by Stefano Vaccara
NEW YORK (UNITED STATES) (ITALPRESS) – Even the Minister of Education and Merit Giuseppe Valditara took the word, after the vice-premier Antonio Tajani, in front of a crowded General Consulate of Italy in New York, in the presence, among others, of the Italian ambassador in the United States Marco Peronaci, of the Consul General Giuseppe Pastorelli and of NIAF Robert Allegrini Valditara first devoted his intervention to the Italian school and the need to bring back to the center of teaching the history and values of the West, and then answer the questions of journalists about the polemic regarding the proposal of the Meloni government to fix to 30% the presence in the classes of foreign students who do not have an adequate knowledge of Italian and the words of the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella against the “ghetto schools”.
In his speech, Valditara claimed the reform of the National Indications and “the return of the centrality of the history of the West”, in his view neglected also in American schools and universities. A civilization founded, he said, on “Rome, Jerusalem and Athens”, from which universal values such as democracy, freedom, equitas, pietas and humanitas would be born. “Not other civilizations, not other cultures have been able to give the world what we have given,” said the minister, indicating in the centrality of the person, in freedom and democracy the heritage of Western civilization.
Valditara linked this approach to the relationship between Italy and the United States, recalling the influence of ancient Rome on American institutions and defending the figure of Christopher Columbus, called “the first American in history”. He also announced a protocol between the ministry and NIAF, which could be signed in Rome on October 12, to enhance the history of Italian emigration in the United States in schools.
Responding to journalists, the minister returned to the question of the roof of 30%, claiming that the proposal is consistent precisely with the call of Mattarella against ghettoization. “We want foreign children who do not adequately speak our language not to be ghettoized,” he explained, rejecting the idea of a clash with the Quirinal and ensuring that on the principle of integration there is full sharing. “We don’t want Alabama schools in the 1950s, where whites and blacks were on the one hand,” Valditara added.
The Minister emphasised above all on clarification: “This is not a percentage of foreign students,” but only those who do not know or do not know our language properly.” The criterion, he explained, would not be “ethnic origin, national origin, racial origin”, but the knowledge of Italian.
Valditara cited the Invalsi results to argue that there is a gap in language skills between first-generation Italian and foreign students and announced that the bill expected Thursday will preview more than 14 million euros for personalized Italian routes in cases where it is not possible to distribute students differently beyond the expected threshold.
The government, he added, has already assumed about a thousand teachers specialized in teaching Italian to newly immigration students. The minister finally recalled the American experience of “pull-out” programs, in which students who do not know the language receive for part of the day a specific teaching outside the classroom, indicating it as a model in part similar to the road undertaken in Italy.
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(ITALPRESS).
