School self-management is a form of protest in which students like us don’t attend the curricular lessons and organise alternative courses and assemblies. It’s an opportunity to amplify our knowledge of matters which concern us more closely and attract our curiosity. Also because, we decide what to do during school self-management.

The organisation is set up by school representatives who, , try to organise a good self-management with simple rules with the student’s cooperation:

-democracy: self-management must be decided by everybody and not only by one person and all the decisions must be reported to the headmaster;

-it needs a concrete objectives;

-the program must introduce open discussion in which everybody, cn take part mantain contact with people from the outside(experts…), an order service and efficient control;

-it must be a moment of information, alone the outside world, and internal to understand and solve the possible mistakes within the organisation.

Beside the self-management there’s another form of students’ protest: occupation, the co-management and the demonstration parade.

The co-management: is a milder form of protest. It consists in agreeing with the teachers on a determined number of days in which the normal lessons are suspended and the students organise together courses on various subjects.

Occupation is the most extreme form of protest: the students drive out the teachers, the headmaster from the school and they accept in only the ones they want to. During the night some students sleep at school. However participates or organises an occupation risks penal sanction.

Demonstration parade is a public demonstration open not only to students. To organise this,it is enough to go to police headquarters, to the office of public order and indicate the date, the time, the route and the reasons.

The origin of school self-management, introduced by ex-minister Berlinguer, goes back inside the fight between the students and the institutions which started in 1968 and it has never stopped completely.

In the middle of the ’60s the western world was living in economic welfare and social stability.The head of the family, belonging to a generation who had personally lived the tragedy of the second world war, wished to live peacefully, while the sons started to feel riarrowed by the political situation.

Music and literature helped the youth to increase their restlessness: it was Beatles, Rolling Stones and BobDylan era.

Parents didn’t like this request of freedom greater and greater from their children, they didn’t understand the reasons of their refusal for a normal life. So the gap between these two generations increased more and more, until the first protest act arose.

During the last months of 1964 the first disputed spread over the U.S. and reached Europe within two years. The students questioned the methods, accademic contents and the

teacher’s power. Most of the students reacted by proposing a teaching method with a final exam of total equalness between teachers and student.

The student’s protest therefore spread all over Italy involving almost all the secondary schools and universities.

The battling students’ and teachers demands, relating to a greater democracy in the school, found an answer only in 1974 with the issue of decrees regarding the following:

-new collective bodies of the school.

-acknowledgement of the teachers’ autonomy.

-the diffusion of self-management was obstructed by the beaurocracy of the political parties which claimed and partially obtained the controll of the new school bodies.

Even the C.N.P.(National committe of Public Education) tried to obstruct the introduction of self-management into the schools.

The introduction of self-management into Italian schools was the result of the talks between the institutional powers within the schools which led to a hierarchical vision, and the new demands.

Self-management and school flexibility, even if it had been introduced under the pressure of contrasting tendencies, represent an authentic revolution for Italian public schools, which will have very positive results on children’s education, on freedom given to teachers, on families, on students and school bodies.

We have been able to know our headmaster, Prof. MarioMarcante’s personal opinion, who has lived through this period more closely.

Infact, he defines the school and the school protests, which started at the end of the sixties, completely different from nowadays, where sit-ins were un-controlled, headed by political battles between the liberal and comunist systems.

Regarding our three days self-management which took place last December, the headmaster was willing to grant us the great hall, gyms and laboratories that could only be used in the teachers’ presence accepting all the students’ proposals. He also proposed a debate held by himself, without great success because of lack of adhesions.

This is one of the reasons why the headmaster criticised the students who, according to him, try to self-manage themselves in an anarchical way, asking for more and more autonomy, though showing inability in managing it.

However he allowed and goes on allowing us self-management to avoid the possible conseguences which could arise if it was refused, much as a sit-in with force.

OUR OPINION:This year self-management lasted 3 days. It took place on the second and third floors where the students attended various courses from the educational ones to those of "total contrast".

We were also able to use the great hall where different kinds of films were shown and followed with great interest.

Like any other activity which lets us miss lessons, even self-management has had and has great approval on behalf of the students like us. It’s very much requested, hiding, of course, the true reason, because we also consider it a way of socializing and having new and different experiences. For this reason we don’t consider it a waste of time, but an important occasion for each person’s growth.

Written by : Simone Colombelli, Claudia La Torre and Valentina Trovato IV B