WARNING: dangerous topic (politics!)

Off-topic
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Hooray! :smile: :tada: :balloon:

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update:

  • President: “So, Mr. Giuseppe Conte, are you ready to become the new Prime Minister?”
  • Conte: “Yes, I hope am!”
  • President: “Good. Is the Ministry list compliant and ready?”
  • Conte: “Yes, it is.”
  • President: “Good. Tomorrow at 16:00 you will take the oath.”

What a relief!!!

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67

Careful, you’ve still got 17 and a half hours to go :wink:

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tomorrow I will be at Gardaland park. Hope to return home and to read that Giuseppe Conte is at work already! :grin:

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What a great way to celebrate New Government Day :grin: Have fun!

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I mean political stability. In 70 years of Republic, we’ ve had 68 different governments. I find this unbelievable. I mean, is it credible that in 70 years nobody thought that the main priority of the nation is to find an electoral law that could make the government elected by the people enough solid to last five years?
By the way, here’s some italian trivia:
how many, of the 68 italian governments lasted till the end of the normal legislature (5 years) and wasn’t disbanded in advance?

Come on, I’m sure you can guess…

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That is pretty unbelievable :anguished:

Ok, I’ll guess… none?

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72

There are of course all kinds of pet-peeves and niggles that one has, but if I had to chose some big-ticket items I would (here in Germany, though some of that would need to happen on a EU basis)

  • introduce a stiff carbon tax (and reduce income tax for lower incomes to compensate) and advocate for it in the rest of the world

  • enforce a strict separation of church & state (make them equivalent to other charitable organisations)

  • remove trade barriers for Africa

  • convert our armed forces into a world-wide rapid response disaster relief agency (convert in the lose sense, may just be get rid of one and put all the money into building the other)

  • spend a lot more on education

D.

(edit to add the last point)

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73

Habemus imperium!
Now Italy has a fully functional government, lead by Giuseppe Conte.
Salvini & Di Maio are both vice-premier.
Good luck.

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I would like to change our educational system, too. I would like it to be as in Finland:

  • all the schools are public: for this reason, the quality level is the same, and all the teachers are super professionals
  • teacher’s salary is above average or high, because they must pass many exams to become teachers. The childhood instruction is considered very important, since it’s the fundamental of the tomorrow’s society. For this reason, teachers are respected.
  • there are no subjects, no frontal lessons. Teachers and students collaborate each other.
  • children are left children: the game is very important. There are 15 minutes of free game every 45 minutes of school, by law. This way children grow happier, they do better things.
  • no homework (or very few). The most or all part of the scholastic work is done at school.
  • no A,B,C…F! Until the age of 13 children get no evaluations with letters. Every children can learn even three languages, writing, reading, computing without being humiliated.
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Good ideas! I would like to know more about this one:

Subjects give structure to children’s learning, and having a syllabus helps ensure that they learn a wide range of things in each subject. I find it hard to imagine there being no subjects - if teaching has no specific focus, will the children learn anything useful? Will they gain knowledge that they can develop upon, or just a range of unconnected things that are easily forgotten?

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I would like our friend @Festarossa can confirm that it’s possible (he’s from Finland)

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In Germany we have the “Waldorf” schools. They have a similar concept. The results are that these pupils have a smaller knowledge than the pupils of normal schools. (They are several years behind them.)

(I have read a report about the Finnish schools that stated the pupils are getting “dumber” with this system - but this is without any warranty because I can’t remember which report that was and how reliable that report was.)

But I would like to ask @ZakPhoenixMcKracken another question: What are you doing with children who have ADHD or just constantly disturbing the lessons?

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I have no children, and it’s been ages since I last wore the school bench. But:

all the schools are public: for this reason, the quality level is the same, and all the teachers are super professionals

ALL schools public, yes, and the quality level is the same for all. The teachers are not super professionals though. They are (mostly) professionals, but since the next is not true, the more clever people seek other professions.

teacher’s salary is above average or high, because they must pass many exams to become teachers. The childhood instruction is considered very important, since it’s the fundamental of the tomorrow’s society. For this reason, teachers are respected.

Teachers are highly respected by tax payers, not so much by the pupils (because of legislation, things have gone downhill past 20 or so years). To be a teacher, you need to have an academic degree. The pay is not at all good for a university graduate.

there are no subjects, no frontal lessons. Teachers and students collaborate each other.

There are still subjects. There is no way to teach without categorizing things. And frontal lessons still exist, more or less. But it’s true that today teachers and students collaborate more. Way back in late ´90s we had an EU project between five schools from Finland, Germany, United Kingdom and the Netherlands. When we started the project, there was a hierarchical relationship between German teachers and students. After one year, Germans adopted Finnish way, which meant teachers and students were on same level, collaborating and learning from each other. I was a Finnish student project manager, which meant I ran the project in Finnish end. Teachers mostly only adviced how we should proceed and provided help if needed.

children are left children: the game is very important. There are 15 minutes of free game every 45 minutes of school, by law. This way children grow happier, they do better things.

True :smiley: And important.

no homework (or very few). The most or all part of the scholastic work is done at school.

Yes, there is much less homework than 20 years ago. And it seems to work. When I was in school, I never did my homework. Which meant I received not so good grades. Until the last year of primary school, when I decided to aim for higher education.

no A,B,C…F! Until the age of 13 children get no evaluations with letters. Every children can learn even three languages, writing, reading, computing without being humiliated.

I actually don’t know what they do these days… Back in my days, the first two or three (can’t really remember) classes were evaluated in written. But after that there was a 4-10 numerical evaluation by subject.

I’m sure there are fellow countrymen to correct my mistakes :rofl:

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79

Hi @Festarossa, glad to read you again!
Thank you for your answer.
I had read my points in an article (in Italian) describing the actual Finnish educational system.
Subjects were removed in 2015, to experiment.
Anyway here is the article (maybe goggle translator can help):

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I’d like to ask some professionals if the ADHD can be caused by the environment in which the child grows or it’s genetic.
Anyway, I will help these children, but if the scholastic environment is of cooperation among all, these children can be helped by all, students and teachers.

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81

Are you sure?

/edit: We are not only talking about ADHD but also other diseases.

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Sure I’m sure. If the help of the class were not enough, then the child can be helped by a dedicated professional teacher, specific for the child’s disease. But only if really needed.

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Yes well, nothing major in this world is ever simple enough to put in an article. We are proud of our educational system, yet, we are changing it. There are a lot of advances, tests, concerns, problems and disagreement how to go forward. Some people think we are creating something great, others say we are ruining everything (and they are basing it on experiences from other countries, mostly Sweden). But yes, they are testing everything, it seems. Mostly I’m worried about the teachers. I know a few, and they are struggling.

The subject about abandoning subjects: I just read an Finnish article from 2015 about this (not sure if it’s really implemented nationwide), and it actually said they would move from old subjects to teaching “phenomenon based” subjects, which would mean they would teach e.g. a subject of EU, which would combine information about finance, history, languages and geography. So basically a bunch of subjects would be replaced by other (partially combined) subjects.

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I understand even just food can play a big role.