Greetings to readers of this blog. Here are two speeches Calamandrei, unfortunately, very dramatically and today (they were spoken 58 years ago).
"Let's say, so the abstract, there is a ruling party, a ruling party, which, however, formally wants to respect the constitution, not want to violate the substance. Does not want to march on Rome and transform the classroom into a space for presentation; but wants to establish, without opinion, a disguised dictatorship. So, what to do to gain control of schools and to transform schools into state schools of the party? He realizes that the schools have been the defect of being impartial. There is some resistance, in those schools is always there, even under fascism has been there. Then, the dominant party follows another path (it's all a theoretical hypothesis, mind you). He begins to neglect the public schools, to discredit, to impoverish. Let it anemizzino and begins to favor private schools. Not all private schools. The schools of his party, that party. And then all these treatments are beginning to go to private schools. Cure of money and privileges. He even begins to advise the boys to go to these schools, because basically it says are better than those of the state. And perhaps we give prizes to those citizens who are willing to send their children to public schools rather than private schools. A "those" private schools. So the private school becomes a privileged school. The ruling party, unable to openly turn state schools into party schools, send the dogs was to give schools the prevalence of its private schools. Warning, this is the recipe. We must keep an eye on the cooks in this slow cooking. The operation is done in three ways, as I have already said, ruining the schools of the state. Let go to hell. Depleting their budgets. Ignore their needs. Mitigate the supervision and control over private schools. Do not check its reliability. Let the teachers teach you that do not have the minimum qualifications to teach. Let the examinations are jokes. Giving public money to private schools.
This is the point. Giving public money to private schools "
(in the Democratic School, March 20, 1950.)
" Ladies and gentlemen, here we are teachers of all kinds of schools, from elementary to university [...]. We are gathered here in this conference which is entitled to the defense of the school. Why we defend the school? [...] We defend the democratic school: the school that is a function of this Constitution, which can be an instrument, because the Constitution written on paper become a reality [...]. The school, as I see it, is an organ of "constitutional". Has its position, its importance to the center of the complex of organs that make up the Constitution. As you know (you all have read our Constitution), in the second part of the Constitution, what is called "state law" describes those organs through which it expresses the will of the people. Those organs through which policy becomes law, vital and healthy political struggles are transformed into laws. Now, when you can think of asking what are the constitutional bodies, all of you will be the natural answer: the rooms are, the President of the Republic, the Judiciary, but there will occur between these bodies to consider also the school, which instead is a vital organ of democracy as we conceive. If you were to make a comparison between the constitutional body and the human organism, one would say that the school match those organs which have the function in the human body to create blood .[...] In that serves democracy allowing any man worthy of have its share of sun and dignity (applause). But this can only do the school, which is the corollary of universal suffrage. The school, which has precisely this character up a political sense, because only it can help you choose, it can only help create the people worthy of being chosen, which normally surface from all walks of life. [...]"
(Excerpt from speech by Piero Calamandrei the Third Congress of the Association in Defence of the national school (ADSN), Rome February 11, 1950.)
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