The conference had just got under way this afternoon when shouting and chanting started in the piazza outside, led by two young men with a megaphone. It was a well-timed demonstration by a collective of unemployed former students and former students (mainly teachers) in vulnerable jobs. The demonstration was well-timed in two senses. The first was that it coincided perfectly with the delivery of the set-piece speeches inside. The second was that the subject matter being protested outside coincided well with the subject matter being discussed inside. By chance, our conference was being guarded by an abnormally heavy contingent of carabinieri (a nearby consulate is expecting visitors!) and that was surely mis-read by the students as hypocrisy on our part (any one of them would have been welcome to attend the conference and make their point of view known). So I went and spoke to them in the piazza and explained that they were in fact preaching to the converted when it came to the importance of education and employment. I asked them to draft a declaration, which they did, and I promised to put it on my blog, which I have (click  ‘read the rest of this entry’ below). I confessed that I had a nostalgic soft spot for them. In the autumn of 1979, when I first set foot in Italy, in Bologna, there were serious student riots and serious clashes with the carabinieri. The riots were about rents for student lodgings. The stench of tear gas hung over the university quarter for over a week. There was strong fellow feeling among the students of the Bologna Center at the time, of which I was one. I’d better say no more! But I hope the student protestors I met will come to the Committee’s site and see that, actually, it is constantly concerned with the sort of themes that so impassion them.

Cosa i docenti precari e innoccupati disapprovano dei tagli camuffati da reforma:

1) Licenziamento di 80.000 professionisti della formazione e dell’istruzione.

2) Demolizione del concetto democratico di scuola pubblica e laica

3) Attuazione del modello lombardo per il finanziamento statale alle scuole private

4) Privazione dei diritti fondamentali dell’insegnante e dell’alunno: soppressione del sostegno ai disabili, tetto del 30% agli immigrati

5) Privazione dell’accesso al lavoro e all’istruzione

Collettivo docenti precari e inoccupati