Authors: Sara Visciola, Sara Costantini
Highschool in Italy is very different from highschool in the United States. For one, here in Italy there are different kinds of secondary schools: for example, “Scientifico” for scientific subjects, “Classico” to study the humanities and “Artistico” to study art… These are “Licei”, but there are also “Istituti Tecnici”, like ours (Tourism), which are specifically for the tourism-economy field. They all last 5 years and at the end there is a national exam.
Contrary to American highschools, in which every professor has his or her own classroom, in Italy the students have their own classroom and the professors have to move around the school. In Italy there aren’t any afternoon classes and we don’t have a cafeteria, but sometimes we have school projects.
We don’t have any sports activities, like swimming or baketball in the school but we use a gym for physical education lessons. We don’t use lockers and we usually bring our books to school every day. We don’t have a study room either so we do our homework at home. We have 30 hours, more or less, of school every week in every highschool.
I think our school is more challenging.
Italian schools are more challenging because we can choose a specific type of subjects to study and so we have really good and specific information and skills about them. In american schools they study some different subjects so they don’t have specific skills in a subject. They can choose what they like to study or not, but they don’t have specific schools for it.
I think that the school system in the USA is more efficient than the system in Italy. In fact, the students can choose the subject that they want to study. In the USA each student has a personal locker that is very comfortable. I wish that the american school system was working in Italy too. An other important element is that the classrooms are very equipped with school tools and the professors have their own class according to their subject, so the students change the classroom depending on school schedule.
This is a very interesting subject for me, being American but working in Italian schools. There are many differences, and the article states well some of the general ones. I do think the Italian school curricula can be more challenging, but it really depends on the school that you attend. In American schools you have the choice of frequenting AP, Advanced Placement, courses. And those can be quite challenging. In fact, for many of them you get university credit (cfu here in Italy). I do think sports are overly emphasized, although having participated in them (volleyball, softball and track) I can say that I really enjoyed them and they helped me understand the importance of working my body as well as my mind. And my parents didn’t have to pay for them, unlike here in Italy.
There is a lot of inequality in the state schools in the US. Unfortunately the quality of the schools depends on the location and money invested in them, which means how much tax Americans agree to pay to finance them. And because each state and community decides for itself how much to invest, the result is really quite varied.