Neither the right nor the left has any idea what is happening in schools

School is a hotbed of fears and hopes: not so much for the pupils, who experience it mainly as a dreary routine enlivened by a narrow-minded preoccupation with good marks, but rather for parents and adults in general, who fall under the collective term ‘the electorate’. Giorgia Meloni’s speech at Fenix should be read in this light, which unites both the right and the left. For the right, school is a chaotic place where pupils stab each other in the back, where students are becoming dim-witted by flirting under their desks, where LGBT activists engage in systematic propaganda, and where classrooms resembling the Tower of Babel resound with every language in the world; it follows that metal detectors must be introduced, smartphones banned, emotional education opposed, the Islamic headscarf torn off and – indeed – a cap imposed on the number of foreign pupils per class. For the Left, school is a cruel place where pupils are discriminated against on the basis of geographical origin, sexual orientation or structural vulnerability, and where teachers force knowledge down pupils’ throats through a funnel, hand out disciplinary notes at the drop of a hat, and take unparalleled delight in failing those from disadvantaged backgrounds; therefore, we must make schools inclusive, urge pupils to fight against fascism, the mafia or gambling addiction, abolish failing grades, dismantle the traditional lecture-style lesson, take pupils into the woods and turn them into honest and caring citizens – never mind if they don’t know their times tables. Both the ‘school of discipline’ and the ‘school of the noble savage’ are based on a fundamental ignorance of what actually happens in the classroom, but they capitalise on the fact that any voter will have attended such schools themselves and will have a child, sibling, grandchild or neighbour who attends them (without being able to vote).

All the more so at the start of the academic year leading up to the general election, Giorgia Meloni’s statements must therefore be put into perspective within this framework, which reveals them for what they are: for example, the much-discussed ban on the hijab and niqab makes no educational sense, but is justified by the fact that the collective imagination of Vannacci’s electoral base is haunted by the nightmare of quintessentially Italian grandchildren forced to write their first lines surrounded by budding jihadists. The same applies to the cap on foreign nationals: not only is there already legislation in place, but the actual national average is said to stand at just over 10 per cent. Far more significant, however, is the subtext of the proposal, which is indeed of educational interest.

It is clear that a strict cap on the number of foreign pupils – if by this we mean non-Italian-speaking new arrivals, rather than, say, a boy whose parents are Polish but who was born in Cerignola, or a Senegalese girl who has already successfully completed primary and lower secondary school – would entail a reorganisation of classes, creating smaller groups into which tiny sub-groups of foreign pupils would be placed, or separate courses exclusively for foreign pupils requiring special attention to catch up. Put like that, it would be such a progressive proposal as to seem revolutionary, also entailing the need to recruit new teaching staff, build new classrooms and make use of school premises throughout the entire day. It might even be considered a left-wing policy, but the voters are not interested: all that mattered to them – and to the Prime Minister – was that the announcement sounded right-wing; after all, nobody really knows what actually happens in schools once the gates are closed.