Foot Disorders More Condition_symptoms

A school is only the beginning to eliminate

Raffaele Mantegazza, from The Stranger
The data on which I do not think enough is being reflected in these months, the debate about the school and its destiny is the extraordinary liaison between the Education Minister and Minister of Finance, a figure unique in the history of this country and his school. Even the most reactionary and the most reactionary among the Ministers of Education in fact, Democrats staged a conflict with the holders of economic ministries: "I'd love to but I can not ..." "your needs are real but there is no money" ... "I've cut the budget for my project for reform," ... were the jingles came from Viale Trastevere, in essence, stated the school has certainly needed the money and resources but the current economic situation does not allow it.

It was obviously an ideological discourse that covered anything but generous intentions towards the school, but in the words of Horkheimer and Adorno: " ideology in the strict sense where you apply power relations are not transparent themselves, mediated, and in this respect, also sweetened . The brutality of Berlusconi and his equipment, his "tell the truth frankly and without pretense, sharp and immediate (close relative of bossismo and not without disturbing parallels with Mussolini) at the school also brings clarity to a difficult to doubt : maneuvering the Gelmini sees the school as a reality to eliminate, at least for what it was - or could have been - so far, that is a possible source of critical thinking, reasoning, culture (this is the mandate that the Constitution entrusts ).

The reasoning is that of the Nazi doctor in front of Primo Levi: "This is something in front of me belongs to a genre that obviously should be deleted. In the particular case make sure that does not contain some element used. Tremonti Gelmini and begin the assault on the school as "instances of mediation" between state and individual, between individual and institution to which the school is an example. This should give pause to those who have seen so far in school, perhaps by generalizing some remarkable insights of Althusser, only the apparatus for the transmission of the dominant culture. And for this I am not convinced even a reading of the key measures gelminiani only in the transformation of the school in an instance of control and indoctrination (if you want to do a teacher's control agent to Foucault does not put one in every 30 students but each one 3!).

The school was also an instance of resistance to domination or at least of mediation (and therefore softening but also paradoxically open to criticism) of the demands that this posed to the subjects. A look at Leninism or even Gramscian school has had to recognize this dialectic: the discipline of the lower classes that the boy learned in school was also the possible discipline of the revolutionary. So I would not speak of "Reform Gelmini" because it is a reform institution in which or to whom it is believed, however, trying to indicate a direction and, speaking of slow dissolution, the more clear about the university, where you start from the walls (foundations who can buy the local private universities), then became almost painful to what (and who) they contain.

Of course, if all that the university has in opposition to this project what it was in the last ten years (the university of "if my candidate wins in Bologna then your Milan wins" in which the university faculty in the councils of ordinary talk, associate members and researchers are silent ; the university where the student component in the collegiate bodies and silent when he speaks is the same for both counts less than nothing, in which the universities are financed with public money and research grants which then does not know anything, nothing happens, there is little control over how they are carried out searches on their quality, the actual quality of teachers, for PhD students, fellows, the fellows, the university in which he spends half the time to make institutional arrangements, balances, bankruptcy, daring constructions Cencelli manual) then it is unlikely that the design-tremontian gelmini encounter difficulties of any kind.

The same seems true for the school, which has been less strong on the power play, but the difficulty in defining a real identity pedagogical ; the problem of character apparel approval imposed from designer labels to children, and the level of trade in schools led by multinational companies (producers of soft drinks and pastries to consume as the range of markers and colored pencils in a specific brand sets the parents) is real, even if (perhaps) the apron is not the solution ; the problem of difficulty of the school to propose / impose a model appropriate behavior of the socialization of knowledge and respect for the weak is real even if (maybe) 5 in the duct is not the solution, the problem of the fragmentation of knowledge and the dispersal of human figures in some primary schools (compounded by the bewildering proliferation unknowable to those objects which are the "Education") is real even if (of course) the teacher is not the only solution, the problem communication clear, public and readable between school and home is real even if (perhaps) the votes are not the (only) solution .

And finally, the problem is chronic and acute initial training of teachers especially in the upper-medium segment is real, even if the removal of Siss is not (certainly) the solution.

Another concern arises about the idea of \u200b\u200bteaching and teaching underlying these measures: it seems to argue that it is returning to teach mathematics to middle school enough to know the mathematics education, developmental psychology , education, everything this looks ready to go in the attic, so the tickling - terrible - the ideas of those who think that all in all "teaching is one thing to nothing, what it takes, just read a book and repeat it in class."

The government and the duo Tremonti-Gelmini want to make money with the school, but they also want to take this opportunity to settle the score once and for all uncomfortable with this institution. But the institution who are going to school as the liquid is still room for criticism, dissent, divergent thinking? It's not that at the time of sinking the death blow they hear him say "you kill a dead man?" If it's not - and we strongly believe that it is not - you will understand in the coming months, not only in the protests but sacrosanct in the management and publicity of a daily school there in recent years has seemed so far away from the sensitivity of the boys and the emancipatory potential of the culture that the advent of the liquidator in bankruptcy as a tandem of Ministers could not be accepted so warm, like the end of something that is already finished, and that is "obviously appropriate" settled once and for all.