal with the situation in times of hardship. «For example, we divide the Pnrr funds for linguistic improvement in half between English and the improvement of the Italian language». And greater work by teachers: «but the reverse of this discussion is that the teaching staff is stable. Because whoever is here chooses it. It’s a very stimulating reality.”
In Veneto out of 592 schools, 17 exceed 40% of foreigners including the Istituto Comprensivo 10 and 9 which we talk about in the issue of Famiglia Cristiana on newsstands from Thursday 18 April. Some are close to 70 percent.
