Reading the first pages of Arturo’s island by Elsa Morante, you are immediately catapulted into the island of Procida: you can feel the flavors of the Mediterranean scrub, the light fills your eyes, as does the blue of the sky and the sea.
Likewise, reading today’s letter Tiziana, the little girl from Filicudi who wrote to Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, asking her for a solution so as not to have to leave her island and her home to go and study abroad, being the only middle school student, I could only agree with her: such beauty is difficult to leave behind. But it’s not just the beauty of the places that holds Tiziana back. There is something deeper: love for one’s land, for one’s origins and for one’s affections.
It is completely clear that it would be senseless to create a middle school just for her, investing resources and staff in an economically unproductive way. However, this story must make us reflect on the depopulation of the South and rural areas, where the lack of investments or, rather, the investments never made, have generated the increasingly worrying phenomenon of human desertification.
Today, in a historical moment in which technology offers many possibilities for working from home and in which Covid has taught that distance learning is also possible, perhaps we could think of a solution for Tiziana and for all the girls and boys forced to make endless journeys to go to school, to the point of forcing entire families to move. From a pedagogical point of view, I know well that there are strong objections: school is class, sociality, meeting and, with the DAD, all this would inevitably be weakened.
However, if we analyze the situation in Filicudi, we see that a primary school already exists and is part of the all-inclusive institute of Lipari. Going to take a look at the Ministry website, very well done, I discovered that the entire Aeolian Islands school has 49 teachers, that in Filicudi there is a multi-classroom with five children and that the school is equipped with technological tools which conveniently allow remote connection. So there are children, teachers, an educational community already present and adequate IT tools.
So why not think about having her start middle school right there, in that context? After all, Tiziana is only ten years old: with the support of an adult, an educator, for example, she could follow distance learning; Furthermore, moments of connection with the Lipari middle school could be organised.
In short, I believe that, if desired, some non-rigid and not only administrative solution could be found to guarantee Tiziana’s legitimate right to study and education. And who knows, perhaps new solutions may arise from a small experiment, capable of preventing many children from being forced to leave their home in the future.
