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“We are crazy”: Italian students have already had enough distance lessons
When Valeria wakes up in the morning, she will have another long day at home in front of the computer. The student from Rome hangs out in front of her laptop for a good six hours a day, because that’s where her lessons take place for weeks. This kind of teaching brought on by the corona pandemic is upsetting young people in Italy.
A student from the Visconti school in Rome protests with “distance education” in front of the school. Image: keystone
In March, Italy’s center-left government closed schools in the wake of the pandemic and did not reopen until mid-September. After the number of cases increased again in October, the country of around 60 million inhabitants was divided into three risk zones.
Since then, distance learning has become valid again for upper-level students and university students in all risk areas. Depending on the region, only children between the ages of 10 and 13 can go to school.
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Valeria and her classmates are frustrated by this, which is why the 17-year-old and a good dozen others have relocated their distance lessons in front of their high school, the Liceo Pilo Albertelli, not far from the Coliseum. They hung a red banner on the wall of the house with the words “La scuola siamo noi” (We are the school).
“They were angry. That is why we are here,” says Valeria, as she sits cross-legged in a warm jacket and stands with her laptop on the cold street. The government should equip them so they can get safe lessons in the school.
The principle of digital teaching sometimes fails due to equipment. According to figures from the Italian statistics agency last year, 12 percent of children between the ages of 6 and 17 did not have a computer or tablet.
Daniele Baldissin teaches her students outdoors in Turin. Image: keystone
Daniele, another student protesting in front of the Lyceum, says that some in his class were watching the lessons on their cell phones. Others would have to share a device with their siblings, says the 18-year-old. According to Valeria, she often has screen-gazing headaches and eye pain.
According to the psychiatrist Massimo Di Giannantonio, the situation of studying at home also affects the mental state and personal development of students. The confusion between the real and the virtual is growing for young people who are already influenced by technology and the media. This is supposed to slow down the time it takes to become independent and develop a sense of responsibility.
In other cities in Italy, too, students have moved to the streets from their own four walls to go to school. In Turin, 12-year-old Anita launched the student protest movement that would soon sprout across the country. “I don’t want to be famous, but more than anything, I want to go back to school,” she told “La Repubblica” newspaper.
Government advisers now see reasons to act. Agostino Miozzo, the civil protection officer who coordinates the government’s commission of scientific advisers, saw a state of emergency in the closed schools, as he said in an interview with the newspaper “Corriere della Sera”. Students would have to go back to school. Many politicians chose to euthanize them as a sign of an effective response to the emergency, he noted.
“We are the school”: a protest poster in Rome. Image: keystone
Italy’s school minister, Lucia Azzolina, expressed her solidarity with the school children in a letter printed in the newspaper “La Stampa”. “You should not be the one paying the highest price for this emergency,” the minister wrote. It will continue to work to ensure that schools offering digital learning are reopened as soon as possible.
They don’t know when Valeria and her friends will be allowed to go back to school. In March they were told that distance education was an emergency solution and that there was hope to return in the summer. But Valeria says she knew it would end up in front of the house computer again. (sda / dpa)
