7 - Italian language studies threatened

La bella lingua still in demand in universities and high schools despite cuts

Twin brothers Cosmo and Damiano Femia were born in Toronto to Calabrese parents from Siderno. They are going to get degrees in Sociology and Italian at York University. They not only speak excellent Italian, but also excellent Calabrese, which they do not consider a "minor" or "secondary" language. "It's a patrimony," says Cosmo, "because like every language it carries with it an ancient culture. The Calabrese culture existed even before the Greek arrived and founded their colonies, which would eventually become Magna Grecia."
Damiano chimes in: "Italian is the lingua franca of Apulians and Friulians, Venetians and Calabrese, Lombards and Latians, Piedmontese and Sicilians, allowing every one of them to communicate with the rest. If it didn't exist, Italy would be a Babel of dialects. But precisely because it is the language unifying all Italians, regardless of their origins and dialects, it's the synthesis of all the cultures of the country. Italian is a special language, and it must be studied abroad. If dialects could also be studied, that would be even better. The linguistic reality of Italy is unique, as much as its culture."
In Canada, however, the high schools are having a hard time; the need to balance the budgets (after the wastage of richer years) led the governments to cut education. The government of Ontario cut especially deep, and secondary schools now stop at Grade 12. As if that was not enough, a theory declaring the superiority of technical subjects (especially those linked to the business world) over humanities is gaining acceptance. Languages are a part of humanities. As a result, in addition to cutting secondary school by one year the boards are cutting courses in French and Spanish, and Italian, of course.
"What saddens me," says Cosmo Femia, "is that these cutbacks are received with resignation. Languages, any of them, really enrich people. Here, people think that the only richness is a fat bank account. So, they toss real richness into the trash."
Cosmo and Damiano are fighting their personal battle; they waste no opportunity to speak of the need for studying languages, especially Italian. They do so when they meet with friends, when they go and play guitar in primary schools, when their extended family gets together on prescribed holidays. "How can people study Shakespeare," says Damiano, "if they know nothing about sonnets? But the highest expression of sonnets came from Petrarca. Therefore, Petrarca the Italian is needed to study Shakespeare the Englishman."
Sonia Donatelli was also born here to Italian parents. She's going to get her degree in Italian and History at York University. "I don't understand," she says, "how the Italian-Canadian community, so large in Toronto, can accept silently the cutting of Italian courses. The parents should be the first to insist for those courses to be kept, joining our teachers who have been sounding the alarm for a long time now; they should get Italian-Canadian MPs to do something. If we lose our language we lose our identity. The fact is that we Italian-Canadians do not know how to lobby. Should we do it, politicians would listen to us."
These are opinions of young people, who sound like adults. This does not happen only at York University. Dario Brancato, from Messina, is completing his Ph.D. in Italian Linguistics at the University of Toronto. "I wonder how can anyone study Art History, for instance, without learning Italian," he says. "This issue of language courses being cut in high schools and universities, when they should be expanded, makes no sense at all. But there is something else just as senseless. In an epoch of globalization, studying languages prevents the elimination of cultural identities. Do they want to achieve a society of faceless robots, all having the same needs and the same urges? This is not merely absurd, it's crazy."
Gabriella Colussi Arthur was also born here. Her parents are Friulians. She speaks excellent Italian, as well as French, but also perfect Friulian. She teaches at the Department of Languages, Literatures and Linguistics of York University. Her students include Cosmo and Damiano Femia and Sonia Donatelli. "Very good kids and excellent students," she remarks.
Excellent students usually imply excellent teachers. How high is the interest in Italian at York University?
"We are recording a significant increase in enrolment, especially to elementary-level courses. Italian as a foreign language is indispensable and we get students from different heritages: Eastern European, Asian, Far Eastern, Indian, not just Italians. But at higher levels, from the Eighties to the present we suffered a robust decrease; we lost some 200 students."
Why?
"Because of heavy political and structural conditions that penalize all languages, Italian included."
We are aware of the political situation such as government cutbacks.
"Rather, the reform of high school enacted by the PC government. In the past, modern languages were taught in Grades 10 to 13, which were considered as specialization years. Italian was one of those modern languages. It was studied mostly by people willing to become teachers, or get a university degree, in short to devote themselves to humanistic studies. That allowed a substantial number of university students to develop motivation for studying the Italian language. Now it's as if the source of a great river has suddenly dried up, and the great river has become a creek."
You also mentioned structural conditions. What do you mean by that?
"Since the mid-Nineties, York University has been forced to cut drastically just to allow the Department of Languages to survive. We had to reduce our offer of courses, thus downgrading our Department's usual flexibility. This caused quite a few problems to our students, most of whom work part-time; if courses aren't flexible, attendance becomes difficult regardless of interest. The study of Italian was penalized by these situations, and that is why it shrunk at this level of specialization. Anyway, we did not remain idle."
What did you do?
"We created several interdisciplinary courses such as Aspects of Italian Culture; Italian Cinema, Literature and Society; Italian: A Minority Language and Culture in North American Society; and Mapping the Italian-Canadian Experience in Canada: A Literary and Cultural Perspective. This allowed many students to get in touch with Italian and Italian-Canadian culture, even if in English. I found that many students, attending those classes, developed an interest for Italian and began to study it. We also restructured the program of courses of Italian in order to make it more efficient."
How did you do so?
"In addition to the traditional curriculum, where Italian is a part of a student's study plan as one of the possible specializations, we created a leaner program that entitles students to get a Certificate of Italian Proficiency. They only need to attend two language courses, intermediate and advanced, and pass them with a minimum grade of B."
What does this mean, in practice?
"It means that even students who do not major in Languages can have a linguistic component in their study plans and obtain a university certification for it. Also, in order to favour the study of languages, we established an intensive introductory course that allows students to devote themselves to a systematic study of the language in one trimester. Finally, we created a course of business Italian: A Socio-Cultural Approach to Italian in the Business Environment. We did this without forgetting another interesting aspect."
Which one?
"Summer studies. For the past 20 years we've been offering summer courses of Italian language and culture in Rome and Florence. Since last summer we added two more, called Toronto-Bologna: the students attend four weeks of the course here and three more in Italy. In summary, we are reacting well despite the lean years."
Leaving aside for the moment the need for the Ontario government to review its education policy, can you tell me two urgent measures to be taken in order to defend and increase the teaching of Italian?
"Promoting a strong campaign in high schools in favour of the reintroduction in the curriculum of the study of languages; and devoting more attention to the professional training of teachers of foreign languages in order to support them and allow them to keep up to date. Today they are demoralized."
Are they?
"Of course they are. Take the universities, where the study of languages has become a luxury because it is too expensive, and language courses close down far too easily. What do the teachers, even the best, do? They survive by recycling themselves, teaching other subjects, or even changing profession. In regards to high school, it would need a comprehensive plan for training and retraining teachers. On the contrary, if I remember exactly, only three universities still offer training in Italian: York, Toronto and Brock. But even if more universities trained more teachers, what could they do in high school, where the curriculum does not include foreign languages? It's a vicious circle, you see. I only hope that sooner or later the situation will return to normal. In the meantime, there is something that Italy could do."
What?
"Italy could support our activities by offering study programmes, short-term internships, at the universities of Perugia, Siena, or Ca' Foscari in Venice, for teacher candidates who intend to become teachers of Italian. Waiting for the long night of culture in Ontario to end, this light would allow us to go on."

Publication Date: 2003-03-09
Story Location: http://tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=2464