"Never again the absurdity of death at school"
"Dear managers, dear teachers, dear girls and dear boys, dear families, dear school workers, everyone. Today is National Day for Safety in Schools, established by law by the Italian Parliament on 13 July 2015. The day was set for 22 November because on this date, a cursed morning in 2008, the collapse of the ceiling at the Darwin high school in Rivoli took away Vito Scafidi, 17 years old and a story to be written. Today we also remember the tragedy of the Jovine School of San Giuliano di Puglia, which is celebrating its twentieth anniversary, in which twenty-seven children and a teacher lost their lives, and that of the Student House in L'Aquila, where eight university students died in the earthquake in 2009. Every time a girl or a boy finds themselves in dangerous situations at school, any sense of things is completely upset. The absurd becomes reality: the school, the place par excellence dedicated to the development and fulfillment of the human person, becomes the place of its negation.
Well, we must never resign ourselves to the absurd, ever, for any reason. All the associations and foundations that have been conducting a meritorious battle for years to raise public awareness on the front of school safety and risk prevention know much better than I do. First of all, my most sincere thanks go to them, because they have always kept the flame burning for those who rebel against the absurd, for those who want to restore a rational sense to reality. At school you don't die nor do you have to risk dying, at school you grow up, you discover your abilities and talents in comparison with others, at school you become yourself.
This is why it is very important that today does not last twenty-four hours: the Day for Safety in Schools must be our constant present. Through correct information campaigns, risk management training activities, sharing of good practices and collaboration between all institutional subjects so that a culture of safety is truly and fully established in our country.
Safety at school is an inalienable right of students, teachers, staff and families. And good politics is truly such when it takes steps forward for the concrete affirmation of this and similar rights. For this reason, in the first days of my mandate, I set up a working group within the offices with the mission of giving substance to one of my fundamental commitments: the implementation of a major intervention for the adaptation and renovation of school buildings. For safety to really be a right, for school to become itself again, for the absurd to never happen again".
This is what we read in a letter addressed to Italian schools by the Minister of Education and Merit Giuseppe Valditara, on the occasion of the National Day for Safety in Schools.