Come next year and all schools in Italy will make it compulsory for school children to study climate change and sustainable development, said Italian Education Minister Lorenzo Fioramonti. The country will build a curriculum regarding climate change and Fioramonti stated that all public schools will be required to blend the topic into their curriculum. A spokesman for Fioramonti told CNN that the lessons will be added to existing classes, including traditional subjects such as geography, maths and physics.
Fioramonti also added that all state schools will be dedicating 33 hours per year, that is, almost one hour per week to climate change issues.
Fioramonti, who is a former economics professor at South Africa’s Pretoria University said that he wants his country’s education system to be the first which puts environment and society as the fundamental key to everything taught in school.
Un’immagine che rappresenta i tanti messaggi di stima e solidarietà che ci giungono da tutto il mondo dopo la decisione del @MiurSocial di promuovere l’insegnamento dello sviluppo sostenibile nelle scuole pic.twitter.com/RD9PsejT5M
— Lorenzo Fioramonti (@lofioramonti) November 10, 2019
Teachers will start training on climate change and sustainability starting from next year and the school sessions will start in September 2020 for students aged six to 19. Earlier this year, Fioramonti had encouraged students to skip school and join the global climate strikes. He also stated on Facebook that schools should not bother much about student absences as the children’s lives are ‘threatened by environmental devastation and unsustainable economic development.’
An associate fellow of the Centre for the Study of Governance Innovation (GovInn), Fioramonti has co-authored and co-edited a total of ten books. After being nominated in January 2018 as a candidate for the Five Star Movement in the 2018 Italian general election, Fioramonti has subsequently been elected to parliament and his name has been put forward for Minister of Economic Development.
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