Three out of four students would like to know more about homophobia, biphobia and transphobia. While the Zan law drowns in the Senate commission among hundreds of hearings requested by the center-right, the Italian children are demanding more information and demanding it at school. And their professors too. On the day of the last bell it is interesting to hear the cry that rises from the 3,199 strictly anonymous responses of students and teachers to the questionnaire distributed by We School, the digital platform used by two million students and 230 thousand professors during the lockdown. IS first photograph taken inside the classrooms of our secondary schools on these topics.
The results
The results of the survey appear clear: 75% of the interviewees are very or quite convinced that the issues of sexual differences should be the subject of lessons or debate at school. And in fact, there is a lack of information: if the majority of young people (76.8%) know the meaning of the acronym LGBTQ +, 245 young people have no idea and 354 are not sure. 71% are very clear what gender difference, sex and sexual orientation mean, but 427 boys know nothing about homobitransphobia and 354 are not at all sure.
Comments
“Teachers and students are aligned, almost allied. As if to mark once more the slow pace of the political debate ”, observes Marco De Rossi, founder of WeSchool. Not always quite aligned. «I believe that homobitransphobia is one of the topics that should be treated the most in schools, but it is the least treated of all. The other day I talked about it with a professor and he replied I’d look for another topic instead of these incorrect subjects “, someone tells. “I would like it to become a subject, or in any case there were courses because many of my classmates are homophobic”, denounces another. “I vote for the normalization of asking for a person’s pronouns at the first meeting,” yet another. There are also fears, opposition, some vulgar rejection, but these are rarer rumors. “I don’t see the need for it. Including and welcoming is all that can be done; talking about it for me is already a means of discriminating »is the anonymous comment included in one of the answers.
Physical and verbal assaults
From the WeSchool survey it seems that the episodes of homophobia or in any case of personal attacks for issues related to LGBTQ + identity are reduced, confined to a minority. But the survey numbers also tell stories of great difficulty. 18.6% of the interviewees experienced moments of exclusion or even attack within the school walls. “It is difficult for teachers to talk about it because these are delicate topics and not always codified by textbooks, but in reality the right context is already there, with the new compulsory teaching of Civic Education – concludes De Rossi -. Starting from September, we will train the professors concerned and provide the contents to address these topics, always respecting the autonomy of the educational mission of the teacher, who will decide how and whether to bring the topic into the classroom “.
The questionnaire distributed at school and via social media
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