League,M5S spar on teacher suspended

(ANSA) - Rome, May 17 - The League and government partner the 5-Star Movement (M5S) on Friday sparred over a teacher suspended because her students compared League leader Matteo Salvini's recent hardline security and migrant decree to the race laws of Benito Mussolini.
    Salvini said "the comparison with Mussolini is not opportune" while the M5S filed a question in parliament into the alleged "censorship".
    Salvini said "I don't think it is right that there should be these disrespectful comparisons".
    "It seems odd that in a school the security decree is put to students as a new Mussolini-style race law.
    "It sounds like a foolish stretch, anachronistic.
    "Politics should stay far away from schools, it should educate (students) to discuss different ideas." Anti-migrant Euroskeptic League leader Salvini said he himself respected "everyone's ideas".
    But anti-establishment M5S House Culture Committee Chair Luigi Gallo said "do we only like indoctrinated citizens? "Obedient and therefore unable to build a better world than the one they inherit, to push beyond rights that have already been conquered? "We are working to make sure students have critical thinking, develop independent arguments and learn to think with their own heads.
    "And what does the League minister do? He censors them.
    "This is a really grave act and that's why the M5S has filed a parliamentary question".
    The students have defended teacher Rosa Maria Dell'Aria, saying she only corrected their language and did not tell them what to put into their video presentation.
    Leftwing parties and trade unions on Friday urged Education Minister Marco Bussetti, a member of the League, to reinstate Dell'Aria, who accused of failing to properly oversee her students.
    Loredana De Petris of the Left party said "it is inconceivable that the government should hide behind ridiculous alibis in the face of a violation of rights sanctioned by the Constitution, worthy of a police State".
    Meanwhile students in Palermo protested Dell'Aria's suspension. The students staged a protest in front of the prefect's office in the Sicilian city to ask for the "immediate suspension" of the controversial measure against Dell'Aria, which has been criticized by teachers and Palermo Mayor Leoluca Orlando.
    Former Senate speaker, Pietro Grasso, the leader of the left-wing Free and Equal (LeU) party, published the students' video on Facebook.
    In a Facebook post, Grasso wrote: "Past and present measures and choices are linked with shrewdness and intelligence - maybe the intelligence is scaring Salvini". The security decree has been criticised for allegedly stripping migrants of essential rights and pushing them towards marginalisation and crime.