The time is ripe for the implementation of Article 30 of the Constitution which establishes the "duty and right of parents to maintain, educate and educate their children". There is a way: the "school voucher"

The State, instead of intervening only in the case of "parental incapacity" as established in the same article, intervenes forcefully in the education as a rule and in the first instance.

The unconditional heir of the fascist regime in this regard, the Republic has chosen to maintain the quasi-monopoly of the school service, which the State provides to all with its own personnel in a theoretically uniform and undifferentiated manner.

It is a monopoly of French tradition that entered Italy with the Savoy kingdom. It appears in history with the Revolution, decided by the National Assembly in 1791 and then outlined in 1792 by Condorcet in his Rapport sur l'Instruction Publique where for the first time it was established that school must be "unique, free and neutral". Fascism expanded and completed it. The fact that this legacy was not questioned by any political force, but rather was adopted by the entire array of post-fascist parties can perhaps explain the belief, so widespread in Italy, that providing school is a typical task of the State: an idea that does not exist elsewhere. Even in democratic and republican Italy, parents have therefore continued to be excluded from choices regarding education, in full contrast with art. 30.

Unless they can do so at their own expense, parents in Italy have no way of choosing which school and which teachers to educate their children. Only 52 years after the Constitution came into force, with law no. 62 of 2000, was it finally recognized that "the national education system (...) is made up of state schools and private and local government paritary schools". Therefore, paritary schools are no less part of it than state schools. However, that same law reaffirmed "what is provided for in article 33, second paragraph, of the Constitution", that is, that "Entities and private individuals have the right to establish schools and educational institutions, without cost to the State": a phrase that has always been used to deny any financial aid to both non-state schools and the families of their pupils and students. Thus, the right that art. 30 recognizes to parents remains on paper, as the conditions necessary for its exercise have not been created.

It should also be noted that in the case of a monopoly, by losing the sovereignty of the user and therefore his right to choose what to buy or not to buy, the most effective tool for quality control of the goods or services offered also loses. This also applies to the state monopoly of free or semi-free public schools. The approval or otherwise of the students' families does not count. The user has no say in the quality of teaching in state schools - burdened among other things by the consequences of the insane annual carousel of teachers' positions. It is certainly true that in state schools there are capable and motivated teachers, but nothing but their conscience pushes them to be such. No one can openly prefer them to others who are not.

The recent statements by Minister Giuseppe Valditara, who reaffirmed the nature of "public service of private schools" and proposed the introduction of "school vouchers" to guarantee freedom of educational choice to all families, even the less well-off, immediately sparked a reaction from politicians and trade unionists opposed to financing private schools (!) to the detriment of state schools.

First of all, it should be pointed out that these are not private schools but paritary schools (former law 62/2000) and that with the 750 million, allocated for approximately 750,000 students of paritary schools, the State allocates approximately 1,000 euros to each and saves approximately 6,000, paid to the school by parents. Therefore, it is not correct to repeat that funds are being taken away from state schools; in fact, the more students attend paritary schools, the more funds the State has available for state schools.

If anything, the problem arises, paradoxically ignored by unions and the left, that with a thousand euros at their disposal, less well-off parents cannot, nor have ever been able to, access private schools, being deprived of the constitutional right to freedom of choice of education and school for their children (articles 30, 31 of the Constitution).

In this regard, even Minister Luigi Berlinguer, who repeated: "The equality law is a left-wing law because it also allows the less well-off to have access to educational opportunities that would otherwise be reserved only for those with economic means", was not listened to.

In fact, this was the most significant innovation of the law on equality: allowing even the less well-off to choose between state schools and private schools, but it was the most neglected principle in the following decades. It was preferred to continue in the controversy between supporters of state schools and supporters of private schools, or in the historic clash between the freedom to teach on the part of the State or on the part of the Church.

The institutional duty to put an end to serious discrimination by ensuring disadvantaged families their educational rights by "removing the economic and social obstacles that actually limit freedom and equality" (art. 3 of the Constitution) has been violated. Even recently, on the occasion of the approval of the last financial law, amendments in favor of the "school voucher for less well-off families" had been presented, but they were rejected as proof of the persistence of a serious

ideological prejudice regarding the educational rights and duties of parents.