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.
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