School, University and Educational policies in Italy: the current situation

The article focuses on the effects of the policies on education, school and university in the last 20 years in Italy. These policies are strictly linked with the influence and the power of Silvio Berlusconi in the political and cultural life of the country. From one side, mostly through television, his figure and his message have had a very strong appeal and have changed the values and the lifestyle of common people; from the other side, his governmental actions, mostly through the “reforms” signed by minister Mariastella Gelmini, have weakened some of the most important characteristics and qualities of the Italian school system developed during the age of the social mass movements in the Sixties’ and in the Seventies’