When I moved definitively to Italy at the age of 28 I wasn’t really thinking about having a baby. I was in love and trying to find gainful employment which was as hard then as it is now. I got married a year later, we bought our first apartment, and I began my career at Stanford University’s Florence Program. When baby fever finally arrived it was accompanied by infertility. The path to having my daughter was long and complicated, but that’s a story for another day.
As soon as she was born I ran over to the U.S. Consulate in Florence, registered her birth, and got her U.S. citizenship and passport. She already had Italian citizenship – not because she was born on Italian soil, Italy doesn’t have jus soli citizenship – but by descent, jure sanguinis, because her father is Italian. She took her first transatlantic flight at five months.
I realized it back in 2007 but it’s even more evident to me now, that dual citizenship was likely the best gift I could have given her along with raising her bilingual and bicultural. But what about everything else, primarily her education? Did I do the right thing by raising her in Italy as opposed to the U.S.?
An American Education
I always made great efforts to ensure that she spent as much time as possible being informally educated in the States. That mostly happened over the summer, at the Jersey Shore and in the New York City area where I grew up. We had wild adventures, fun road trips, and she consumed, lived, and absorbed popular culture and family lore. Determined to expose her to things that her U.S. peers were experiencing, one summer I whisked her to California and enrolled her in basketball camp at Stanford while I attended a conference (she still hasn’t forgiven me). On that trip we spent time in the Bay Area and in L.A. with my best friends from college and graduate school.
I suppose I always wanted her to go to college in the States but I didn’t want to influence her and always gave her alternatives. It is her choice but I know I am biased. I adored my college and grad school years and dedicated a good chunk of my career to serving undergraduates. Even in these tumultuous times for education and college campuses in America, these past two summers of college tours have reinforced my belief that a liberal arts education is the best education, have filled me with hope for the future, restored my faith in humanity, and been a once-in-a-lifetime mother-daughter bonding experience. They have also shown me that everything she has done up until now, her whole education, has been wildly different from what it would have been had I raised her in the U.S., something I thought about doing many, many times.
The Italian System
The system here is rigid, many call it archaic, some consider it broken. A couple of years ago I interviewed my daughter and nephew about the differences in their educations in a podcast episode that outlines and underscores the disparities.
But perhaps things are finally changing on this side of the pond. This year, during the maturità – the much-dreaded final exam that Italian students must take in their 5th year (yes, they do an extra year here) – a bunch of maturandi from all over the country protested by refusing to take the oral part of the exam and criticized a mechanism they find reflects neither their performance nor their characters and creates an enormous amount of unnecessary stress and anxiety. While these acts of protest have sparked a national debate, I’m not expecting a revolution anytime soon. But this dissent must be noted. It points to the fact that the new generation is not afraid to speak out against a system they feel is in need of a serious revamp, one they see as no longer relevant or acceptable for today’s youth.
Looking toward the future
I’ll never know if I made the right decision but I suppose as parents we never do. I know the strengths and weaknesses of both systems and I also see the many ways her traditional and rigorous high school has given her tools and a kind of resilience that I didn’t acquire until much later in life. Is it the right choice for everyone? Not at all, and a lot of my fellow expats do not embrace the Italian way and opt for private or international schools or more forward-thinking public schools that pay attention to and value kids’ individual needs and learning styles and offer them more freedom in terms of curricula and creative enterprises.
When she chose her high school in her last year of middle school she was adamant about her decision and still is. Going to a public university in Italy would mean choosing something very specific yet again and that feels limiting to her.
Maturità
I think that we parents need to have faith in our kids, support their choices, and stand by them every step of the way. That’s what I’ve always done and what I’ll continue to do as I brace myself for the next chapter, this last year of Italian schooling, and for the final exam she’ll be have to take in lieu of prom and a graduation ceremony.