Italy’s government has called for a broad revision of school curricula in order to instill anti-racist values in students.
“In our schools we should study more Primo Levi and less Manzoni,” Prime Minister Giuliano Amato told a news conference Monday, referring to the late Italian Holocaust survivor and the 19th-century Italian novelist and poet Alessandro Manzoni.
On Monday, Education Minister Rosa Russo Jervolino issued a message to all schools “to say no to intolerance and anti-Semitism.”
She said she was issuing the plea especially because “the past months have seen repetitions in this country and Europe of episodes of racism and resurgences of anti-Semitism, which give rise to fears of a recurrence of the specters of the past.”
Jewish leaders and also a teachers union have been pushing for years for a more integrated curriculum that would teach modern and contemporary history, including the Holocaust, in a more thorough way.
Dario Missaglia, secretary-general of the teachers union, told reporters that the teachers had been waiting for a firm stand to be taken by the education ministry on this point.
“I think that Russo Jervolino’s message fills this vacuum,” he said, noting the short shrift paid in history books to World War II, including the resistance movement.
He said he proposed to the minister that state-run television be involved in preparing video programs and education broadcasts on the subject which could be used in the classroom.
In addition, a video presentation for schools on the Holocaust — a project long advocated by the Jewish community — was said to be nearly ready for use in the classroom.
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