A-Infos (en) Italy, FDCA, Cantiere #44 - Public Schools Under Attack: The Valditara Agenda: Corporatization, Cuts, and Discipline - Alessandro Granata (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

It's not a reform, it's a step-by-step structural transformation: 
schools are increasingly being subjected to the market, stripped of 
their critical function, and made increasingly unequal. We're not simply 
facing a new era of reforms. What's happening under Minister Valditara's 
leadership is a genuine political project to redefine Italian public 
schools. A coherent, systematic project, carried forward seamlessly from 
previous governments, which aims to transform education from a universal 
right to a tool that serves the needs of the market.
Schools Reduced to a Labor Factory
The heart of this project is the corporatization of education. With the 
"4+2" model, the strengthening of school-work alternation, and the 
structural inclusion of businesses in training programs, schools are 
gradually being transformed into a production chain.
Students are no longer subjects in training, but workers in training. 
They don't train informed citizens, but individuals ready to adapt to a 
precarious, underpaid, and rights-deprived labor market.
Behind the rhetoric of "employability" lies a simple truth: the level of 
education is being lowered to adapt to an economic system incapable of 
providing decent work.
Technical Education Under Attack
First, the transformation of the so-called "4+2 curriculum" into a 
"regular curriculum" (after just two years of experimentation and a 
small number of courses launched). Now we have the reorganization of 
five-year curricula with radical changes to timetables and teaching 
structure: these two measures mark a profound turning point that if 
fully implemented would overturn the functions of the secondary school 
system.
The two "reforms" reduce knowledge and cut school time, bending the 
purposes of technical education to corporate logic. They want us to 
believe that in less time, we would learn more and better. This is not 
"modernization," but a return to a past in which certain educational 
programs were entirely instrumental to the needs of the labor market.
Less knowledge and more obedience
Reducing school hours and cutting subjects are not neutral measures. 
They are political tools. Fewer hours, less content, and less depth mean 
less critical thinking.
At the same time, an authoritarian model is being strengthened: conduct 
grades are used as a tool of exclusion, harsher disciplinary sanctions, 
and the centrality of respect for authority. School is no longer a place 
for democratic debate and growth, but a space for control and normalization.
A school that teaches obedience is perfectly functional for a labor 
market that demands flexibility, adaptation, and silence.
The destruction of the unity of the public system
The expansion of curricular autonomy and flexibility marks another 
crucial step: the breakdown of the national unity of education. Regional 
LEP (essential levels of performance) were already being envisioned in 
the wake of differentiated autonomy.
Each school becomes a system in itself, shaped by the needs of the local 
community, that is, local businesses. The result is growing 
fragmentation: qualifications with varying values, unequal pathways, 
divergent opportunities.
It is the end of the idea of public schools as a tool for equality. In 
its place, a system that reproduces and amplifies social and territorial 
inequalities.
Businesses within schools: a paradigm shift
With the "Educational Pacts 4.0," businesses are firmly established in 
schools, no longer as interlocutors but as co-protagonists. They can 
influence content, curriculum, and methodologies.
This is a momentous shift: education is no longer guided by autonomous 
educational goals, but by economic interests. Schools are losing 
cultural and pedagogical sovereignty.
Meanwhile, teachers continue to be asked for qualifications, 
certifications, and sacrifices, while those in the manufacturing sector 
are recognized as having an educational role without any equivalent. 
This is a clear devaluation of the teaching role.
Reducing school time means undermining basic knowledge, thus 
contributing to the process of cultural decline. The reorganization 
includes cutting the humanities and sciences, resulting in the 
disarticulation of disciplinary knowledge.
A school of early exploitation
Lowering the age for activating School-Work Training projects to 15 
turns students into laborers to be trained at no cost, before they have 
even had the opportunity to achieve the necessary critical maturity.
A corporatized school
The proposal is for an educational model subservient to the contingent 
needs of local businesses, forgetting that schools should train 
citizens, not simply a workforce. Evidence of this is the de facto 
imposition of skills-based teaching and UDA (units of learning) as the 
only acceptable methodology, and the requirement to enter into 
agreements with businesses to ensure that "experts from the business 
world" enter the classroom.
UDA, while true, simplifies and is much more practical, it can be more 
superficial, less in-depth, and burdens teaching planning. In all 
theoretical subjects, or the theoretical parts of disciplines, 
mathematics and grammar are not applicable. They reduce and simplify 
content it's no coincidence that this is the model being used to create 
vocational school textbooks.
Cuts, precariousness, and structural impoverishment
All this is happening while resources are being reduced. System cuts, 
school downsizing, mergers: fewer schools, larger, less rooted in the 
local community.
Staff insecurity remains unresolved, and salaries continue to decline. 
The structure is being reformed, but the people who bring it to life 
every day are being abandoned.
It's a clear strategy: weaken the public sector to make it permeable to 
private interests.
A school of redundancies
In addition to the reduction in teaching quality, there is a reduction 
in teaching positions. The reduction in annual teaching hours in the 
reorganization of five-year curricula and the incessant ministerial 
propaganda for the implementation of 4+2 curricula will lead to 
redundancies and excess staff. Cowardly in the name of vaunted 
flexibility and autonomy individual teachers were asked to decide in 
their colleges which competitive exam class would be cut: they pitted us 
against each other by asking us to decide which colleague would lose 
their job!
A School of Improvisation
The launch of the timetable reorganization, in the absence of subject 
guidelines and with the opposition of the CSPI (National Council of 
Public Education), which urges the administration to consider the decree 
temporary, limiting its validity to the next school year, will seriously 
damage the new technical curricula, undermining the seriousness that has 
always characterized this historic segment of the education system.
The teaching staff, urgently convened to decide how to allocate the 
"flexible" hours, were forced by the timing to do so for the first year 
only, forgoing a comprehensive view of the entire five-year curriculum. 
Furthermore, the reform is being implemented after enrollment has 
closed, when families have already made their high school choices based 
on a curriculum that will be completely overhauled over the course of 
the five-year period.
A School Tailored to Business
Giving individual schools broad flexibility in organizing their 
curricula (to meet local production needs!) will make each institution's 
educational offerings unique. This dismantles the principle of a first 
two-year program with strongly shared features in technical majors, 
forcing students to make an early and uninformed choice of 
specialization as early as middle school. Furthermore, this much-vaunted 
flexibility jeopardizes the comparability of students' preparation in 
similar majors, thus undermining the legal value of the qualification.
A School of Class
Finally, this reform solidifies inequalities: those who choose technical 
education, from now on, will be prematurely directed toward rigid 
professional paths, severely limiting their chances of continuing 
university studies or changing their future direction. School ceases to 
be a right and a tool for emancipation, becoming an educational service 
subservient to the logic and demands of the market.
The Big Lie: "It's the School's Fault"
The same mantra is always repeated to justify these policies: school 
doesn't prepare for work, school is inefficient, school needs to change.
But the reality is different. Youth unemployment, job insecurity, and 
low wages are not the result of education, but of an economic system 
incapable of guaranteeing rights and prospects.
Placing these responsibilities on schools only serves to legitimize 
their corporate transformation.
A Political, Not a Technical Choice
There is no neutrality in these reforms. Every choice from curricula to 
discipline, from relationships with businesses to cuts responds to a 
specific vision of society.
A society in which:
* education does not emancipate, but selects;
* knowledge does not liberate, but serves;
* school is not a right, but an economic investment.
Resistance is Necessary
Faced with this scenario, analyzing is not enough. We must take a stand.
Defending public schools today means defending:
* the universal right to education,
* the critical function of knowledge,
* equal opportunity,
* the dignity of educational work.
It means rejecting a transformation that empties school of its deepest 
meaning.
Because a school reduced to a tool of the market is no longer school. 
It's something else entirely. And accepting this without conflict means 
handing the future of education and society over to a logic that has 
nothing to do with democracy, inclusion, and the fundamental 
egalitarianism toward which schools aspire.
We continue to pursue the myth of professionalism at the expense of 
equality.

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