Foreign Pupils, Bad Citizens - Global Rome: Changing Faces of the Eternal City - page 91

enrollment of foreign children in certain schools. even if the circular did not ap-
ply in the case of pisacane, it certainly helped to give legitimacy to the negative
views concerning the school.
once entrenched at the institutional level, the prejudice against pisacane
can spread elsewhere, reinforced and legitimized in its public expression through
petty day-to-day bureaucracy. This, more than any circular, directive, or formal
act creates pisacane's segregation and the fact that it is a “case.” for example, a
mother tells the story of a significant episode in another local school in the same
neighborhood. a little girl born in italy, the daughter of an italian mother and
an arabic-speaking father and thus with a recognizably foreign surname, was
informally refused admission to that school on the grounds that there were no
longer any places; she had to resort to pisacane. on the same day, an italian girl
who lived in the same building and had an italian first name and surname was
accepted in the very same school.
but there are many anecdotes along these lines. an italian mother had of-
fered to help a foreign mother who had just arrived in Rome and wanted to en-
roll her daughter in the infant school. The italian mother thought that pisacane
would be a good choice:
first i went to speak to the teachers, because my request was outside the nor-
mal time of year. The teachers told me: we have no problem with this, but you
must go to the borough's office. so i went to the office and the woman there
said to me: “but why do you want to enroll your friend's daughter at pisacane
school? Don't you know that it's the school for foreigners? why not enroll her
in another infant school?” she took it for granted that i, an italian, did not
have a lebanese friend and obviously thought that the child to be enrolled
was italian.3 a further incident told to me by the people involved further un-
derlines how stereotypes are produced. someone who works in the education
office spoke to a teacher at pisacane, emphasizing the fact that “well-off par-
ents and intelligent migrants who paid their taxes sent their children to the
Deledda school, whereas no italians went to pisacane because the immigrants
enrolled there came from disorderly families who were in trouble with the
law.”4 it will be noted that the old conception of the school for “the riffraff” ” is
superimposed with almost exact precision on the newer one of the school “for
foreigners.”
The “pisacane affair” has evolved from this discrimination expressed by
small gestures, words that are barely weighted, and shared “common sense.” it is
on the basis of common sense that the wind of political debate has been able to
blow strongly, legitimizing an interpretation of the school to the point of mak-
ing it predominant. The general sense that emerges from all this is clear: for
many of the residents in the district, especially those who need to demonstrate
their respectability in contrast to the disreputable torpignattara district, there