Storm among Italian high school students: a student organisation has taken it upon itself to track down teachers who promote left-wing ideology in the classroom. The initiative is not to everyone’s liking, and the Italian Left is crying fascism.
According to the newspaper La Repubblica, leaflets were distributed in several Italian high schools by the organisation Azione Studentesca, linked to Gioventù Nazionale, the youth movement of Giorgia Meloni’s party, Fratelli d’Italia. The document contains a QR code that gives access to a questionnaire allowing students to express their views on the education system. One question in particular caught attention: “Do you have one or more left-wing teachers who spread propaganda during lessons?” It is possible to answer yes or no, and then give specific examples of this educational activism when it occurs.
Is this cause for scandal? For the Italian Left, it is nothing less than a reminder of the ‘filing’ system set up against anti-fascists during the Mussolini era. The controversy eventually escalated and reached the government. The president of the Democratic Party (PD), Francesco Boccia, told Corriere della Sera that he had asked Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to distance herself from this initiative, which he considered questionable. A teachers’ union launched the ‘Schedateci tutti’ (Register us all) campaign on social media, asking teachers to report themselves.
The initiative came from young people and the grassroots, which gave the right wing a ready-made response: we should be enthusiastic about the commitment of young people. In other times, in May 1968, we would have welcomed the fact that young people were taking up the political struggle and making their disapproval known.
Protest was then held up as a virtue, but the aim, of course, was to denounce the right wing and authority. Meloni refrained from commenting directly, leaving it to MP Giovanni Donzelli to respond. He did not let himself be deterred and replied sharply to the press: “If there are teachers who, instead of teaching properly, engage in propaganda, students have the right to protest,” he said. He accused the PD of wanting to “muzzle the voices of young people” and turned the accusation around, arguing that it was the Left that was exercising “violent censorship against young people in schools.” The president of Azione Studentesca, for his part, defended himself against any suggestion of profiling, as no names are requested in the questionnaire.
The Left is alarmed by methods that are reminiscent of ‘the darkest hours’ and the profiling of the fascist era. There is a certain hypocrisy on the part of those who, in so many other contexts, marvel at the ‘freedom of speech’ and ‘name and shame’ procedures that expose private individuals or companies accused of going against political correctness. The #MeToo movement, with its Italian variant, #quellavoltache, also consisted of a major public denunciation campaign, without anyone on the Left finding fault with it—despite the inevitable false accusations that may have crept into this great exposé.
The initiative has one merit: it highlights the hold that left-wing ideology has on the teaching profession—a hold that we tend to overlook because it seems so natural and ingrained.
A similar initiative to that of Azione Studentesca exists in France, with a platform set up by the group “Parents vigilants” (Vigilant Parents), which is close to Éric Zemmour’s Reconquête party. This time, taking the side of parents with the aim of protecting children from woke ideology and inappropriate content conveyed through the promotion of gender theory, the site also offers to collect testimonies on proven cases where teachers or school staff have clearly overstepped the mark by engaging in activism in the classroom. Teachers’ unions in France reacted sharply to the launch of this initiative and, as in Italy, denounced it as ‘ideological profiling’ in favour of the ‘Great School Survey,’ which was also launched with leaflets and QR codes at the start of the 2024 school year.
Parents Vigilants were criticised for their desire to “publicly condemn teachers whose teaching practices did not meet with the approval of far-right thinkers.” Teachers urged parents not to respond to the survey. Despite this, hundreds of testimonies of clear abuse were collected and eventually appeared in the press.
