From "repubblica.it" of November 19, 2006
SCHOOL & YOUTH
Bullying, the government takes action. "Plan for schools and families""
Three ministers are working together. Mastella proposes a "round table with the opposition." Bindi: "All institutions must work together for childhood." Fioroni: "Train teachers.""
Arcigay's Schoolmates Project
ROME – The case of the horrific video in Turin showing a disabled boy being bullied. And then the complaint, filed by Repubblica.it, by many acts of violence in classrooms filmed and downloaded on major internet sites: almost a true "trend." And yet the online comments were sometimes more horrifying than the images themselves, until an online outcry against the authors began, leading to the removal of some videos. And, alongside this, a wave of violence and harassment committed by minors against their peers.
'It's an emergency that's exploding among young people, and now the government is starting to make its voice heard to fight it. The Minister of Justice, Clemente Mastella, proposes a government consultation table open to opposition input to develop a prevention plan. "The first step," says the minister, "is to eliminate everything that triggers violence, such as video games," and in this regard he emphasizes his proposal to establish a Guarantor to preemptively verify the content of video games before they are released on the market.
These interventions should be supported by a longer-term strategy that essentially concerns the world of schools. Beppe Fioroni, Minister of Education, sums it up in the word 'order to raise the threshold of student vigilance', and at the same time proposes a targeted training for teachers to implement "a strategy for the recovery of offenders and the defense of victims"". The minister asks: "But how is it possible that an institution and a class cannot see or hear?", but immediately adds that in any case "those responsible have been punished with a promptness and severity that is unparalleled in the history of the Republic.".
The proposal is aimed more specifically at children and families. Rosy Bindi. The Minister for Families feels "the need for a new Action Plan for Children, involving Regions, Municipalities, and all those (voluntary associations, research centers, and cultural institutions) who work alongside children and their families." "We cannot ignore," adds Rosy Bindi, "the loneliness and fragility of too many families. The recent violence is an expression of profound unease and a serious rift between the worlds of adults and children.".
THE CASE OF TURIN
From "Corriere della Sera" of November 15, 2006
Disabled man beaten, video filmed in Turin
'The incident occurred at a vocational school in June. It was published online in August. The principal and teachers identified the school and the attackers. Four minors, including a girl, are under investigation.
TURIN — I am four students from Turin between the ages of sixteen and seventeen «"The producers, directors, and distributors" of the horrific video featured on Google among the funniest. They are the ones who insulted, mocked, pushed, and humiliated their disabled classmate. They are the ones who did all this amid the disconcerting indifference of an entire second-year class at a technical school for advertising graphics on the outskirts of Turin, a stone's throw from Grugliasco.
A difficult school, say the principal and the teachers who work there, a school "without solidarity", in which Only a year ago, a photograph of a boy with the words "He's gay" was hung on the door of a first-class classroom, and a string of insults followed.. Then that photo was torn up, no one knows by whom, no one knows exactly when.
Today, the video scandal, with the world's eyes on it, is under investigation by three public prosecutors' offices: Milan, Rome, and Turin. The four students, three boys and one girl, the one who actually uploaded the video to Google,
They were discovered by the postal police, but in reality they had already been unmasked by the principal and some teachers who, in the video broadcast on the news, had recognized the classroom walls and the faces of their students. Yesterday morning, the four were tracked down at school, taken home, and searched. They cried.
The video in which their classmate is humiliated, even used as a target, was filmed in June of last year, when the boys were in their second year of high school. The images were uploaded to Google in August, where they remained until last Monday, when the Milan-based Vividown association discovered the video (apparently a composite of four different clips) and filed a defamation complaint.
The four students, who will soon be questioned by the head of the Turin juvenile prosecutor's office, Ennio Tomaselli, are being investigated for conspiracy to commit domestic violence. "Our primary duty," the magistrate commented, "is to protect the injured party, so they don't suffer further shock and traumatic repercussions. The school took immediate action, both by reporting the matter to the principal and by several students. The Piedmont regional school office also contacted me." Of course, the disabled boy will also be questioned later.
While Turin will shed full light on the incident of bullying and violence at the school, it will be up to the Milan prosecutor's office to determine the extent of Google Italy's responsibility. Is it possible that no one monitors the videos reposted online? Is it enough to defend the search engine by arguing that its servers are located abroad, in the United States, and therefore not subject to Italian law? Prosecutor Francesco Cajani, of the Lombardy capital's computer crimes unit, has already questioned an Italian manager of the search engine as a person with knowledge of the facts and is studying the legal case, which could represent a veritable cyber earthquake.
The Arcigay Perugia Project
“EDUCATE ABOUT DIFFERENCES” AGAINST BULLYING IN SCHOOLS
ARCIGAY PERUGIA INITIATES A TEACHER REFRESHER COURSE
Bullying
At the Turin school where a disabled student was beaten by his classmates and the video was posted online, a year ago, other incidents of bullying against a gay boy occurred. At that time, a photograph of a boy with the caption "He's gay" was hung on a classroom door, followed by a barrage of insults.
In Italian schools, as in those of many other countries, the phenomenon of school bullying – otherwise known as “bullying” – perpetrated by children against their peers is still very frequent. The targets of such actions are often people – such as disabled people and homosexuals – who belong to socially stigmatized groups or who have individual characteristics considered undesirable.
In particular, homosexual adolescents quickly understand that the silence and prejudices surrounding certain topics convey highly derogatory values. The stigma and resulting sense of vulnerability can often lead to a progressive decline in academic motivation, self-esteem, and increased concern for their safety.
Arcigay Arcilesbica Omphalos has activated, for the province of Perugia, the refresher course "Educating about differences" which will be held in the first months of 2007, aimed at all middle and high school teachers.. "Educating for Differences" aims to sharpen teachers' skills and sensibilities in order to make schools a place where families can participate and students can learn, without discrimination or exclusion, in a collaborative, inclusive, and safe school environment for all. The course, authorized by the Ministry of Education with recognition decree 06.07 of July 14, 2006, will be taught by psychologists and other experts in the field.
“Being able to recognize conditions of hardship in schools — he states Gian Pietro Bucciarelli, the president of Arcigay Arcilesbica Perugia, and a teacher at a high school in the Perugia area, "also means knowing how to prevent humiliating acts of hazing and bullying. As teachers," Bucciarelli continues, "we have a moral duty to promote the inner well-being of young people, of all young people, as a source of harmonious development and balance and the foundation of a more cohesive and respectful future society."”
Info
[email protected]
Arcigay's Schoolmates Project
Schoolmates: the training
Scholmates is a transnational project promoted by Arcigay. Project partners include the COLEGA association from Madrid, the KPH association from Warsaw, and the Anti-Discrimination Office of the City of Vienna. The project is co-financed by the European Commission under the Daphne II Programme.
The beneficiaries of the project are adolescents who are victims of bullying at school. Although the project's primary focus is homophobic bullying, we strongly believe that the tools and measures implemented during the project will prove effective and reproducible in preventing and combating bullying in general, whether motivated by racism, anti-Semitism, etc.
Projects dealing with bullying are unlikely to involve victims and perpetrators in the proposed activities. Therefore, Schoolmates will focus on intermediaries. The activities will be directed on one side to the peer group, on the other to adult staff, both teaching and non-teaching. Students, teachers, staff, and anyone within the school can play an important role in making the school environment safer and more welcoming.
The Schoolmates workshops for teachers and students will be held during the 2006/2007 school year in about ten schools in the provinces of Bologna, Modena, Reggio Emilia, Ferrara, and Rimini.
In Italy, as in the other partner countries of the project, there are strong preconceptions and prejudices regarding homosexuality which manifest themselves in the marginalization, bullying and verbal and psychological aggression towards people who are or appear to be homosexual. This situation is most evident in schools, where bullying, often motivated by xenophobia and homophobia, is highly pervasive. It is even more evident and even more serious because the victims are adolescents, that is, people in the full development of their sexual identity.
In schools, among adolescents, derogatory verbal comments towards lesbians and gays, insults sometimes accompanied by threats or actual acts of physical violence, are very frequent: an Italian survey from 1999 highlighted that 3 out of 4 homosexuals, both female and male, have suffered verbal insults or threats at school, due to their sexual orientation..
Furthermore, the silence and prejudice surrounding this issue, both among school staff, including teachers, and among peers, foster highly derogatory attitudes toward homosexuals. This attitude increases the sense of vulnerability and isolation that homosexual adolescents experience in the face of abuse. A vicious cycle is thus triggered: the adolescent victim of bullying, aware of living in a potentially hostile environment, fails to bring the attacks to the attention of school staff, fails to seek help, and further isolates himself. Thus, he becomes a more likely target of bullying.
Info
www.arcigay.it/schoolmates
Schoolmates in Reggio Emilia
From Il Resto del Carlino, October 17, 2006
""Gays? They were less clever with Hitler.""
Controversy over assembly at Moro High School
«"Gays? They were less cunning with Hitler." "Yes, that phrase did exist, they told me. I don't think, however, that one case out of over eight hundred kids present invalidates a project as delicate as it is important. Of course, leaving a student assembly entirely to the students, as always happens, can be risky. In this case, it lent itself to this inconvenience, but if the kids are somehow guided by the presence of an adult, they don't express themselves freely.".
Carlo Bonacini, principal of the Moro scientific high school, has a displeased tone of voice on the phone. At the Moro, on Monday, during the school assembly, the Schoolmates project, a project that also through an afternoon course helps kids understand what homosexuality is, fight prejudice and counteract the ever-increasing phenomena of homophobia and bullying.
«The assembly – he reconstructs Fabio Astrobello of the Arcigay of Reggio, invited to speak – , also thanks to the commendable commitment of the student representatives, it was a numerical success, even if there were about twenty questions out of a total of a thousand or more participants».
The meeting also included the circulation of two sheets with the title: «"The first thing that comes to mind when I say gay/lesbian"» and a box where you can insert all your questions and curiosities.
All this is done to help young people freely express their thoughts and to make them understand how Italian society still is full of prejudices and stereotypes towards homosexuality.
«"Precisely in these two sheets, which were read at the end of the meeting," Astrobello explains, "I found something that I found very serious and particularly unpleasant; among the many swear words, the various "different," "abnormal," and "sensitive," I found a horrifying phrase: “When Hitler was around you were less clever…you fucking faggot”. While the first few are "physiological," given the anonymity, the last sentence made me think a lot about how much work still needs to be done in our schools, and in society in general.
Astrobello wonders if "our province is still the welcoming and open place we thought it was, if our young people aren't also suffering from those negative influences that are in the air, and I think of the fear of the different, which pushes us to be suspicious and hide behind false ideas of normality and intolerance towards diversity. Someone should explain to me what normality is and who determines it. How many kids will still have to suffer or take extreme actions like suicide before the problem is addressed in a secular and thorough way?" At Moro, the afternoon course against bullying and homophobia will soon begin. Enrollment is limited and almost all of the participants are girls.