Valditara: ‘“Italia per gli italiani” è un’idea da sostenere’. Il PD: ‘Un attacco ai docenti’

Writing “Italia for Italians” is “understandable”. Indeed, it is a “phrase also repeated by members of the government”. Thus, during Question Time in the Chamber of Deputies, the Minister for Education and Merit, Giuseppe Valditara, defended the pupils of the Liceo Monti in Cesena who were punished for a banner bearing the slogan also championed by the Minister for Education.

At the heart of the story are two fifth-year pupils, who have just sat their A-levels in the last few days, and who were responsible for displaying the sheet bearing the slogan ‘Italia for Italians’ on the last day of term.

The ministry sent inspectors to the school to check whether the sanctions imposed following the incident had infringed upon the ‘free expression of opinions’, explained Valditara. The pupils had been given a mark of 6 for conduct and set an essay entitled “We are the Africans”, as well as an in-depth study of the racial laws.

Minister Valditara began by stating that the Ministry has no authority over the assessment process carried out by individual class councils, but specified that ‘the investigation aims to clarify the link between the breach of school rules and the content of the essay set for the pupils: that is to say, whether the Class Council, in setting an in-depth study on the racial laws and the essay ‘We Are the Africans’, was in any way influenced by the incident in question and by the banner displayed’.

That said, the minister continued, ‘should the findings of the investigation reveal a link between the content of the critical essay and the wording used on the banner, and not – as required by the regulations we have recently introduced – a breach of school conduct rules, it would certainly be a serious incident, contrary to the professional ethics of teachers’.