Will home schooling become popular in Italy too?
In the United States there is a real explosion of interest in home schooling, or the practice of educating children at home instead of at school, but the phenomenon is also growing in Italy. James Hansen's diplomatic note
In Italy the practice of withdrawing children from schools to educate them at home is called parental education and is explicitly protected by Article 30 of the Constitution, which states: "it is the duty and right of parents to support, instruct, educate their children…", even if, when it is talked about – that is, almost never – it is also common in the Bel Paese to use the Anglo-Saxon term 'home schooling' .
Whatever you call it, the phenomenon is growing. In the 2020/21 school period, over 15,300 Italian pupils were educated by their parents, a significant increase compared to the approximately 5,100 in 2018/19, although it remains an absolutely minority choice, especially if we consider the 8.5 million pupils present in the Italian state schools. The school closures of the Covid era will certainly have had an impact, but the trend continues. In recent days the National Association of Principals (ANP) has reported an increase in requests for consultancy on the topic from school managers.
However, it is in the United States that a real explosion of interest in parental education is taking place, where for some years it has been by far the fastest growing form of education. According to a detailed investigation by the Washington Post newspaper, to date the share of young people studying 'at home' is increasing at an annual rate of more than 50%, while education in public schools is decreasing, by around 4% every year. 'year. The use of private schools is also growing, rising by 7% in the last two years.
Home education is not yet a mass phenomenon in the US – it currently affects just over two million students – but the clear indication that public school refusal is spreading in the US has alarmed educators and school unions. teachers. The trend was already growing markedly before the arrival of the pandemic which, with the long school closures due to lockdowns, seems to have fueled the dissatisfaction that had been brewing for some time: both due to the common perception of a decline in the quality of public education , both for the ideological 'flights forward' imposed against the will of parents on various issues, such as the spectacular redefinition of sexual 'genders', the 'hereditary' responsibilities of today's whites for the racist misdeeds of the past and so on.
Home schooling has always had its followers in the USA, but what until a couple of decades ago was considered an issue limited to a small 'fringe' of religious conservatives who kept their children at home reading the Bible, is now becoming revealing it as a sort of popular revolt against a 'single and secular' thought in many fields that perhaps went a little too far compared to where the students' families were willing to go…
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/sanita/lhome-schooling-avra-la-meglio-anche-in-italia/ on Sun, 05 Nov 2023 06:32:20 +0000.