Italian Education Minister Lorenzo Fioramonti has announced that Italy will be the first country in the world to make the study of climate change mandatory in public schools.
Fioramonti made the announcement during a culture committee of the Italian Senate this week. “Next year Italy will be the first country in the world where the study of climate change and sustainable development will be mandatory,” he said, in comments reported by La Repubblica.
According to the minister, “all schools will dedicate 33 hours a year, about an hour a week, to issues related to climate change,” adding, “many traditional subjects, such as geography, mathematics and physics, will be studied in a new perspective linked to sustainable development.”
“The entire ministry is changing so that sustainability and climate are at the centre of the educational model,” he said.
The new Italian budget tabled by the leftist coalition of the Five star Movement and the Democratic Party (PD) will also look to increase places to hire around 24,000 temporary workers in the education sector by the end of September of next year.
The budget has been a source of contention within the unpopular coalition government and was recently revealed to be giving handicapped Italians less money per day than newly arrived migrants.
According to the figures, handicapped Italians will receive a mere 54 cents per day compared to the twenty euros migrants receive.
The Italian move to make climate change studies mandatory comes after Swedish teen Greta Thunberg popularised a movement to take children out of school one day per week to protest climate change.
Whether or not the policy will be properly implemented is also up for question as the relationship between the Five Stars and the PD remains rocky following both parties’ massive regional election loss in Umbria to the centre-right coalition led by Matteo Salvini.