I want to tell you something about…my brother’s haircut!
I have a little brother… ( I mean: he is very big, but younger as me!). He was at the “Liceo Scientifico” in Italy (something like a science high school?) until yesterday, but he was very unhappy and unappreciated there. The teachers were there too traditional and bigoted for a new-generation’s boy: they think, students are stupid, we are genius and we must just test, how they’ve learned. That’s not right, then students need teacher’s help to develop their abilities, not to be judged. However, he has tried to stay there for a couple of years, but he has understood that students cannot change the personality of some teachers and finally he decided to move to another school, a private “Liceo linguistico”- high school for languages.
He is very clever: as he was just 18 months I’ve practiced with him the Doman Method. I found very interesting to make some didactic experiments with my two brothers! He could read many words and then books and he could speak English (he is Italian). I was very proud, because he was (He is!) a very smart child, but now I think it was too early, not for him, but for the Italian school’s narrow-mindedness (white-collar mentality!).
He has many interests and likes to know about many different new things: but that is not what the teachers want to have in the public school. The teachers want just to hear or to read what they like and cannot motivate students to give the best. As teacher I think, primary schools are in Italy not bad, but the high schools need to be reformed: teachers have the right to judge only their own work, not the students.
In his first day in the private school, there was an American teacher: he spoke with my brother and… he said: your haircut! You seems like… And my brother: I know, I’ve an original haircut!