The Plexiglass Menagerie
Whoever is in the business of making or installing Plexiglass these days must be making a fortune. Imagine the delight of a Plexiglass tycoon when the Italian ministry of education announced a potential (and much polemicised) plan for schools to install Plexiglass dividers between student’s desks. The plan also suggests children should wear visors instead of masks. Whoever came up with this cockamamie idea obviously didn’t consider children who wear glasses. Anyone can tell you that wearing a visor over your spectacles is a nightmare. Not only, while I have seen some people wear visors in a botched attempt at a fashion statement, the majority of people I have spoken to who have to wear them for work (dentists, beauticians, etc.) find them unbearable and impossible to use.
It is astonishing that the Italian ministry of education still doesn’t have a plan for how to reopen schools in September. Considering that schools in parts of Italy have been closed since mid-February, it is a mystery what the ministry has been doing for the past three months. Schools have been reopening around Europe since the beginning of May. Surely observing what other countries in Europe and Asia are doing can provide learnings for Italy? I don’t see any nation putting their children in Plexiglass cubicles or having them wear visors. I do hear programs to test children for the virus. Temperature measurement. Tracking and tracing. But there is no talk of testing children here. Italians have a tendency to treat children as overly precious, fragile. In winter, when it is barely cold, you see them bundled up in scarves and gloves and thick coats. At the seaside, mothers keep their kids out of the water for three hours after eating to avoid indigestion. But it is a known fact that kids are more resilient than we are. It is also a known fact that education is the backbone of society. That in order to work, parents need to send their kids to school. That in order to thrive, children need to be able to socialise and interact with other children. Teachers are equally frustrated about the lack of input coming from the state, so frustrated in fact that they are striking today, on what is technically the last day of the school year for Italian schools.
Here’s a little update on the state of the tracking app Immuni. It will be operational as of the 15th of June in four Italian states. (Let’s just note that that’s a good month after the end of lockdown, and while the old adage “better late than never” may apply, I think in this case, the lateness is ever so problematic, especially as the four states they are launching in don’t seem to be virus hot zones, but, oh well). By now 2 million Italians have downloaded it. There has been a controversy about two images on the app in a section on “Protecting your family” depicting a woman holding a baby and a man behind a computer. There was an outcry that these images were sexist. It is 2020 after all, but when it comes to gender roles in Italy, we may as well be in the 1950s. The funny thing is that to rectify the mistake, the developers, a company called Bending Spoons (their motto ironically is “Where Bright Minds Hack the Future”) just put the baby in the man’s arms and the woman behind the computer. What a simplistic solution to a profound mistake. And what is this ongoing fascination with babies in a nation that has such a low birthrate? I keep hearing the echoes of fascism.
In closing, while numbers continue to look positive for Italy, the reproduction rate in Lombardy, the “Rt”, has gone back up to 0,91 from a low of 0,53. Experts say that these oscillations are to be expected and it’s nothing to be alarmed about. And so, our dance continues.