School Reform: the proposals of the students of the Liceo Classico Umberto I of Palermo

A modest proposal (A modest proposal for preventing the children of poor people from being a burden to their parents or Country, and for making them beneficial to the Public, 1729) is a satirical and desperate booklet by the Irish writer Jonathan Swift where he presents a “solution” to the problem of overpopulation in Ireland at that time that consists in fattening up undernourished children and feeding them to rich landowners.

The students of the Umberto I Classical High School in Palermo have chosen this title for their “modest proposal” for school reform. What will we do? A post-modern version of Swift’s solution for them?

Our modest proposal

We are students. We have asked ourselves:

How can school be more in tune with real life?

How can school make students good citizens with a solid understanding of our world?

How can school enhance students’ critical thinking?

How can we make students aware of their skills and enable them to develop them?

How can we give back centrality to students and teachers in our educational system?

How important is it to invest in school in order to bet on the future of our country?

We, the students of the 5th grade of the Liceo Classico Umberto I of Palermo, together with our teachers, have reflected on our school system, elaborating, finally, 10 proposals, through which to give an answer to the initial questions. We hope to attract the attention of our politicians to the need to improve our school system. In the end, we have drafted a modest but serious proposal that provides an answer to the opening questions.

How to make schools more attuned to real life? How to help schools form citizens with a solid understanding of the world and develop their critical intelligence? How to make students aware of their aptitudes and help them realize their own? How can we give back centrality to students and teaching staff in our educational system? How important is it to invest in schools in order to bet on the future of our country?

We hope that the attention of politicians will be attracted by our modest proposal to start paying much more attention to our Italian school. The future cannot wait much longer!

Follow our Modest Proposal here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1H4S1KutXGq4sGDe4hDREsYctgXuVyPAO/view