5 -The birth of Italian language in Britain

A unique high school in Newcastle continues tradition initiated in 19th century

CUMBRIA — Things went like this: one day Gosforth High School, in Newcastle, decided to introduce a linguistic curriculum and thus become a Language College. It obtained grants from the government and from private citizens, and offered classes in Spanish, German and French. It also decided to add a second language to its satellite middle schools, and in order to choose which one, students and teachers were polled. Almost unanimously they chose Italian.
“Then we had a problem,” says Carol Shepherd, language teacher and co-ordinator of the initiative. “The lesson schedule was completely filled by regular lessons; how and where could Italian be inserted? Then we thought about breakfast. In summary, interested kids would come one hour early and would have breakfast all together; the lesson would start during the meal and be completed in class. The idea caught on, not just among the students who enthusiastically accepted to arrive at 8 instead of 9 o’clock, but also among our sponsors who decided to pay for the breakfast in addition to the teachers. Since then our lessons are called ‘breakfast-Italian’.”
The experiment was to last for one year, but after three it’s still going on with increasing success. “It’s unique in Britain,” says a proud Shepherd, and then she asks whether I would like to tour the school and speak with the kids. Initially, they are somewhat awed by the presence of a foreigner who speaks the language they have just begun to study. That foreigner sits down among their desks, and addresses them in Italian by speaking slowly and simply; and when he realizes that they do not understand, he translates into English. Breaking the ice is easy when one speaks of Italy with children who recently returned from trips to Venice and Florence. That’s where they met with their peers of the Scuola Media “Guido Cavalcanti” in Sesto Fiorentino; now they are exchanging letters, postcards and promises of future meetings.
“About 250 children enrolled,” says Shepherd. “Very few of them are of Italian origin. This means that this is not an initiative aimed towards immigrant families, but to everybody. It really was a great success.”
Why did the kids prefer Italian to other languages?
“Because Italy is very trendy in Britain, and also because Italians who came here had the ability to blend into British society,” explains Shepherd. “The fact that they did not separate themselves in closed communities gave them an aura of rule-abiding people, worthy of trust. Italians managed to get accepted even by that part of our people who were always wary of foreigners. Children cannot notice these things, but they absorb them at home. So, when we asked them which language they wanted to learn, they didn’t think twice.”
After their first trip to Italy, the children are planning another. But they also launched a promotional campaign for enticing their Italian friends to come to Newcastle. They prepared a leaflet illustrating their town and its characteristics (with photos, graphics and useful information) completely written in Italian, and sent copies to their friends of the “Guido Cavalcanti” in Sesto Fiorentino.
“We would also like to get in touch with other schools abroad that do like us,” concludes Shepherd. “Maybe, by co-ordinating we can do more and better. May I ask you to publish my e-mail address, in case someone in Canada wants to contact me?”
Certainly.
“Shepherd@accutrans.demon.co.uk. I know that very interesting things on the study of Italian language have been done in Toronto. I would be glad to be able to organize something with some Canadian colleagues.”
The study of Italian in Britain has long-standing traditions. When, in the early 19th century, the political exiles of the first insurrections arrived here (in 1820-21), British society was fascinated, because the struggle for Italian independence was perceived as a struggle against despotism, in particular that of the Pontifical States. The British had a tender spot for this kind of fight: they had demonstrated it two centuries earlier, when Oliver Cromwell, in the name of the Parliament, had opposed despotic Charles I, who was eventually beheaded. When the Britons discovered that those patriots pursued by the police forces of the Italian states were also sophisticated intellectuals, they welcomed them in their salons. Studying the language of those romantic revolutionaries, i.e. Italian, became an indispensable part of the education of the children from the upper classes.
A few years later, in 1837, the most famous of Italian exiles arrived in London, Giuseppe Mazzini, the soul of the Italian Risorgimento. In Britain, a land of hope for European liberals of the time, Mazzini not only engaged in political activism, but created London’s Scuola Italiana, which would remain for years as a beacon of modern teaching.
“It’s a free primary school for workers, organ grinders, peddlers of plaster statuettes,” he wrote to his mother on October 3, 1841. “This school will operate at night, because people cannot attend it by day, and it will teach literacy, grammar, geography (especially Italian geography), mathematics and mechanics. Everything necessary will be provided for free: paper, pens, ink and winter heating.”
Classes opened on November 10, 1841 with some 50 students; by the following August, they numbered 240. A qualified success.
When Mazzini began planning Scuola Italiana, he did not start from abstract considerations, but from an analysis of the conditions of life of his fellow nationals in London’s ill-reputed neighbourhood of Holborn, in the vicinity of Hatton Garden and Saffron Hill. During those same years, more or less, Charles Dickens would set his Oliver Twist right there. Among those shacks, Mazzini identified children as “the precious element,” i.e. the winning bet of the future. That “element” was to be protected with free education. That was his great intuition.
Maybe these children of Newcastle’s middle schools who wake up one hour early in order to learn Italian do not know yet who Giuseppe Mazzini was and who were those romantic revolutionaries who found shelter in their country. One day they will find out. They will learn how much Italy can be found in Britain and how much Britain can be found in Italy. and they will learn why these two countries left such a deep mark on the world.

Publication Date: 2002-08-18
Story Location: http://tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=1684