Meloni’s classroom crackdown: Learn Italian or face the new rules

Italy is preparing a sweeping new school integration package that would cap foreign pupils in classrooms, require some migrant parents to learn Italian and ban face-covering veils including the burqa and niqab.

Giorgia Meloni says anyone who comes to Italy and wants to build a future there “must learn our language, understand our culture and respect our rules.”

The Italian prime minister announced the plans at a youth event organised by her Brothers of Italy party, arguing that schools cannot allow Italian children to become a minority in their own classrooms.

Under the proposed legislation, the government would establish a legal maximum for foreign students in individual classes. Reports have put the proposed ceiling at around 30%, although Meloni did not publicly specify the exact figure in her announcement.

Language becomes part of the deal

The package would also require parents of foreign pupils facing serious difficulties integrating into the Italian education system to learn Italian.

Meloni drew a distinction between a small number of pupils who arrive without Italian and can quickly pick up the language with help from teachers and classmates, and classrooms where large numbers struggle to communicate.

Her argument is that the latter situation stops being integration and becomes a failure of the education system.

And then comes the veil ban

The government also plans to prohibit face coverings such as the burqa and niqab in schools.

Meloni has framed the measure around the principle that pupils should attend school with their faces uncovered and linked it to equality between men and women. The proposal does not amount to a ban on all Islamic head coverings; the measures specifically target garments that cover the face.

A much bigger fight over Italian schools

The proposals are already attracting criticism. Italy's school system already has a 30% guideline for non-Italian pupils, introduced in 2010, but it has often been difficult to enforce because of local circumstances and demographic differences.

Opponents and education figures have questioned how a new compulsory cap would actually work, particularly in areas where migrant families are heavily concentrated. Constitutional-law experts have also raised questions about the effect of moving children away from their local schools in order to meet a quota.

So this is not simply a story about what children are allowed to wear.

Meloni is attempting to redraw the rules of integration inside Italian classrooms — limiting numbers, demanding language acquisition and insisting that cultural and religious practices cannot override the rules of the school.

SOURCE

Students need to learn Italian, obviously.

Parents learning Italian ?, only if receiving benefits if unable to work, because they don't speak Italian.

Head gear ban, only if all: scarfs, hats, kippah / yarmulke are banned also. As targeting Muslims is just wrong.