Buondì.
It’s ‘Caldo ma non troppo’ here in Bologna today, according to the app on my smartphone, which makes a nice change. It appears the opressively-hot weather has broken, though not with the promised violent storm.
Oh well, we have to take what we can get at this time of year.
Here’s a quick introduction to today’s Summer Series article (text + online audio), which is no. twenty-two out of thirty. Ever noticed, by the way, that ‘numero’ in Italian is abbreviated without the ‘o’? Today we have n. ventidue, and no hypen either.
Three weeks from now and we’ll be done with the free articles, and the summer itself.
Episodio 22. L’economia ai tempi del fascismo
So, the economy under fascism, a potentially interesting topic for those of us into modern history, economics and political science, which were my subjects as a young man (before I became a language teacher, more about which later…)
Though actually, it’s not a very interesting article. Perhaps our writer is one of the many for whom ‘economics’ rhymes with ‘maths’, and so should be rushed through as quickly as possible.
Over at ‘EasyItalianNews.com‘, for instance (also more about which later), I often have to nag the editor to nag the writers to pay more attention with the numbers they quote in the simplified news articles they write.
None of them, and I am not exaggerating I promise, seem to get the difference between a million (there are approximately sixty million people in Italy; an apartment in a nice part of Bologna might cost you a million euros) and a billion (there are approximately eight billion people on the planet; ‘billionaires’ measure their wealth in these).
Ditto, percentages seem to cause huge problems, particularly the difference between percentages in the increased growth of something and percentages of the number of that thing. For instance, ‘there has been a ten percent growth in mortality for people infected with (insert scary but really rare disease here)’, does not equal ‘ten percent of all people, or even of all dead people, succumbed to (scary but really rare disease)’.
Far be it for me to criticise people for their educational short-comings, for as I’m constantly being reminded by conversations with my Italian wife and Italian medical student daughter, my British state school education left me with absolutely zero idea of the layout of my insides. I’ve heard of the liver and the kidneys, and have a vague idea of what they do, but no way could I locate them on a chart.
No, I blame the teachers. And the system, of course.
Only some of the ‘EasyItalianNews.com‘ writers are actual language teachers, but you couldn’t tell either way from the level of accuracy. The graduate, professional educators seem to be no more or less accurate when it comes to numbers than those with just high school diplomas.
I’m getting off track, so back to fascism and economics. As always, there are echoes of today’s events, particularly the current trend for protecting ‘our’ industries, farmers, etc. at the expense of Johnny Foreigner, whose dastardly filling of our malls and food stores with affordable consumer goods and foods has done so much to undermine the profits of ‘our’ formerly self-satisfied industrialists and farmers.
Mussolini wasn’t much interested in numbers, either, it seems. In the early years of fascism, being more into bombast and women, he left a lot of the decisions to the experts still in place from previous administrations.
With time, though, that changed and – much like these days – the state began to intervene to ‘fix things’. Draining swamps and building cities on them, for example. I came across this online a while back and had never heard of it before, but it was a thing.
Latina, Lazio’s second biggest city (after Rome) was apparently a Mussolini make-work project, very similar to what Franklin D. Roosevelt would soon get up to on the other side of the Atlantic.
Italian economics in a word: ‘protectionism’, looking after ‘ours’ at the expense of ‘theirs’. In two words ‘state intervention’. The European Union was supposed to have sorted that out, but alas. See this article from The Economist (paywall).
Two annecdotes.
In 2003, despairing at the opportunities offered to foreign language teachers in Italy (only the locals were and are eligible for state-school jobs with tenure), I shelled out ten thousand euros or so for a two year part-time course at our local business school.
There I discovered that reading the set books was rare, cheating in exams was rife, and that what I truly lacked was not industry or integrity but the enthusiasm for networking and forging connections that my classmates all possessed and that would, in the future, be crucial.
Silly me. Of course doing business in Italy is largely about who you know not what you know. There’s money enough to go around for those IN the system, but hard work and innovation play little part in who gets it.
When the course ended, I opened a language-school in Bologna. My friends described starting a business in Italy as ‘coraggioso’, which – like so much great advice I’ve received over the years – I dismissed.
Eighteen years later the school is still going (many others aren’t), though I recently quit trying to teach Italians English, the pedagogical equivalent to banging my head against a brick wall.
The problem with that was, basically, that our adult clients, so people who really did need to learn English for their jobs or whatever, had been ruined by a decade or more of incompetent teaching, or by no teaching at all (some Italians never studied English because their middle school already had German/French teachers – take it or leave it – and no budget for an English teacher…)
Then as now, to work in an Italian state school, you needed to pass a competitive exam, because the ‘send your curriculum, get interviewed, get the job’ system, which is typical in the private sector is seen as vulnerable to corruption. Well of course, my friends would tell me, if the ‘preside’ (head teacher) could just hire who she wanted, she’d only hire her friends!
So competitive exams, known as ‘concorsi’, which favour the best students, the ones whose only life skill might be memorising set books… Having passed the exam, but having never had any training, or potentially ever having actually seen a real, live child, the lucky new teacher is allowed into the classroom to do whatever damage she or he feels is appropriate.
Hey kids, you have a new ‘teacher’! There’s no quality control, and employment contracts are for life – like the punishment for murder one. But this time the victims are the kids.
When families complain, the only remedy available to the ‘preside’ is to swop teachers with another class (next year, promise!) Some other kids will suffer, instead.
Did I mention there are no, or virtually no, ‘foreign’ foreign language teachers? There’s plenty of temporary work for native speakers, but it is just that – temporary. Only Italians get the real jobs, and once they have them, they never, ever quit, for they have an EASY, UNCHALLENGED LIFE.
Compare that with the UK, whose schools are full of teachers who are native speakers of the languages they teach. Teaching in the UK is famously hard work with long hours. But the average enthusiastic and TRAINED young graduate (they even pay for their own year-long training) lasts just five years in the profession before heading elsewhere, out of exhaustion or despair.
Is that better? Who’s to say? But it illustrates the Italian (fascist-era) way of doing things, not improved on after WWII and the new, democratic and more left-wing constitution, article one of which states that ‘L’Italia è una Repubblica democratica, fondata sul lavoro.’
What does that mean? Basically, if you have a job, a proper, permanent, state-school job, this country is for you. If not, then not.
It’s not actually true, as there are plenty of families that have been rich for generations without ever doing a day’s work. It would be more correct, in my opinion, to say that ‘Italy is a democratic republic founded on labour unions and inherited wealth’.
You won’t believe me if I tell you that I have heard many times from Italians (not just teachers, but families, and even from children) that schools are FOR THE TEACHERS (and ancillary staff) rather than for the kids.
Children in Italy have rights, in theory, but the right to an education delivered by a trained, competent and monitored professional is not one of them. Whereas employee rights are absolute! Union meetings are held in school time. Strikes are always on Fridays.
Where was I? Ah yes, a comment that came in overnight from a (non-Italian) language teacher:
“I do dislike your constant rudeness about language teachers. I was one myself and I don’t recognise myself or my colleagues in your embittered depictions ! You obviously had a bad experience but please do not tar us all with the same brush.”
Acutally, I didn’t have such a terrible experience learning French as a child. As I replied to the teacher, though, I’ve worked in the profession for over thirty years, including as a manager and teacher-trainer. I also have three kids who’ve been through the school system. Like any parent, I have an opinion.
Incidentally, I never get this sort of feedback from actual Italian teachers, because most of them a.) can’t read English, or couldn’t be bothered to if they could, and b.) know in their hearts what a cushy deal they have, so prefer that the subject isn’t discussed. There’s less chance of a parental revolt that way.
Pushback is rare from language teachers in the English-speaking world, too. This one was worth mentioning just for that reason.
So, a language teacher who apparently doesn’t recognise shortcomings in herself or any of her colleagues?
I rest my case there.
If you’d like to read the thread, so the person’s original comment and my relies, it’s here.
And/or go read about the economy under Il Duce:
Episodio 22. L’economia ai tempi del fascismo
N.b. The previous twenty-one episodes in this series can be found on our History page, along with the ninety Summer Series articles from previous years. Scroll right down to the end to find the latest ones.
A mercoledì, allora.
P.S. Best of EasyItalianNews.com offer!
Donors pay for EasyItalianNews.com, and earlier in the summer I emailed them a link to download (for free) a copy of the latest ‘Best of’ ebook, Best of EasyItalianNews.com 2022-2023.
If you’ve ever helped them out with some cash, you should have got the email with the download link for your free copy. If not, please check your emails carefully (it would have been about a month back), then write to the EIN team at easynews@nonparlo.com. Please don’t write to me.
This week that ebook is 25% off. You’ll find it here: Best of EasyItalianNews.com 2022-2023
But if money is tight, the free sample download has dozens of pages. Why not take a look? (.pdf)
I enjoy reading back through the ‘easy news’ stories each year when I proof the ebook – the big events, discoveries, famous people who’ve left us, and so on. Perhaps you do, too?
So the previous four years’ ‘Best of’ ebooks are half-price this week (there are extensive FREE samples for each of them):
Best of EasyItalianNews.com 2021-2022 | FREE sample (.pdf)
Best of EasyItalianNews.com 2020-2021 | FREE sample (.pdf)
Best of EasyItalianNews.com 2019-2020 | FREE sample (.pdf)
Best of EasyItalianNews.com 2018-2019 | FREE sample (.pdf)
P.P.S. 
And talking of ‘EasyItalianNews.com’, did you find time to read/listen to Saturday’s bulletin over the weekend?
If you didn’t see it, why not subscribe and so get each thrice-weekly bulletin emailed to you?
Just enter your email address on this page and you’ll get each bulletin (Italian text + online audio) as soon as it’s published, each Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.
Subscribe now and you’ll be all set for tomorrow’s bulletin of ‘easy’ Italian news (+ online audio), without having to spend a cent.
+++
OnlineItalianClub.com | EasyItalianNews.com | Shop (ebooks) | Shop (online lessons)