This past week marked 5 months in Italy for me. Can you believe it? I’ve lived in Italy before (in 2012, I spent a semester in Rome while getting my Art History degree), but this is the longest time I’ve spent in any country other than America. With that, of course, comes the realizations of how different this new country is from my native country. Some differences are small and others are more important and [maybe] help explain the bigger picture differences between our countries i.e. our economies, unemployment rates, etc. I’ve decided I want to try to flesh out these differences on my blog in a monthly (or so) segment I’m going to call “Italy vs. America: _________” + the subject at hand. In these posts, I’m not necessarily arguing that one country’s way of doing things is better than the other— unless I am, which will be abundantly clear— I just want to explore how every country is different from others with customs and laws and neither one is wrong, per se, just different!
So, with all that being said, I want to start these segments with one difference I’ve found most interesting to me so far, and that is E D U C A T I O N.
In America, at least in my school district, children at all different learning levels were mixed together from kindergarten to 2nd grade, including kids with intellectual disabilities. Then, by 3rd grade (or age 9-10), each grade started being divided by the A-track (intelligent) kids, B-track (average) kids, and the C-track (low learning) kids. I believe at this time, those who were intellectually disabled or had extreme learning difficulties had their own class with more than one teacher, depending on how many children had these special needs. This continued through high school, and by the time you got to 11th or 12th grade, there was another option: AP classes. AP, or Advance Placement, classes were for the kids who wanted to go onto college and wanted to take college prep courses in order to best prepare them for college level learning. You could choose to take one AP class in a subject you liked and excelled in, or you could take all AP classes and really challenge yourself. It’s been 10 years since I had to do any of this, so bear with me, but I believe you took tests to get into AP classes, and also if you wanted to move from B-track to A-track. Speaking from experience, I can tell you there was a big difference between A and B-track in what you learned and how much you were able to get through in a class. Spoiler: I hate math and dropped down to B-track in 11th or 12th grade, so I saw how different that was from my usual A-track and AP classes. Basically, this system definitely favors the intelligent children to make them even more educated and prepare them for college more than with the lower levels, which I don’t agree with.
Italy, on the other hand, is so so different from America with all this. First, kids are never split up according to their reading or math levels, including the children with disabilities. From kindergarten through 12th grade, students at all different levels remain mixed, and they also don’t change classrooms throughout the day like we do in America. Instead, the teachers are the ones who move from classroom to classroom: this results in super bland classrooms with white walls, no posters or anything personalized because many different teachers are in the same room each day. Also, the fact that students are mixed together means that the teacher has to prepare worksheets for students at a low, middle, and high level in order to keep everyone at the same pace, giving the teacher much more work to do for each class. Once students get to high school in Italy, they can choose which type of high school to go to according to how interested they are in going to university and what their main interests are.
Some other random things:
Testing students’ knowledge is different here. Students are expected to take oral exams (interrogazione) in front of the class with the teacher questioning them (in addition to written tests like in the U.S.)
Grading is different in Italy— no A-F, but instead they use 1-10, and I believe there's no such thing as a GPA.
There are virtually no clubs or activities for students in Italy, academically or otherwise.
Most schools have class on Saturdays, and the school day roughly goes from 8:30AM-1:30PM when all the students go home and have lunch with their families, start homework, etc.
Then, of course, my and every other millennial’s favorite topic: college! Depending on what you want to have as a career, in Italy, you go to university anywhere from 3-8ish years. This is similar to America, i.e. if you want to be a doctor or lawyer, you go to school longer than maybe an accountant or HR representative. However, and this will be shocking, university in Italy is so much cheaper than in America— crazy, right?! Of course this isn’t crazy, tuition in America is absolutely insane! In Italy, it costs most students 1,000-2,000 euro per year (plus the cost of books) to go to a public university, while in America it costs ~$25,000-40,000 per year, depending if you’re out of state or not. Because of the high costs in America, many students apply for scholarships and financial aid that doesn’t exist in Italy, but still, Americans graduate with huge amounts of debt that Italians really have trouble understanding. I’ll stop here with the cost of university because there are few things that get me as angry as I am about the cost of an education in America, and I’d like to not break my keyboard today ☺
I think there are positives and negatives to both systems because no government is ever 100% correct. It was really interesting for me to learn about this new system and weigh the pros and cons of each. I have friends and family in America who are teachers, and now I'm a teacher in Italy, so it's an interesting and important topic for me personally, but what are your thoughts? I'd love to hear them!
