There have been about five assaults
on teachers per month since the beginning of the current school
year and almost half have involved other adults, Education
Minister Giuseppe Valditara said on Wednesday after the knife
attack on a teacher by a 16-year-old student at a school near
Milan on Monday.
"This implies that families have become estranged from schools,
(it is) a tension that needs to be resolved," said the minister
during a recording of the flagship talk show Porta a Porta on
Rai 1.
"I am a great believer in a relationship that empowers children
and considers parents not as union representatives for their
kids but as co-authors of an educational path that is
supportive" of the teaching profession, continued Valditara,
adding that the authority and social importance of teachers
needs to be put back at center stage.
"Today I visited the Garibaldi Institute in Rome, and I met many
motivated children, full of enthusiasm," said the minister.
"In a dramatic moment such as this, I would not like the message
to be that our young people all have problems, while (in
reality) Italian schools are made up of many wonderful kids,"
said Valditara, adding that Monday's episode in Abbiategrasso in
which the assailant also turned a replica gun on his classmates
before being arrested was "something different from bullying".
Bullying is a problem in all European countries and it is "an
expression of a society that has lost the culture of respect and
cultivates arrogance and high-handedness," he added.
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