It was a good wind that blew in 1968, on which extraordinary currents converged and flowed, such as “Lettera a una professoressa” (Letter to a Teacher) by Don Lorenzo Milani, the ideas of psychiatrist Franco Basaglia, and from that year L’Istituzione negata. Rapporto da un ospedale psichiatrico (The Negated Institution: Report from a Psychiatric Hospital) where the closure of asylums was theorized. In 1970, “Il paese sbagliato” (The Wrong Country) was published: Mario Lodi denounced how in most cases there was “an extraordinary resemblance between the cells of an old prison and school classrooms.”
In the same year, RAI broadcast Luigi Comencini’s documentary “I bambini e noi” (Children and Us). In one episode, “The Bicycle“, the director masterfully examined the social and educational issues that a Roman suburb, Prima Porta, had to face. Alongside the crowded regular classes, there were differential classes for students with cognitive and behavioral problems. The author pointed the finger precisely at the ghettoization and myopia of those “educational choices” which, far from recovering and solving problems, had devastating effects, irreparably exacerbating contradictions.
That the debate was particularly lively and open in those years was also demonstrated by the credits of the documentary itself, but the absolute protagonist in the commitment to a flexible school, capable of welcoming everyone, aimed at overcoming the discriminatory and marginalizing vision of the Gentilian school, had been since the early sixties, in Turin, Mirella Casale, school principal and mother of Flavia, a child with severe disabilities.
“The impulse to deal with intellectual and/or relational disabilities I owe to a personal experience that caused me great pain, the greatest of my life. I managed to contain it by living my school life normally, without letting the students feel the suffering I had inside. On October 26, 1957, my daughter Flavia – who had not yet turned six months old – fell ill with ‘Asian’ flu with very high fevers and developed a very serious viral encephalitis, followed by a coma, which greatly damaged her brain.”
Mirella Casale, a school principal and mother of Flavia, a child with severe disabilities, had been working to overcome the discriminatory and marginalizing vision of the Gentilian school system since the early 1960s in Turin.
Since 1971, Casale had experimentally included students with intellectual and psychophysical disabilities, even severe ones, in the common full-time classes of her middle school, the “Camillo Olivetti.” From that date, the experiments were numerous but, even after the approval of Law 517, there was talk of “wild inclusion” to express the confusion, sometimes bewilderment, for the total lack of training not only of curricular teachers but also of those who should have been support teachers.
I remember that during the scrutiny of a third-year middle school exam in Collegno, a colleague wanted to write H next to the “Promoted” wording of a child with disabilities. As a class council, we refused the proposal, which, however, to most, did not seem so senseless.
The problem was not so much the students with severe disabilities, initially few in number and then completely in charge of “support,” but those whose problems of social, behavioral, even neurological discomfort were not recognized, boys and girls who ended up being sanctioned, punished, failed. In many cases, differential classes were quietly reconstituted in a masked way, renewing the story of the monster driven out the door that comfortably re-enters through the window.
In many schools, especially lower middle schools, groups were organized within the classes in various assortments. Some were offered a Latin course or creative writing or something of cultural depth, others drawing, finally soccer tournaments for those who were agitated and less inclined to study. While probably everyone would have preferred to play soccer or draw, the message was clear.
I still have in mind a curious substitution hour in a second-year middle school in Lunghezza. Entering the class, I crossed paths with the group of good students who, with dictionaries and ruled protocol sheets, were heading to the small room near the library. “They’re crazy about the Commentarii de Bello Gallico, today there’s a test!” explained the pleased literature teacher. The colleague I was substituting was the support teacher for the student with disabilities, who, however, in that hour of pseudo co-presence, as she later told me, struggled to keep calm the kids who were doing or copying homework for other subjects, moreover some were “real delinquents” and there was no way to “keep up” with the boy with problems, thank goodness he was good and quiet, sometimes he got agitated too, but they would call his mother who came to pick him up right away.
Then it was my turn to be that mother who quickly ran to pick up her son from school. Kindergarten didn’t go well, everything was so new and there was constantly the scruple of not disturbing even when the abuses were evident, but I kept quiet so as not to undermine relationships that I feared would end up harming Massimiliano.
Better in elementary school, where the good teacher Clive had taken the facilitated writing course to write with him. In middle school, the teachers, knowing I was their colleague, counted on my understanding: “There are Roma people in the class and then the program to carry on, your son is sometimes really restless, it would be better if he stayed at home or at least left earlier, for his own good.” Rock bottom was hit in high school, where Massi, in one of the first years, had Gabriella as a support teacher.
Gabriella lived outside Rome, had a degree in biology, had been a bank employee until a few years before, had decided to enter the school to work fewer hours and had chosen the support chair because it was “faster.” She was always justifiably absent as she was enrolled in a Latin teaching course: she would ask for a transfer to support to get closer to home, but then she would switch to the Latin class because she didn’t feel suited for support.
A similar fate, in the same school, had befallen Lorenzo, Massi’s peer and son of my friend Giuliana. In addition, compared to Gabriella, Lorenzo’s support teacher couldn’t leave Filippo, the dog, alone. Filippo remained tied in the school’s small garden and the owner had to go down continuously otherwise he would cry, that is, bark in a singsong without stopping. On outings for educational visits, the school group was followed by the support teacher, Lorenzo, and the dog. Surreal! (As surreal was a nice little drama between Lorenzo’s grandmother and the support teacher: her husband was also named Filippo, and the grandson was a bit confused hearing the grandfather’s name called continuously; the teacher almost took offense: she couldn’t change the dog’s name after 5 years; “Imagine if my husband can change it after 70!” the grandmother quipped).
It was to get out of all this that, after a memorable and liberating phone call in tears to Giulia from a bench in Villa Chigi, I decided to follow her advice: stop settling for nothing, stop patching up messy situations, I had to, finally, indulge my inclination to “take problems by the horns”.
Taking advantage of a series of favorable regulations, for two years I sat at the desk next to Massi as his support teacher. It was a Human Sciences high school with mostly female students. The teachers didn’t oppose resistance, the female students and the few male students, after the initial moment of amazement, found the thing original and immediately liked having that strange couple of boy and his mother support teacher in class.
The teachers were kind, but absolutely uninterested in the issues of including the disabled student, so much so that it never occurred to anyone to ask my opinion for organizing the school camp or the end-of-year trip. The girls and boys, even from other classes, learned instead to know Massi, to relate to him, and, basically, not to be afraid of him. Massi was calm, he was happy when they came home to do homework and for me it was an experience of true training.
Years later, in my first middle school, Lucia had arrived, a little girl with motor disabilities as well, very sensitive especially to noises, it took nothing to make her startle, agitate and cry, but when she was calm and smiling, Lucia was fantastic. No special recommendations were necessary, it was natural for everyone, including the “loudest” teachers, to speak calmly, in a low voice, to get up gently (woe betide making noise with chairs), not to go wild during breaks and to repeat, whenever possible, nursery rhymes and poems that sent her into raptures.
We all let ourselves be educated by Lucia and, at least that time, the usual “these children have so much to give” wasn’t rhetoric. Even today, in the lexicon of us colleagues from back then, “Lucia’s class” has remained “the Gotha,” also meaning that things rarely went so well afterwards.
There are still many critical issues and for targeted inclusive projects to be feasible for the benefit of the person with disabilities, tools and resources that are not found would be needed, as well as a real will to go in that direction. But we cannot deny steps forward, especially in mentality.
Unfortunately, no right is acquired once and for all and we can never lower our guard, as current news events demonstrate. However, when a rule felt to be right, even if initially imposed from above, becomes conscience, it is difficult to go back.
In my day, when I went to school, it was normal for teachers to smoke in class. Then in schools, hospitals, cinemas, trains “no smoking” signs appeared… Now those signs are no longer needed. If we look back, we realize, with joy, that we are moving forward and that we have improved on many things, despite everything.
