Operand30
210 posts





























I know a number of British people who lived 1 to 2 years in Italy and then came back. The constant is that they have young children. Whatever they tell you, if you ask them about the Italian school system, they will eventually admit that it was, if not the main one, one of the critical items for them. Italian primary school is much harder than the British one. An awful lot of Italian parents cope with that by literally abandoning their children to their own devices. Most take a more proactive stance, so they either start tutoring their children themselves (a couple of hours a day per child starting in year 1) or pay for tutors to do it in their stead. In primary school, British kids have homework once per week. Italian kids have homework once per day, doubled over the weekend. If you visit Italian homes in the afternoon and they have children, it is pretty standard to see the kids sitting at the main table with books and notebooks spread all around, with a parent or a tutor sitting with them for the whole session. Also, the amount of books they have to carry to school every day is borderline unbelievable. You would think they are training them to carry legionary backpacks. For people accustomed to the gentle British primary schooling, the Italian system feels borderline insane. Note also that it has massively eased up: in my childhood, we had to memorise a long poem every weekend (which back then meant Sunday, as Saturday was school day). h/t @GroovySciFi














Author H.P. Lovecraft returns to Providence, Rhode Island after a visit to New York City. He has a new character idea, a monster called “Cthulhu.”
































