Category Archives: Italy

Is Football Worth It? The Cost of Stadium Violence in Europe

February 7, 2003 Deirdre Straughan Leave a comment

^ carabinieri arriving for a soccer match at Milan’s San Siro stadium

I used to believe that spectator sports were a way of channeling the mob’s inherent violence into vicarious forms of conflict. “Supporting” a team means joining a sort of artificial tribe, comprised of that team’s fans. You signal your membership in the tribe by wearing the team colors, chanting the team chant, and despising rival tribes. The teams on the field play out a ritualized battle in which one side wins and the other loses, with more or less actual violence and possibility of injury, depending on the sport.

Unfortunately, nowadays the tribes no longer leave the battle to the teams on the field. While in England for my MBA residential school, I had time one evening to do my usual hotel thing: flipping channels on the TV. One program showed a town’s preparations for a football (soccer) match. A trainload of fans were met at the station by mounted police in riot gear – even the horses had plastic shields over their eyes. The crowd was escorted off the train, with mounted police leading, and more walking alongside. The road from the station to the arena was lined on both sides with police, standing shoulder to shoulder in flourescent yellow jackets; the visiting fans had to walk straight along the road to the arena.

Inside the arena, a police chief remarked to the TV crew that there were 100 seats unsold for the match, so they would be able to create a buffer zone between the opposing fans. I didn’t stay with the program to see what happened, but later on saw footage of rowdy fans (faces electronically blotched out) being dragged away by police.

Some games in Milan involve similar preparations: busloads of police arrive well before the match begins, and are presumably dispersed throughout the stadium to maintain order. For games when certain nationalities of foreign fans are expected, the mayor orders all bars nearby not to serve beer after a certain time.

If I were a housebreaker, crime boss, etc., I’d be delighted to know that I could get on with my trade in peace during football games, when the bulk of a city’s police force are busy keeping the fans from killing each other.

However, I am only a taxpayer, wondering how much all this is costing me. Is football worth the cost to society, even for those who care about the sport? A few years ago, in an effort to curb stadium violence, the then-minister of sport in Italy threatened to have the games played in empty stadiums, viewable only on TV. How is it “sport” when we must go to such lengths to prevent the audience getting hurt?

The whole concept of “supporting a team” seems very artificial to me. I can understand rooting for one’s national team during the Olympics or the World Cup – at least you have a passport in common with them, and perhaps a language, culture, and history (although the increasing phenomenon of athletes migrating, to countries where they can be better supported for an Olympic bid, or get a spot on a less-exalted team, calls that into question). In a sense, you are cheering your country’s ability to produce good players – there are worse national traits to celebrate.

But it’s rare for a “local” professional football team to have a single player from the city that they supposedly represent – many of the players won’t even be from the same country. So, when we cheer for AC Milan, what are we applauding? Berlusconi’s ability to buy good players? Given the mysteries shrouding the origin of his personal fortune, this is not something that makes me cheerful. Still less do I feel that football is worth getting violent about, unless maybe I could beat up Berlusconi.

Feb 9, 2003

I wrote the above a few days ago, inspired by the TV show I saw in the UK. Today Milan’s two home teams, AC Milan and Inter, are playing each other in Milan’s famous San Siro stadium. We saw six large buses and assorted other vehicles full of police heading that way. Then, as we entered the metro station at Piazzale Lotto (closest stop to the stadium), we were suddenly confronted with several dozen riot-geared police. We had had the ill luck and bad timing to arrive just as a subway train pulled in, carrying fans of both teams. To avoid trouble, they had been put into separate cars, with police escort. The police cordoned off the station so that one group was forced to wait while the other group exited, each side singing rude songs and shouting slogans at the others. The rowdies were, predictably, young men, but the groups included women, and some confused and frightened looking children. The rest of us stood and waited until both packs of idiots had left the station.

Italian education

Scuola Materna: Public Preschool in Italy

January 30, 2003 Deirdre Straughan Leave a comment

Scuola materna (kindergarten) is a wonderful thing. In Italy, every parent has the right – though not the obligation – to put their child in preschool, free of charge, for three years, until they begin first grade in their sixth year.

Traditionally, this seems to have been regarded as a way to socialize kids to life outside the family, but the schoolday was kept short, on the assumption that mom was home anyway.

Nowdays, in many families both parents work, so most scuole materne offer full-time hours up to 4 pm, and after-school programs for parents who can’t pick up their kids that early. Essentially, this is very high quality, state-sponsored daycare.

Ross’s scuola materna was part of a loose cooperative of pre-, elementary, and middle schools, all set in a large park, with each grade level occupying its own small building.

The park had originally been a track for trotting races, hence its name, Parco Trotter. In the early 1900s, it was well outside Milan, and sickly children were sent there to breathe clean air and take the sun. There had even been a swimming pool and a tall, airy gymnasium, though these and the dormitories are now ruined past repair. It had been a practical school, where the children tended gardens and raised farm animals as well as (presumably) studying the usual subjects.

Parco Trotter is now engulfed by the city, but remains an island of green among the gray cement; not surprisingly, it has a lower incidence of absences due to illness than any other school in Milan. The preschool kids spent a lot of time outside simply running around, as few kids in Milan are able to.

They weren’t expected to learn to read or write, but they did many pre-reading and pre-math activities, construction and art projects, and more – Montessori methods were very much in evidence!

They could be as messy as they liked outside with sand, flour, dirt, and rocks. The bathroom was designed for water play as well as other uses. They decorated their spaces with trees made of cloth, and their own paintings and other creations.

For one project, parents were asked to show the kids around their workplaces, which included a car repair shop and a bakery. Afterwards, the teachers interviewed the kids about what it meant to work, and wrote down the answers, such as: “Work means sweating a lot.” “No one likes to work, but if you don’t work, you starve.”

As preparation for the passage to elementary school, the kids visited elementary classes to see what the older kids were doing, and afterwards were interviewed about what it means to “get big.”

School Food

At all educational levels, school hours used to be organized so that kids went home at lunchtime. Offices, shops, and factories would also close, so the family would gather around the dining table for a midday meal. Apparently, many Italian parents of my generation grew up this way, and still aren’t entirely comfortable with leaving their children at school for lunch.

But, again, modern life intrudes: many mothers as well as fathers now work full-time, often so far across town as to make the family lunch together impracticable. The city government stepped into the breach with a school lunch program, usually prepared somewhere else and then trucked to the various schools. Parco Trotter is fortunate to have a kitchen on the premises, so the food doesn’t have to travel far. The quality was quite good, though they sometimes served vegetables that no self-respecting child was likely to eat, such as boiled fennel bulbs.

It seemed that many parents were more concerned about this aspect of their child’s education than any other. The teachers would furnish daily reports on how well the child had eaten, and there was a parents’ committee to oversee the kitchen. Several times we were called upon to sign petitions protesting this or that aspect of the kids’ diets. (After four years of legendarily bad food at Woodstock, and seeing that Ross ate more at school than she did at home, I had a hard time taking these seriously.)

Every day when I picked up Ross from school, I’d hear the other mothers greeting their children. Invariably, the first question every mother asked was: “What did you eat today?” Just as invariably, my first question to Rossella was: “What did you do today?” And Ross would promptly tell me – what she had eaten.

Asilo Nido: Daycare in Italy

January 29, 2003 Deirdre Straughan 3 Comments

Jan 29, 2003 / revised and expanded Jan 26, 2007

When we arrived in Italy in December, 1990, our daughter Rossella was 16 months old. I had been full-time at home with her for most of her life, except for two months of increasingly long hours in a parents’ cooperative daycare center at Yale in late 1990, when I needed time to pack up our house and make other arrangements to move. Ross, although the youngest in the group, had been happy in daycare: she enjoyed being with other kids, even though she wasn’t walking yet and had to crawl after them to participate in their play! So, when we were settled in Milan, I decided it was time for me to go back to work, and I did not expect Ross to have any problems with daycare.

Under Italian law, working mothers have paid maternity leave for the first six months of a child’s life. For ages six months to two years, there are government-subsidized daycare centers (asili nidi – literally “nest asylums”). Unfortunately, in the years before our arrival, there had been a decline in births in Milan which had led to many of these public asili nidi being closed. Then there was a sudden rise in the birthrate around the year of Ross’ birth, so when we arrived in Milan, mid-year, there was no space available in the nearby asilo nido.

My in-laws kindly paid for a good private asilo called Ciao Bimbi (“Hi, kids!”) which Ross attended for two years – after a slow ramp-up. Italian daycare and preschools strive very hard not to traumatize the kids in their first experiences away from home. Every new child goes through a period of inserimento (“insertion”), attending for two hours the first day, three the second, etc. – with a parent standing by to be called in case of need.

As I dimly recall, Ross got through the inserimento quickly and was very happy at Ciao Bimbi. It lacked any outdoor space for the kids to play in, but there were huge indoor spaces complete with climbing equipment (photo top).

We were particularly pleased that, wanting to emulate her peers, she practically toilet-trained herself and was out of diapers within a couple of months of starting at Ciao Bimbi: we didn’t have to do a thing except make a potty available at home.

The teachers were wonderful, and Ross remembered them with affection for years.

The class had adventures beyond Ciao Bimbi, such as swimming lessons, which Ross took to like the proverbial duck to water. We were amused to note that she was the only kid smiling in the school swimming pictures! (I was also amused that this swimming pool was in the basement of an urban building – you had to swim around the building’s supporting columns!)

The only problem with Ciao Bimbi was that it was a long way across town by bus, so I had a trek every day to get her there and back again. It was a financial and commuting relief when, at age three, Ross was able to transfer to the preschool near our home.

Nowadays, a fashionable (and expensive) asilo like Ciao Bimbi would, as a matter of routine, offer insegnanti madrelingua inglese (mother-tongue English teachers): every Italian parent recognizes the value of learning English, and the value of starting early to do so. However, this would be handled naturally, in the context of play and activities, not with formal lessons.

Italian culture

Teenagers and Cellphones – Standard Equipment for Italian Adolescents

January 24, 2003 Deirdre Straughan 1 Comment

David Pogue, technology writer for the New York Times, mentioned in his weekly column (some time ago) some ways in which Europe is technologically ahead of the US. We’re certainly far ahead in the use of SMS (short message service), by which you can use your cellphone to send text messages to someone else’s cellphone. I read elsewhere that SMS recently became available in the US, but not many people are using it. The problem, I believe, is that US cellphone companies have not yet captured the attention of the teenage market.

Italy has one of the world’s highest ratios of cellphones to people. They spread years ago from well-heeled to ordinary folk, with the introduction of pay-as-you-go plans: you buy a phone and “recharge” it with calling time whenever you need or can afford to, with no credit check or monthly fee. This has been a boon to people who cannot qualify for or afford a land-line phone, and to parents of teenagers: give the kid a set phone allowance each month, and when it runs out, they either do without or pay their own way.

Still, the cost per minute of talk is fairly high, and varies wildly depending on whether you’re calling a phone in the same network, a different network, or a land-line. SMS cost only 10 to 12 cents per message, and are less intrusive than calls; the default signal for an incoming message is a single beep. Or you can set your phone to silent mode, and keep an unobtrusive eye on it. Some kids get away with using SMS to pass notes in class.

A familiar clichÃ© about teenagers is that, as soon as they come home from school, they are on the phone for hours, much to the frustration of anyone else in the family who needs to use it. But the clichÃ© no longer matches the reality. In the US, kids come home from school and immediately get online with their computers, to text chat with the friends they just saw at school. In Italy, they come home and start tapping out SMS. With SMS, you’re more likely to reach everyone you want to talk to, as there are far more cellphones than computers with Internet connections in Italy. Plus, with a cellphone you can reach your friends no matter where you or they are – neither party is tied to a desk.

Being able to communicate textually instead of orally is great for adolescent boys, who tend to be tongue-tied in comparison with – and especially when speaking to! – their female peers. The same boy who blushes and stammers when confronted with a real live girl, sends wildly romantic SMS. At the beginning of the school year, my daughter was baffled by a boy who would spend hours in SMS conversation, but was too shy to speak with her in person. Later she was courted by a boy who doesn’t yet own a cellphone, which she considered an advantage as he was forced to actually speak to her.

Like many adults, I initially didn’t use SMS much, but am finding it increasingly useful. If I need to communicate a change of plans to my daughter while she’s in school, I can send a message. She’s got the phone set to “Silent” so it won’t disrupt classes, but I know she checks it during breaks.

School rules have evolved rapidly to cope with changing mores. At first many schools banned cellphones altogether. Some have or had rules that they must be turned off completely during school hours – rules which were routinely flouted, as so many rules are in Italy. I guess that by now most schools have given up.

There are downsides to being constantly in touch. I’ve seen my daughter (and others) sit in a roomful of friends, tapping away on her phone. I don’t get that: why not enjoy the friends you’re with, and catch up with the others later? Adults aren’t much better; during breaks in business meetings, everyones dive for their phones, missing that potentially very valuable informal time with their colleagues.

Italian culture, Italy travel

Holiday Hell – Italian Vacation Traffic

January 1, 2003 Deirdre Straughan Leave a comment

Almost every Christmas, we drive halfway down Italy to Abruzzo, where my in-laws are retired by the seaside. This puts us on the road with millions of other Italians going home for the holidays. Much of the flow is north to south: the many southern Italians who migrated to northern Italy decades ago to find work, but still have strong family ties in Sicily, Calabria, etc. So we are part of the grand “exodus,” carefully monitored by the media, with pre-analysis, traffic predictions, minute-by-minute developments, and (afterwards) death toll reports. In recent years we’ve driven on the 24th, when there’s the least traffic (except Christmas Day itself, which we may resort to one of these years). The Sunday before Christmas is also good, as no trucks are allowed on the highways.

There are trains, of course, but travelling by train with a lot of luggage is a pain, and trains have their own risks: The holiday season is when many public services choose to cause the greatest possible disruption, by going on strike. Trains don’t do it too often, but everyone else does. Public transit workers in Milan, Rome, and Genova were on strike for several days during the week before Christmas, causing huge traffic jams as everyone then had to drive to work. This probably put a considerable dent in holiday shopping; I suspect shop owners are not feeling very charitable about anyone’s right to strike at the moment.

Then another protest group got into the act. Italian milk producers are aggrieved because they keep getting fined for producing more milk than European Union quotas allow. For the last several years, they have brought attention to their plight (and won government support for discounts on their fines) by blocking major roads around Milan just before Christmas, particularly near Linate airport. There have been cases (though not this year) of holiday travelers having to walk the last five kilometers to the airport, carrying their own luggage.

(No, this has nothing to do with Parmalat, and I will refrain from any Parmalat jokes as I am sick of them already.)

Between Christmas and New Year’s there is a smaller but still significant movement of people, as many, having spent the obligatory “Natale con i tuoi” (Christmas with your family), now escape to go skiing or for more exotic destinations.

The big “counter-exodus,” of people returning to their working homes from wherever they’ve been, takes place around the Epiphany, January 6th. This year the air traffic controllers are adding to the fun by going on strike January 8th.

Countries Beginning with I

Category Archives: Italy

Is Football Worth It? The Cost of Stadium Violence in Europe

Scuola Materna: Public Preschool in Italy

School Food

Asilo Nido: Daycare in Italy

Teenagers and Cellphones – Standard Equipment for Italian Adolescents

Holiday Hell – Italian Vacation Traffic

Deirdré Straughan on Italy, India, the Internet, the world, and now Australia

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Deirdré Straughan on Italy, India, the Internet, the world, and now Australia