Caffarra www.bolognarifascuola.it Manifesto for Education An appeal for the problem of education to be brought back to the center of the city’s concern. An initiative presented in Bologna last May 4th by Francesco Melfi On May 4th, the social cooperative Il Pellicano, the Oppizzoni Foundation and the Bologna Company of Works presented the project “Bologna is back at teaching.” Elena Ugolini, the Head of the Malpighi High School, explains, “Our objective is to remind the city of its responsibility as regards the education of the younger generations as a necessary condition for guaranteeing the welfare and the quality of life of the whole community, and as a crucial question for all persons of all ages.” Fabio Catani, President of the Bologna Company of Works, recalled that “the common good for a city like Bologna is the growth of the people who live there. The development of the human capital is the only possible factor for bettering a society.” How can this be made possible? For a start, the promoters indicate two instruments. The first is a manifesto that lists synthetically the contents of a true education, on which a public debate has already begun, a debate that intends to suggest immediately a new way of speaking of school, children, education, teachers and the future. Ezio Raimondi left the audience speechless at the Press Conference when he said, “As an elderly teacher I cannot but support the meaning of a manifesto of this kind; in order to move in the future we must have a relationship with the past, because it is the past that educates us. The school should always provide a true, comprehensive picture of the world.” As confirmation that the provocation had struck home, many personalities of the world of business and culture signed the manifesto immediately. Among these were the President of the Financial Foundation CARISBO, Fabio Alberto Roversi Monaco; the Regional President of small businesses, Silvia Noè; the President of the Regional Committee of Young Industrialists of the Confederation of Italian Industry, Federica Guidi; Ezio Raimondi, an Italian scholar of international fame; the Director General of the Regional Schools Board, Lucrezia Stellacci; and the film director Pupi Avati. The second event connected with “Bologna is back at teaching” was the launching of a fundraising campaign for an initial project aimed at young children, the building of a third section in the Pellicano Primary School, a new school building that will house the Malpighi Middle School, a diagnostic center to deal with learning difficulties and a series of teaching laboratories open to all the children in Bologna. Fabio Roversi Monaco, President of the CARISBO Foundation, stressed that “if education is really the crucial factor for the life of each one of us, it’s time to stop thinking that there must be only state schools, because neither the schools, nor the hospitals, nor the universities were born that way. The school should be neither state nor private, but, since it is an expression of a society, it must be able to organize itself in various ways so as to improve education. It’s right to ‘go back to school’, because the schools are something that have always to be rebuilt.” Lucrezia Stellacci, the Director General of the Regional Schools Board, recalled her Easter greetings to the Minister for Education, Moratti, in which she quoted a phrase of Fr Giussani: “When a society comes to certain crucial moments, the true problem is the need to educate both youngsters and adults, in other words, everyone, because it is normal people who need to put into action their own capacity for justice and goodness.”For more information: info@bolognarifascuola.it www.bolognarifascuola.it