gioppino

Apparently the reconstruction of the event has been blown out of proportion:
Schettino alla Sapienza: "Non era una lectio magistralis" - Wired

MarkRD

Only to be expected. But the fact remains ..

As the item concludes: Lectio magistralis o seminario estivo, infatti, poco cambia sull’opportunità di invitare Francesco Schettino, a Concordia appena recuperata, in qualsivoglia evento formativo.

fleetwoodmac1975

Well if I had to judge universities on the basis of whom they invite I would definitely strike off British ones, inviting the likes of Tony Blair and George w to give lectures at 200k a throw...however on the whole British university are very good so I would say not to judge them on the basis of their invitations to war criminals..the same goes for la sapieza, we should not judge it because of schettino.

jonwel

I didn't know this but it doesn't surprise me in the least. And even honest politicans, if they exist and really have something worth saying, shouldn't be paid at all for speaking, considering all the money they've already made.

Patty

Its back to school soon. My son has his exam tomorrow to see if he can be promosso.

My friend's son has been 'bocciato' and will have to repeat the year again. He is 16 and this has really thrown him. I know all the 'he should've studied more' arguments and and I know that part of the blame lies with the kids -but his mum was telling me that in one subject he has had 5 different teachers this year and the students were all over the place.
What do you think of 'bocciato' - do you think it really serves a purpose or do you think it just demotivates and demoralises the students ?

Lorna at Vicenza

I've spent the last 10 days doing lots of English with various kids who have got "debito" exams this week.

It's made me realise that parents can never book holidays for the last two weeks in August just in case their kids finish the school year with "debito". This must be a right pain for parents who don't get much choice in the time off because factories or whatever shut down from Ferragosto.

I've also discovered that the comune of Chloe's middle school is giving out some kind of "borsa di studio" for students who left with a grade of 8 or above. Only about 100 Euro but that would buy a few new school books. I checked the comune website to see if this true - it is - and the forms are all there to print and fill out. Unfortunately it's only available to residents of that comune. Chloe went to school there but is resident here. Our own comune isn't doing any kind of similar initiative. Boo shame.

I don't particularly like "bocciato". I don't like the way that kids can get 9 or 10s in lots of subjects and then be bocciato coz they're lower in music, art or history for example. A kid might be a near genuis in the sciences and to be bocciato coz his grades are low in those other subjects seems unfair. He doesn't need music to go to med school and not everybody is good at everything.

I hated Geography, never bothered with it and only did the most perfunctory of homework. I was good at other stuff. All my teachers knew of my hate for geography and although they egged me on to do better as I wasn't stupid, they kind of let me off a bit as they knew I worked hard at other subjects. I had the same teachers for years thougn so they also see real progress in students (or lack of it) and they get to know the kids. 5 teachers in one subject in one school year is pathetic and nobody that way ever sees any real work done, any progress or even has time to learn the kids' names let alone how they work.

primularossa

May I please ask you how does it work i the UK if a pupil has problems and is not able to face the next class?
sa this does not interestest The British, you May send me Private messages
Thanks

Garbatellamike

There is no overall yearly exam in UK Primula - the kids are examined at age 16 (GCSE) in the subjects they study (which must include maths and english). They get a separate grade for each subject. Subject to passing GCSEs they can stay on for 2 years for advanced levels (A Levels) which are the qualifiers for university entrance. I did 9 exams at GCSE and then 4 at A level (none of which involved art or music!).

For example I would still be in the first year at school if I had had to get 6 in art or music to progress.

Some bright kids might get moved up a year but being held back a year is rare

Hope that helps

Patty

Primula - from personal experience (1st child did all her education in UK, 2nd child UK 4-12, then Italy and 3rd child did one year in UK then Italy and he's now 16)
Generally what happened was that each teacher had an assistant and thereby this person could help the slower children in the class. Those children who could go a bit faster were encouraged and those who had difficulty went at a different pace. It was all managed very well and I think no child felt worthless. This was through to end of juniour school. Where I am from we still (maybe unfortunately, not sure though) have the 11 plus exam. This exam streams the children into abilities for their secondary education. The top 25% go to a same sex college, the next 25 % go to grammar and the remainder go to secondary school. Alot of people are against this type of streaming. However secondary education is the same for all and so until 16 everyone studies the same subjects - unlike here where at the delicate teenage years the kids have to choose whether to do liceo, itis etc etc. Then as Mike says when you are 16 you can choose to stay at school or leave and either work or go to a vocational college or similar. I think the UK system is much better and if you aren't very academic you can leave at 16 and go onto either a trade or a works experience setup. Obviously no system is perfect but I do think that forcing kids to choose at 13/14 is far far too young and the percentage of italian children who then change in the biennio is quite high I gather.
Also at 16 you can then 'drop' the subjects that you don't enjoy and continue in 3 or 4 of your strong subjects to take you up to university. For example my daughter dropped maths and science as she wanted a linguistic degree. Makes sense no ?

Patty

Just seen on news that Renzi's big announcement for the school reforms - due today and which he said was going to amaze us all....... has been postponed.
Well what a surprise

Lorna at Vicenza

You did O' Levels or GCSE at 16 Patty so you dropped your most hated subjects before that.

Primula ..... very basically this is how it works ....... we have a national curriculum and all schools teach the same foundations at high school for the first 3 years. This means that if you move from York to Bristol or from Dorset to Lancashire you don't miss anything and don't have to start new things.

After those first three years you get to drop some subjects and make choices towards your future. Four basic subjects are obligatory ...... maths, English, one science and one foreign language. You get to choose the other four and you study these 8 subjects for the next two years and have national exams in those subjects. You can take another subject or more if you're clever and if your teachers think you can handel the workload. There was also plenty of sport - all kinds of sport.

School timetables and classrooms are very organised. I was friends with Catherine and Sarah. We were together in maths and English but when I was doing biology Catherine was doing German and Sarah was doing physics for example, so we were in different classrooms then. We get tests but the goal is to study towards your exams and we all grow up knowing that if you screw up and do bloody nothing, you'll get shit exam results. Shit exam results means that you won't carry on into the sixth form where you begin to study another set of your chosen, more specialised subjects towards university. Shit exam results mean shit jobs and no further education.

We are taught to become little adults and we are not just taught lessons but how to reason, debate, study, rationalise, carry out experiments (method - conclusion - results), write comprehensive essays and lots of other stuff. We do our first lot of "big important " exams at age 16 in May. Every child in England does the same maths test on the same day at the same time. All the exam papers are sent away to an independant examining board. Your own teachers do not ever mark your exams. You have to wait until August for the exam results. If you get a low score in an exam, there is the possibilty to do another one in August and September. These are called retakes. If for whatever reason you only got a C in maths but you really wanted and needed a B or an A to carry on and you were just off balance or nervous or stupid on exam day - you can do another maths exam, a retake and hopefully get that better grade.

When I was at school the options were there but very basic to what is available now. I could only choose French or German. Now many schools offer a much wider choice of languages and other subjects. Schools also have lots of extra-curricular clubs and activities and we have sports teams. There are also mini-positions of responsibilty in most schools which you volunteer for or are elected for ....... library prefect, dinner hall prefect, study group helper for the first year kids etc.

Some teachers are quite willing to give a student an extra ten minutes of their free time. I once asked my maths teacher the same question 3 times. After 3 explanations I said "sorry Mr Bond, I still don't get it." The rest of the class did so he said "come and see me when the lunch bell rings Lorna." I did and he carefully explained everything again and did examples with me until he was sure I got it and that I could then go on and do my homework by myself. Teachers call us by our christian names and not shout out our surnames like we are in the military.

Every child has a locker. When the bell rings at the end of one lesson you have five minutes to go to your locker, put your maths books away and collect your chemistry books and walk to the chemistry lab before the next bell rings to start the next lesson. Teachers have a homework timetable too and they have to stick to it. In the first years we never had more than 2 subjects of homework per evening and the homework was supposed to be an even 20 minutes. My maths teacher couldn't give my class homework on a Thursday because it wasn't our day for maths homework. They can suggest that you study fractions or angles a bit more at home but not give homework that night.

We were never scared to say "Mr Bond, I did my homework but got stuck on question 6 and couldn't carry on." The teachers knew us and knew which kids were genuine, didn't bother or made excuses. We were never scared to ask "why?" or say "why is a handbag so flipping important in The Importance of Being Earnest.?" If the teacher was ready to discuss it that day, she would. If not she'd say something like, "we'll get to that on Friday Lorna. Now let's get back to discussing the personality of Miss Cecily"

37100

In my time at school, only one boy was held back. He joined after Xmas, was the youngest in the class and while gifted, he struggled to keep up with us physically. At the end of the school year, it was decided he would be better repeating the year.

Lorna at Vicenza

Primula .... we also get personal comments from each teacher for each subject on our reports (pagella).

For example:

French Grade B. Lorna has shown great progress this year and is really enjoying the language. Her oral work is really very good but she must improve her literature skills if she wants to do well next year.


Art Grade A. Lorna has produced some excellent work this year and shows passion and dedication.


Geography Grade D. I have no doubt that Lorna is more than capable of achieving a much better grade if only she dedicated as much time to this subject as she does to wasting time in my class.

jonwel

Very instructive, Lorna, for me too, as an old-time Brit (I finished school in 1968). In my time there was no national curriculum. There were various exam-setting commissions formed by the universities (Oxford University Board, Northern Universities Joint Board etc. if I remember rightly) and the school could choose which one to follow (obviously these Boards were approved by the government, so there was a certain uniformity of standards, but it was known that some set slightly easier exams than others). As a result only students under a given board did the maths exam on the same day.

We had A-levels, while the lower-level exams were called O-levels (a little more difficult than GCSEs, I believe).

I remember a small number of repeaters, none in my class.

Science teaching was good, with regular use of laboratories. Some Italian schools seem to have laboratories but hardly ever use them! Studying chemistry and physics without doing experiments and handling the apparatus is inconceivable to me.

Languages: we didn't have language laboratories or other equipment and maybe the teaching methods were antiquated, but our teachers did at least speak the languages they were supposed to teach! At university they had done their year abroad and they often visited the country concerned to keep up their level. At O level we didn't study literature, except for the odd short passage thrown in for interest. We concentrated on learning basic everyday language. We didn't become fluent at school, but I remember that in both France and Germany I was able to make myself understood after just a couple of weeks.

In English I was taught all the grammar very methodically, with a scientific approach. I know that's considered out of date now, but it's certainly helped me in learning other languages and in translating. On the other hand they didn't really teach us to write a good essay or précis. Not that they thought it was unimportant but they didn't know how to approach it.

Homework timetable? Yes, exactly! I'm amazed that Italian students have to study practically every subject every evening and that they can find themselves preparing three "interrogazioni" for the next day because there's no coordination between teachers.

On the negative side, the school was an elitist grammar school and was divided into A, B and C streams. They gave the best teachers to the best classes, while they should have done the opposite. And it was a single-sex school and still is!!!!
We didn't have much to protest about, but if we had protested I think we'd have come up against a very authoritarian regime!

Lorna at Vicenza

Your examining board memory is better than mine Jonwel.

I've just checked my certificates ............. brought them here with me thinking I might need them. I never have.

I have O Levels from the Joint Matriculation Board.

I have a CSE certificate from Yorkshire and Humberside Regional Examination Board in textile and design. This is a CSE because this subject wasn't taught or tested at O Level.

I've also got a GCSE in sociology from Southern Examining Group - signed on behalf of The Oxford School Examination Board.

**** knows where my A levels are.

I have other certificates from clubs and things and activities mostly done with school and all FREE:

B.A.G.A gymnastics certificates levels 4,3,2 and 1. I remeber we were given cloth badges along with the paper certifcates and we could sew these onto our leotards.

Swimming certificates from the Metropolitan Borough of Calderdale Education Department. These date back to the last year at Junior school and the first years at Grammar School. Who remembers doing a width, then a length, then diving into the deep end to get the brick/disk and then swimming in your pyjamas making them into floats?


Calderdale Schools Gymnastics Association ......... Inter - School Competiton
Girls team. Winners in 1982.

A Certificate of Merit awarded to Lorna ***** who has submitted art work of exceptional quality to the public exhibition on the dangers of fire held in Calderdale, West Yorkshire, during February and March 1981 .... so that was Junior school too.

Help The Aged - for taking part in Youth Campaign sponsered events to raise funds. Oh yes ---- we all did so many sponsered things and bothered family and neighbours for pennies not to mention school sponsered things too and cake stalls and bring and buy jumble sales to get money for smart new things for school. At Grammar school we had a non-uniform day once a year. It cost 10p and you could wear what you liked with crazy hair and even make-up and mad jewellery or fancy dress and some of our teachers joined in too and paid their 10p. Some of ours turned up in versions of our school uniform. That was always a laugh.

I even found my Brownie certificate from 1978 to say I was officially now a Brownie. God knows where the Girl Guide one is but I do still have my badges.

There are other bits and bobs too.

Oh what a little trip down memory lane. I haven't opened this box for decades. Might keep it out to show the kids. Some of the badges are cool !