The case of has reached the Ministry of Education Linda Cocchetto, Virginia Herrera Gonzales and Lucrezia Novellothe three Venetian students who refused to take the oral exam after receiving a grade that was too low for them in the Greek version of “Minosse or on the law”. The general director of the regional school office Marco Bussetti sent an inspection to verify whether there were really any carelessness in the correction of the version by the external teacher Carmelità Pettenà of the Franchetti high school in Mestre, reports Repubblica.
The grades of class III A at the Foscarini high school in Venice, the class of the three girls, were lower than those of class III B, which had another external teacher: 9/20 versus 12/20, an average of failing in the first case, sufficient in the second. Hence the mothers’ doubt: why were such low grades given in Greek even to students who had had very high averages in Greek over the course of the three-year period?
Misinterpretations
Pending the inspection, for the moment the only official version is that of the young women. Whose mothers point the finger at the “mistakes of interpretation” in their daughters’ versions.
“My daughter’s only known mistake is a subordinate clause that she gave the wrong value to,” says Linda’s mother, who is also a Greek teacher. “The rest are errors of interpretation, such as a participle translated as “avente un battitore” instead of “con un tasto”: but, even if it sounds bad in Italian, a student is led to translate a Greek participle with an Italian participle, because if he doesn’t, he risks a bigger mistake, that of implying that he didn’t understand the participle.”
«Other errors noted – says Virginia’s mother – were also of interpretation. But Greek has this “risk”. For example, a “in this part” was marked as an error and corrected with “in this passage”, or even the definition of Aristotle as a preceptor, rather than “scientist” as the teacher corrected (if I may, a few centuries before Galileo… .)».
Lucrezia’s mother adds one more detail, also confirmed by Virginia’s mother: «During the oral exam my daughter asked to see the test to understand the mistakes. She saw a lot of red marks and got worried. The only mistake was a “since” translated instead of a “che”. She also made a mistake in translating a third person singular: in fact she had interpreted it as impersonal, therefore translating it as “si dice” instead of “dice” but the rest of the sentence was correct. There were other mistakes but they didn’t seem very serious to her… Anyway, we’ll show the translation to a professional».
And the other red marks? “Professor Pettenà – explains Lucrezia’s mother – replied that it is her “habit” to underline correct parts with red. But it is still an official act, is it possible? This is also why we ask for access to the documents. I know that my daughter, our daughters, thought they would get a good grade. With their gesture they represented the discomfort of the class, even of those who supported them but could not afford not to be questioned. She does not have it in for Professor Pettenà, she would never allow herself to judge her methods or teaching. She only disputes the evaluation criteria, which have ruined an academic career but, fortunately, not her future career: she will enroll in biomedical engineering and will take this experience with her as baggage”.
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