The situation of Italian teachers is becoming increasingly surreal. First they were forced – after having obtained their degree and therefore all the credits required to teach – to acquire another 24 of socio-psycho-pedagogical disciplines; which meant paying, and not even a little, to give completely useless, purely theoretical and notional exams, which in no way helped the teacher to improve his performance.

Then, finally, the competition was announced; Too bad it’s not qualifying, so there’s a very serious possibility of passing it but staying out anyway, because places are limited. In short, you risk studying for months on the verge of exhaustion, for nothing. Not only that: in any case, even if you pass it and get back into the available places, it’s not enough. You must still attend the qualifying courses, worth 30 or 60 credits depending on whether you have three years of service or not.

In turn, however, these paths do not guarantee entry into the role, but essentially allow them to participate in future competitions, to then do the probationary year, be evaluated, and then enter the role. These beautiful and enormously useful routes, obviously, are not free: you have to pay 100 euros to register for the pre-selection (because they have a limited number of places, so even in this case there is no guarantee of access, and moreover it is not certain that someone can do it in your region or city), and then around 1,800-2,000 for the course itself.

A path for those who have the money to follow it

Not an exactly low figure, which cannot be taken for granted as being within the reach of all temporary teachers. And here comes the further joke: each teacher obviously hopes to be called to teach again this year, given that no one lives on air. But if you have to follow the qualifying path at the same time, things can get very complicated: the courses must be taken in person, and are not provided in all provinces. There is therefore the possibility that in the morning you work in a school in city because it is not humanly possible to do both excellently.

In all of this, many teachers are still waiting to take the oral exam for the competition announced in the spring: some will take it in the autumn, others don’t even know the date yet. For the oral exam, obviously, you have to study, which, again, is hardly compatible with an 18-hour teaching position (and anyone who thinks it’s just a few hours of work should try to get the experience or keep quiet). This means that many teachers have given up answering the invitations, to dedicate themselves entirely to studying: in fact, the questions in the oral exam are often absurd, very difficult, and require knowledge that is unlikely even for a teacher who has years of experience behind him. Expecting a human being to know by heart every single relevant date in human history, from prehistory to the present, is crazy; as is thinking that he can remember entire verses of poems, titles of minor works that will never be explained at school, or the rivers and lakes present in every single state in the world. This translates into the usual story: those who can afford it enter school, the others stay at home.

Inequalities between teachers

Among other things, even if you want to respond to the invitations, there isn’t much to draw on: most of the places are reserved for those who pass the competition, and therefore they are temporary chairs. This involves moving, rental contracts and endless breaking of balls, which obviously makes little sense to face if after two months you will be sent home, or you don’t know where, especially if in the meantime you have to study all the human knowledge.

To this we add that the qualifying courses started early for some categories, i.e. for those who are already qualified for another competition class or those who specialize in support; while other teachers have not yet been able to start, or started a few weeks ago. In essence, therefore, all those who were able to complete the course entered the first tier, and the others, despite years of service and perhaps having already passed the exam or at least the written exam, are passed over and do not work.

And it certainly doesn’t end here: just think that 15% of the places in the competition are reserved for those who have carried out civil service! It is not clear how this experience should make a better teacher; in fact, it favors people who don’t necessarily deserve it, but who were simply lucky enough to be exploited for a few hundred euros when they were in their twenties.

A selection that does not reward merit

All this enormous (dis)organisational machine, then, is not in the slightest capable of guaranteeing us a serious selection of teaching staff: the outcome of the oral exam in fact depends largely on the classic blow-up…, because someone can have a a shamefully banal question like “French cuisine”, and to someone else an absurd question like “how many meters is the highest mountain in Turkmenistan”. This is not only humiliating for teachers, but it is also harmful to public affairs, since in the end we don’t know who we are sending to class.

The most dramatic thing is to see how the teaching class tends to put up with all this absurdity without protesting too much, and is willing to do more or less anything to harbor the hope of one day being able to have a permanent job. On the backs of these workers the State builds a shameful business, which benefits online universities (private), specialized publishing houses (private, which often willingly sell books written with their feet and full of errors) to teachers, and various bodies that provide courses and issue certifications for some points in the ranking. How a teacher can be expected to remain motivated, energetic and positive is a mystery.