The reopening of schools in September: that’s why it’s not just a didactic problem

For Popper, therefore, falsifiability is the only scientific criterion we have: as Einstein claimed, from which he drew inspiration “no amount of experiments will be able to prove that I am right; a single experiment will prove that I was wrong. ”

Here, we would not want to be forced to “falsify” every proposal, from the most serious to the most bizarre, that we have heard in recent months thinking about the school and its future after the health emergency we are still experiencing. But we believe it is right to suggest scenarios in which the action of the Municipalities is necessarily not only “implicated” (because the schools are located within the cities, and they are a beating heart) but essential to allow the success of future experiments / experiences

Only two assumptions seem absolutely indisputable and would stand the test of any falsification process:

1) that the reopening of schools and their exit from the crisis we are experiencing has costs, which means that not unlike the economic sectors, it requires heavy investments, which are also priorities for keeping the country of which the school is the main structure;

2) that schools, with very few exceptions, are inside the cities, and therefore that nothing concerning the school, its spaces, its timetables and its rhythms can be read regardless of the fact that the whole city is involved in it and the Municipalities must be privileged interlocutors for new territorial integrated projects based on the relationship between school and Municipality, between school, Municipality and subjects of active civism, an indispensable relationship but always more today, in the face of the changes and difficulties that await us and at the risk of serious economic, social and cultural impoverishment that children and young people in our country will suffer

We take for granted (as a completely imaginative hypothesis) that all schools in Italy have buildings in accordance (!), But also that, as it is in fact, the characteristics of the buildings are such that they cannot be imagined, if not over the very long period , an intelligent and flexible “regeneration” of spaces.

The recent report drawn up by the Agnelli Foundation (2019) clarifies that the Italian school building heritage is very varied both by year of construction and by spatial organization, but also largely outdated, due to the decline in investments in “construction” of new buildings from the 90s.

We also take for granted that as regards the number of pupils per class, the schools of the first and second cycle still meet the parameters established by the Gelmini reform and have an average of pupils per class ranging from 22 (in the presence of pupils disabled) to 30. It is known that only for “exceptional” reasons – small islands, mountain areas, cramped spaces where the ASL has placed capacity roofs, the presence of more disabled pupils, schools for the children, denial crisis, etc. – these numbers go down to class groups which can go from 15 to 20 students.

Finally, we take for granted that the restoration of the school routine, which does not have didactic activities as a sole purpose (the school is not only didactic) constitutes a priority need of the new generations, for a healthy and balanced growth, and also of their families (also if centering on adults often takes us astray ..)

Today the main choices that health protection requires are:

a) reduce gatherings,

b) daily and continuous sanitization and sanitization;

c) move the bodies away from each other to keep them safe;

d) reconciling the needs of children and students with the other safety devices that are typical of places where there is the presence and movement of people (preventive temperature measurement?)

But one can imagine that all phase 2 focuses on the study – by a task force of experts who do not dialogue with the living world of the school or with the Mayors – of how to move from “confinement at home” to “confinement in the classroom “?

Children and young people are citizens, they live in the city, they move and they have to do it, they have needs to which school time – even long – partly responds, partly grasps and represents the rest of the world around them. To give an example, can we even hypothesize that, to guarantee distancing, the communication assistants stay away from the pupils who attend or are, as happened in this period, actually abolished? Can we believe that changing or reducing school hours does not have an impact on transport, families, peaceful growth, talents and needs? Obviously not: for this reason we must pretend to bring the discourse on school out of a dangerous self-reference.

We can analyze, as “school cases”, some of the scenarios that have been discussed in recent times: each of them, compared to the benefits in terms of hygiene and health – linked to social distancing and the reduction of gatherings – presents not only costs high for the state but also for local authorities and families, and most of all it has consequences and costs for the students themselves, for children and adolescents who must remain the center of gravity for every action.

Whether you want to stagger entry and exit to school, whether you want to reduce class groups using a mixed model of school in presence or absence, or you want to rotate the classes by expanding school time, with shifts in the morning, in the afternoon , on Saturday, even if you imagine an use of the open spaces in connection with the closed ones, the family and social organization will be inexorably conditioned by it. The organizational structure of the school will have to be reviewed and an investment in human resources (teachers, auxiliary staff, operators) will become indispensable. We have not verified this awareness in the political discourse so far, we hope it will come.

But for the Municipalities, the times of the city with the relative transports, the adaptation of the school spaces, the furnishings and the environments, the investment to guarantee the 0-6 bracket a greater presence of staff, the request from the families of ancillary services, arise as needs of which we are already well aware, and will not be easy to sustain without adequate financial planning (and adequate transfers of resources).
But even if you decide at least in the transitory phase to leave the boys at home with the DAD, what do you think will happen to families with small children? Do we definitively renounce services for children? And what do we replace them with? Moreover, from the point of view of the school itself, one cannot even imagine going on with the remote school without a rethinking of the relationship between the technological medium and knowledge, without a reflection on the didactic models put in place so far. It is not enough for the Ministry to worry about buying connections and tablets: we have millions of boys and girls, boys and girls to be reached individually and at the same time cooperative and inclusive, if we do not want to do incalculable damage to their growth and to the country. . There is a need for training for teachers, and not only to learn to “use” the medium, but to change their role, from player to director of networks.

As you can see in each scenario, questions arise that make it difficult to achieve quickly and in a non-patchy way. And above all, no scenario can be taken seriously in a generalized way, i.e. for all school orders, or for all Municipalities, or for the whole school year.

There are questions, so far unanswered, that it is right for the Municipalities to ask, because they will be invested with:

a) Spaces must be considered

All school environments must be adequately prepared, especially in the common passage areas and in the restrooms or facilities: sterilized ventilation, sanitation, etc. The problem adds to all the previous building problems of the heritage of school buildings.

b) Special Educational Needs must be considered

Today with the remote school “who is ahead continues to be, who is halfway continues to be, who is behind stays much further behind” (Mila Spicola). The reopening of schools if it is desirable for all male and female students, for those who were in difficulty before it is essential, The studies will then tell us what effects, both positive and negative, the replacement of the class could have on disabled pupils real with a virtual one. But certainly for many children in conditions of discomfort and without good family mediation the experience was heavy.

c) You have to think about transport

Mobility is certainly one of the issues to be addressed as a matter of priority and with greater force: investing in public mobility and digital technologies, and promoting cycle and pedestrian mobility also with decisive actions to contain and contrast the use of the car.

The city will need to review the transportation system. In order to allow pupils (for example, those of upper secondary, but not only) to go to school, compulsory quota of numbers inside buses and subways will be confronted with the need for the kids to get to their school. Some proposals come from the many committees and associations committed to the environment and sustainable mobility. Well, each involves costs:

• Provide “circular” services to coordinate with the participation of trade associations for the identification of predefined itineraries in the main cities.
• Promote, also financially and with the use of young people as carers, the activation of “pedibus” services for the movement of school pupils.
• Provide funding for the rapid activation of bike and car sharing services in the main cities

Are investments or financing planned to implement the school transport service or safe mobility or do you think it will all be borne by the Municipalities? If taken individually, some interventions seem easy or, if anything, already existing in some Municipalities, especially in the less populated ones, expanding the scale of needs, it cannot be imagined that each one will “manage” on his own. Are government investments on sustainable and safe mobility being envisaged?

d) Safety and hygiene-health prevention must be considered

For sanitation, once the initial phase on which MIUR has invested 43 million euros at the national level has been passed, we also plan to ensure funds for the maintenance of the required standards in the regional budgets on a regular basis or vice versa it is assumed that the Will they load individual schools or municipalities or, even worse, families? We start for example from protective devices and health checks: masks and gloves for students and staff, effective and repeated test systems. We are talking about ten million people, who even if they become half with a school every other time are still many. At the first outbreak induced from inside the school or taken out of school at home or elsewhere, a storm of controversies difficult to contain would certainly break out in the country. A war of all against all in search of “responsibility”, understood as guilt. Bodies know it, schools know it, school managers, employers fear it.

e) Social inclusion must be considered

The school is also one of the most significant welfare spaces in this country, an area of ​​inclusion par excellence: it is flanked by the work of the social private sector, by many associations, by many centers that support it without replacing it, or at least it should be. What fate is assumed for daytime education centers? And for all the accompanying activities obviously based on physical proximity (territorial education, extracurricular projects, summer camps, just to give some examples)?

The list of questions could continue … but this work does not want to discourage us all from thinking that we will make it. The school has to reopen. For everyone, not one less. Solutions must be found together.

But together with the reopening of the schools we must ask for a change of pace in the management of the present and the near future, and charitable attention to the world of schools and to the difficulties of the Municipalities cannot suffice (that has actually been little so far): we warn those who are governing the processes and speculating solutions. The government must reopen the schools, but must look at the issue with a broad perspective, opening the dialogue to local authorities and to the living world of the “real” school and those around it, to guarantee truly effective measures; and for them to be effective, it must take into account substantial resources, no less than they need for Healthcare. Because health and education travel together. They are unavoidable rights of the person. Our Constitution says so.

Annamaria Palmieri he is councilor for school and education for the municipality of Naples. Doctor researcher, she was SICSI supervisor at the Orientale University of Naples and is a professor of subjects Literary and Latin in high schools.

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