Friday, September 26, 2008

Socializing young protesters Italian style


This was the scene this AM when I dropped Danielle off at her elementary school. Protest signs, fliers about the upcoming demonstration and school strike two weeks from now, swarms of children on the school steps chanting against the Berlusconi school budget cuts, and proud parents snapping photos of their demonstrating children...American social scientists like to declare schools to be instruments in the training of a docile citizenry, but clearly Italian schools serve to train students in other ways, including in the art of civil protest. At home we tend to have a lot of rhetoric about the democratic process, but we could learn a lot from Italy about what it means to be an active, politically engaged citizenry.

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Whats an Elementary School Orientation Meeting without a Little Politics?

Daneille's Roman elementary school just held an orientation meeting for the parents of entering 1st graders (there is no kindergarten here)--we attended assuming that the meeting would be akin to Evanston's orienting meetings for kindergarteners. The first portion of the meeting went aswe expected: About 25 parents squeezed themselves into the children's miniature chairs and another 30 parents crowded the classroom's perimeter while the teaching team made their introductions and presented an overview of school policies and materials to be covered in the coming academic year. The meeting took a surprise turn 20 minutes in, however, when the topic turned to politics and strikes. For the next 40 minutes the teachers launched an impassioned outline of the school budget cuts and pedagogical changes the new Berlusconi government plans to institute starting next fall. Currently, there are three professional teachers per classroom (two of them are floaters), and the government plans to reduce this to one teacher per class. According to the teachers, this reduction would imperil the children's education, as one teacher could not possible offer expertise in multiple areas of instruction. Within minutes, parents were joining in to voice their indignation over the looming changes. Sensing the level of outrage had become optimal, the teachers circulated a protest petition for all to sign. Then talk turned to the details of their protest plans--they announced the date they anticipated striking and encouraged us to lend our support, as we all dutifully jotted down the info.

For us, it was a lens into a very different way of dealing with frustration over government policies. While parents get riled up about Department of Education changes in Evanston and circulate petitions of protest, political talk is not part of the formal school landscape (petitions are circulated OUTSIDE, in the school parking lots, and political frustrations are never voiced during school parent-teacher meetings). But, as we are learning, this is Italy, where politics and strikes are all part and parcel of formal school welcome gatherings!

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Favorite Trastevere Graffiti: Pre-fab & Traditional


Ground zero for graffiti in Central Rome appears to be our neighborhood of Trastevere. Above is my favorite graffito--these stenciled pig-tailed girls discarding Fascism popped up about a week ago on various Trastevere walls. The two "pre-fab" graffiti below make me smile when I pass them. The musical duck is an icon for a local jazz festival (I think!).


And now for some more traditional graffiti. No wasting of space here....
And finally, the political....a pun on America...

Saturday, September 20, 2008

A child-centric world?

Childhood in Rome has its own rhythms, rhythms that Danielle has rapidly embraced. In many ways, as the stereotype goes, children are the epicenter of Italian life. We cannot walk into a shop without the merchants making a fuss over Danielle. Today, when the manager of a Trastevere pizza-takeaway joint saw me photographing the pizzas in his case, he rushed out from behind the counter to Danielle (who was munching on her pizza slice), swooped her into his arms, carried her back to his station, triumphantly planting her on his stool. There, he thrust a pizza slicer and spatula in her hands and invited me to photograph "la bella Daniela" at work. Grinning, she complied and so did I. Waiters have slipped rings off their fingers for Danielle and strangers at cafes have presented her with fancy glow-in-the-dark sunglasses. The local gourmet shopkeeper gifts her with hand made candies, the cheese merchant feeds her chunks of peccorino Romano cheese and waiters chat indulgently with her about the various books she reads over meals. Yesterday, when we stopped for a late afternoon drink, the bar manager proposed that Danielle have a gelato, which we declined, explaining that she'd already had her gelato for the day. Within minutes he'd returned with a micro-mini gelato cone he had hand-fashioned for her, declaring conspiratorially that this was not a real cone! (When would an American cafe-owner go against parental decisions about their child's desert consumption?).

The child-centric orientations go well beyond gratifying children with food and impromptu gifts. When we take strolls in our neighborhood, strangers will greet her with "Ciao, bella!" or gesture at her and declare "Ch'e carina...," While the indulgent parental side of me would love to think it is because my child is so uniquely wonderful, I know better: people here do this with ALL the small children who pass their orbit. When I apologize to gelato merchants because Daniele is taking too long to make up her mind, causing the queue behind us to lengthen exponentially, the gelato vendors invariable chastise me for rushing her. This is a land where children are constantly reaffirmed and indulged. Is is any wonder Danielle adores Italy and periodically asks us, "Why is everything better in Italy?"

Yet for all the public fuss over children, playgrounds are few and far between in Rome. We are constantly on the lookout for them and, after a little over a month of living in Rome, we've only spotted three playgrounds. For such a child-oriented society, it is perplexing, especially when one considers that most Romans are apartment-dwellers without access to backyard play areas. We are fortunate that we have one playground right down the block from us in Piazza San Cosimato, but it is quite small--not equipped to handle the herds of neighborhood children trying to elbow their way onto the structure at peak hours.

A word about those peak hours...Since arriving in Rome we've been struck by the very different pace at the local playground on the piazza a block down the hill from our apartment. In the early mornings, when the farmers' market is running on the piazza, the playground is packed with children, parents and senior citizens, conversing and watching the sidewalk theatre. By afternoon, the playground becomes somewhat quieter, and the benches surrounding it become home to a higher ratio of street people, along with a few tourists and elderly neighbors. In the late afternoons playground traffic picks up again until about 8PM, when families begin to dine. Finally (at least on summer nights and weekends so far this fall), as Danielle was delighted to discover, the playground starts to fill up once again around 9:30 or 10PM...Here is a shot of the playground taken at 10:15PM, and this was on a slow August night, before all the Trastevere children returned from their vacations! And last Saturday (an unseasonably cold night) when we passed the playground at 10:30 PM, Danielle paused to gaze at all the children on the structure and declared in awe,"Theres lots of action here at night!"I have to mention the playground structure. The San Cosimato piazza playground was redone a couple years ago and, with characteristic Italian attentiveness to the visual domain, they went with playground equipment that is out the pages of a high Italian design catalog--more sculptural art than industrial playground. Gone are the traditional slides and swings, replaced with soaring poles and dangling climbing pieces that are vaguely reminiscent of Alexander Calder mobiles fused with contemporary Italian espresso makers.

The other dimension of childhood that we are just learning about with Danielle's first week of public school is the attentiveness to training children to have the proper respect for food and mealtimes. She came home the first day aglow about how the school lunchroom is "like a fancy restaurant." Apparently they sit at little tablecloth-covered tables and are served lengthy, leisurely meals of all organic food...nothing like the cafeteria trays and 25 minute lunches they are given in Evanston! The institutionalized cultural lessons about the centrality of food start early...