It’s a Saturday afternoon. The classrooms and playgrounds of Milan’s primary schools have stood empty and silent for the past few hours: they will come back to life as soon as the Monday morning bell rings. For the moment, the silence is broken in the corridors of the Cadorna school at 5 Via Dolci only by the quick-paced footsteps of a lady and the snap of her sticky tape that she is using to seal the doors of the first and second floors of the school. Sellotape is much more efficient at preventing children from escaping than any kind of ban.
Whilst Sabina secures the school, other parents gather round to give her a hand. One father is preparing the projector for a film and a few mums are setting up the tables that will later be laid out for a party. Gradually, the top floor of the Cadorna school fills up with parents piled high with cakes, chocolate, pizza, crisps and Arab sweets. In an area between the corridors on the second floor, children’s clothes are lined up in a row on a table, whilst in the classroom next door, Arab mothers exchange traditional outfits adorned with sequins and gold thread. Others are preparing henna.
“It’s called Open Saturday’, explains Sabina Uberti Bona, , the spokesperson for the school’s Intercultura Committee, a group of parents which was founded five years ago thanks to a collaboration project with the Fondazione Cariplo. “Our goal is to value the school’s diversity and each of the 25 nationalities represented here”. She is talking in a loud voice so as to be heard over the squeals of the children as they enjoy themselves at the integration party.
“Open Saturdays are about teaching children more about other cultures through games,” adds Sabina. “We set up a space for trading second-hand clothes, we organise story times to transmit our love for reading to our children, and we also put on films that showcase experiences of sharing. There is an afternoon snack later which is prepared by Italian and Maghribi mums, who also take care of the ‘Room of Wonders’ with henna tattoos and traditional dress.”
I. AN OPEN VIEW OF THE WORLD
Massimo Nunzio Barrella is 43 years old and has the kind of face that easily breaks into a smile. He has only been headmaster for a matter of months, but for long enough to understand that he is in the right place. “The Cadorna school is a special kind of place, it is really two souls”, he says. “The one at 5 Via Dolci is only one of three complexes: the other two are located in Zone 8 of Milan; an entirely different socio-economic setting.” On Via Dolci, 65% of the children – roughly 400 in total – are foreigners: in some classes, this rises to 90%. They are predominantly from Morocco, Egypt and the Philippines. Other nationalities are represented by fewer numbers. Despite this fact, “not all of them need to be taught early writing skills, as many were born in Italy.”
According to the numbers, the places of origin of these foreign children, who are 260 in total compared to 144 Italians, can be subdivided as follows:
- EASTERN EUROPE 7%
- SOUTH AMERICA 11%
- ASIAN CONTINENT 32%
- NORTH AFRICA 50%
The Cadorna school is different from other schools in Milan, not only because of its high concentration of foreign children, but also because of the many activities it organises which aim to involve every student. These activities are held from Monday to Friday and even on Saturdays. “The activities we put on span from creative workshops to extra-curricular courses in music, culture and sports ,” explains the headmaster, “and on Saturdays a group comes in to help with the schooling”. Thanks to these courses, the Associazione Cadorna, which brings together all the parents, has managed to raise funds which are then invested in the school for the benefit of the children. “This year we have chosen to start using multimedia and have set up a Wi-Fi network and purchased a new electronic registration system, LIM. These are all aspects which help to keep the school up-to-date.”
There are other activities that revolve around the Cadorna school, which follows the example of open schools and as such, is open to the area where it is based. On Fridays, for example, the school playground holds the ‘Km0′ Coldiretti market which sells locally sourced produce and twice a week, the ‘Mamme a Scuola’ (mum’s at school) project takes over. “This is one of the aspects that struck me most when I arrived at the school,” recalls the headmaster, “a school within a school”. As many as six classrooms are kept free for foreign mothers to learn Italian. Lessons take place in five of these classrooms, whilst the other is kept free as a baby-sitting room for their children from 0 to 3 years old. “‘Mamme a Scuola’ is a non-profit organisation of volunteers run by mothers, grandmothers and former teachers, and I believe it really responds to the needs of families living in this area.”
“Our goal is not just to reach a basic, general level of tolerance, but rather to achieve a profound, heartfelt acceptance,” Barrella adds. “Our main value is respect for the individual person, their culture and their story.” The headmaster was very quickly aware of the fact that without the involvement of the parents, integration would be much more difficult to achieve: “Over these past few months, I have experienced directly what it means to involve parents in the management of the school, especially a school like this one, which is not only full of children, but also families that need to integrate. Their contribution is vital to be able to provide these children with the opportunity to really integrate and be accepted both at school and in the area.”
The strong influx of foreigners in recent years has caused many parents to transfer their children to other schools. “This is not so much the result of racial prejudice,” says Barella, “as it is of the fear that the education provided will lower in quality to be able to cater to students at an early writing stage. Parents are afraid that the curriculum will slow down and have a negative affect on their children: this preconception has indeed taken hold, but there is nothing to base it on”. There are other parents, like Sabina, who instead have decided to stay and transform these differences into an advantage. To make things easier, these parents organised themselves into the Intercultura Committee, learning first and foremost from their own children. “In my son’s classes, there are only four Italian students,” explains Sabina, “But this isn’t an issue, rather the contrary. Especially at that age, children don’t understand what it means to be ‘different’. They have no concept of what racism is”.
People are made of stories, not atoms.
The work of the Intercultura Committee is an attempt to not only integrate the children into the community, but also the parents themselves. But this hasn’t been easy. “One of the first goals of the group,” says Sabina, “was for it to become intercultural in its own right. Truth be told, initiatives often originate from Italian parents with the goal of involving foreigners.” Although mothers and fathers of other nationalities are increasingly participating and offering to help out, “the Committee’s dream is to take things one step further: we also want to draw them into the actual organising of the events. This would be an incredibly important step in being able to meet their needs which we, as Italians, can’t always fully comprehend”.
The participation of parents also has something to do with gender: “Usually it is the mums who look after the children. Even though, I must say that in this school there are many dads, especially Italians, who do get involved in our activities,” admits Sabina. “We have noticed,” she continues, “that the number of foreign fathers who take their children to school or come to pick them up is always on the rise.” This last point, however, is not a good sign: “It is usually the symptom of a family experiencing hardship: if fathers can take their children to school and then pick them up, it means they must be unemployed”.
II. THE ISSUES
“Over the past year, from September onwards, there has been a huge increase in the influx of foreign children,” explains headmaster Barella. At the Via Dolci school, around 45 children were taken in who had just arrived in Italy having mostly come from Egypt and Morocco. It had almost been seven years since such a large number of new foreign students turned up in so few months. This was above all an issue from a logistics point of view: in which classes should these children be placed?
Space is becoming increasingly limited, with classes in risk of becoming overcrowded. The headmaster requested help from other schools in Zone 7 on several occasions, but received no response. “We all need to sit down around a table to try and solve this problem, because clearly such a high number of students cannot be taken in by one school alone.” The City Hall does not offer any solutions either. “Despite these new arrivals, paradoxically, fewer teachers have been brought in to teach literacy. This year, there have been fewer hours dedicated to this activity in our school than in the previous year and this has clearly put us in a difficult situation.”
“Paradoxically,” adds Sabina, “the aspect that stands out the most is the perception of hardship, which is therefore the most consequential. San Siro is a neighbourhood with significant socio-economic poverty.. E questo si vede». And this is clear to see.” “We must work very hard on everything concerning integration,” continues the headmaster, “not only in the case of the arrival of foreign children, who may have the chance to be educated and learn Italian, but also in terms of placing an emphasis on the special educational needs of children, also for Italians, who find themselves in difficult family situations and are in need of both academic and psychological support. The aim should be to guarantee every child the individual and personalised attention they need to succeed in their education.”
One by one, tired but happy children leave with their parents. The school and the corridors are empty once more, whilst the bin bags are overflowing with plates, cups and napkins. After every party, there’s always someone left to clear up. Sabina knows this all too well; “When you have a school like this one, which opens its doors to the area, it means that there is a place where the neighbourhood can find people to talk to. It’s a bit like a big service centre; it’s amazing.”