Last Day of School

Saturday the 7th of June was my last day of not only just Italian school, but school in general as I finished in New Zealand before coming to Italy. Although I'd been looking forward to this day from the beginning of my experience of Italian high school, it was sad to be saying goodbye as it also signifies that I'm nearing the end of my exchange year.

A couple of days before the actual last day we had a school party which was held at the school in the evening. I couldn't stay for long because I was meeting my host sister and some friends to go for a walk afterwards but for the short time I stayed I really enjoyed myself. It was held in the courtyard between my school (classic and human sciences) and the school next-door (geometry/architectural). They had music playing, food and drinks and in general everyone was just in such a good mood because school was finally coming to an end for the year and summer was beginning! On the last day my class had a shared lunch and we borrowed one of the school's CD players (yup no speakers, internet access or even computers in this classroom!) to play some music, creating a mini class party. It was really nice because throughout the year I never got much chance to just 'hangout' with my class as a whole as they were always so fixed on studying; it's just a pity it had to be the last day!

As my Italian school experience has now come to an end (I honestly feel like I'll never complain about anything ever again haha) I thought I'd share with you some differences, or things that have surprised me throughout my year at an Italian high school. I did this after my first couple of days here and if you want to read that you can do here. I think after attending school here for the whole year I now understand, or have a different opinion on,  some of the differences that hit me right at the beginning. So here goes...

1. The hierarchy within the school here is extremely obvious - Principal, then Teachers, then Students. For example when speaking to teachers students must use the formal way of saying 'you/tu' which is 'lei'. This shows respect to the teachers but the amount of disrespect I've seen from some of the teachers towards students is ridiculous (some teachers didn't even seem to bother learning students' names which you could say is just a cultural thing, but even my classmates told me that they would appreciate being called by their names), I still don't understand how they can expect it.

2. School on Saturdays! My school did a survey to see if students would prefer to do an extra hour of school each day Monday-Friday and then have Saturdays off. This would mean six hours, instead of five which is what we do in New Zealand. When I talked to my classmates about this I was so surprised that most of them would prefer to keep Saturday as a school day because "what about lunch?!" I love how typically Italian that is!

3. There's near to no technology in schools here (or at least in my school). Each class had a blackboard and that was it, all of the students used textbooks and visits to the presentation room (with one very old computer and a projector) were very rare. I'm not saying this is a good or a bad thing, I honestly don't know. There's benefits of learning with technology, and benefits of learning the old fashioned way. I suppose it really depends on the person and what subject you're studying but this still really surprised me at the beginning, especially coming from a school where almost everything bar maths is done on the computer.

4. They were serving alcohol at the school party where the youngest students were about twelve! I know this doesn't really seem like a big thing and it's more of a cultural difference, but thinking back to my school in NZ where even at the school ball there's no way they would have been allowed to serve alcohol it seems extreme.

5. Here the individual teachers make, and mark the tests and verbal exam questions throughout the year. Although it must save the school a lot of time and therefore money, it allows room for so much bias and informality. It also means that your grades depend a lot on which teacher you have for the year, as it depends how tough they are on marking, and what level their questions are at. I've also heard a lot of stories about terrible teachers who no one has the courage to complain about because they can't risk being given bad grades as a result (consciously or subconsciously) which in my opinion puts students in a terrible situation.

6. Here you choose your school and not your subjects. In my opinion this is actually quite a good thing because for example if you want to be an architect you go to that particular school and do all of the subjects necessary, whereas in New Zealand you might choose the wrong subjects when not given the right guidance, and ruin your chances of getting into your desired course after finishing school. Although at 13 years old it is very young to be expected to know what you want to do when you finish school.

7. This is more of a cultural difference rather than a difference only within the school system but there seems to be an extreme lack of freedom in terms of the students' actual learning. For example, at not one point throughout the year were we given a task to do over more than one lesson; something that would teach time management and planning skills in addition to the subject at hand; something that you would have the freedom to do in your own time, adding your own spin and showing your own individual perspective to the task. There always seemed to be a right, and a wrong answer which doesn't allow any 'outside of the box' thinking. Anyone can tell you for example how to spell the word 'innovation' but not everyone can be innovative, think laterally and solve real word problems where there isn't just one right, and one wrong answer.

8. I think the main difference - and something that a lot of these previous things add up to - is the fact that the Italian school system hasn't changed for such a long time. It's what you would imagine a school to have been like back in your parents' or even grandparents' day. It's extremely basic and aimed at one learning style alone. If you're one of those people who learns by listening and reading then you'd probably do really well at an Italian school, but if you learn from getting physical and learning through experiences then you're pretty much stuffed to be honest... ( as an example - we studied chemistry for the whole year and never even did one experiment or anything whatsoever. It was all learning from textbooks which for some people just wouldn't ever work no matter how long they studied, and for some people would work better than anything physical)

These things here, along with the ones that I listed after my first two weeks in Italy, are what I found from my experience of one Italian school, and one Italian class. I'm not saying this is what it's like in every school in Italy because I really have no idea. I also just wanted to say that although I may sound negative when talking about the school that's mostly because I personally find it hard to learn just from listening and reading in an environment such as this, however everyone is different and maybe the fact that their school system has remained unchanged for such a long period of time is only a testament to it itself.