Meloni's plans for schools: minority confusion in Italy

Giorgia Meloni is now campaigning against discrimination - namely against the alleged discrimination against Italian kids in the country's schools. “It is unacceptable for Italian children to see themselves pushed into a corner in an Italian class because they have become a minority,” she said on Sunday in Rome, in her speech at the festival of the youth organization of her party Fratelli d’Italia (FdI).

The post-fascist head of government wants to immediately follow her words with actions. The Council of Ministers is expected to pass a legislative decree on Thursday that will introduce a cap on the proportion of foreign students in classes. Burkas and niqabs should also be banned in schools. In addition, the parents of foreign children who have difficulty in school because of language problems should be forced to take Italian courses.

Meloni can at least claim immediate success with this “integration” push. She had the lead of all the TV news programs, and on Monday she had the headlines of all the daily newspapers for herself. For example, you could also read an interview with a headmistress from Rome, at whose school a high proportion of the kids are foreign and come from Islamic countries. The director noted that she had “never” had students wearing a burqa or niqab.

More real is the problem of class composition. Of around 8 million students in the country, 930,000 kids only have a foreign passport. However, two thirds of them were born and grew up in Italy, and many of them have been in the Italian school system from kindergarten onwards. If Giorgia Meloni had wanted to seriously address their situation, she could have visited, for example, the Scuola Pisacane in the Roman district of Torpignatara, which is heavily influenced by migrants.

Children from around 20 nations attend kindergarten and primary school there. Nobody talks about capping the proportion of foreigners, on the contrary: the school is now also highly sought after by Italian parents. Kids with difficulties in Italian are looked after intensively; everyday school life is organized as an international coexistence across all borders, with interaction between the teaching staff and the parents' association.

However, the right-wing head of government is not at all interested in reinforcing such realities. With a view to the upcoming elections in 2027, she has a completely different problem: the tough competition that has arisen for her coalition on the right-wing fringe with the founding of the new party Futuro Nazionale (FN - National Future) by ex-paratrooper general Roberto Vannacci.

The Meloni right is “softened,” claims the general, who is allied with the AfD in Europe and who preaches the recipe of remigration day in and day out when dealing with migrants. He has now led his party, which was only founded in February, to 8 percent, at the expense of the right-wing government parties in particular. Matteo Salvini's xenophobic Lega has collapsed to 5 percent, but Meloni's FdI, which was at 30 percent in better times, is currently only at 25-26 percent.

The reactions don't stop there. At the Lega's major rally in Pontida, northern Italy, held every September, the motto last Sunday was: "Non passa lo straniero", "The foreigner cannot get through", a line from a soldier's song from the First World War.

Meloni cannot be left out with her fight for the Italian students who are allegedly pushed into a corner. However, she didn't mention a single word in her speech about an incident that shocked Italy last week. A quintessentially Italian 13-year-old who hung out in suprematist web forums that glorified violence attacked his teacher with a knife in the classroom. She was rescued by a Congolese classmate of the perpetrator.