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Ladinia
If you think of Ladin school you immediately have to think of a school which is based on three languages: Italian, German and Ladin. This is the school system that is present in Val Gardena and Val Badia, the two territories which have always had to compete with the two big neighbouring cultures. At the beginning, when school was first introduced, more or less all the subjects were taught in German with only some hours of Italian. But then, after the second World War a school system was created which guaranteed an equal space for the German and the Italian language. Thanks to vice-school authority of German schools in South Tyrol, Josef Ferrari, it was possible from the first years of the 50s onwards to establish a completely new school model which determined the teaching of half the subjects to be in Italian and half the subjects in German with some hours of Ladin, the mother tongue of almost all students. All the students attending this type of school have the possibility to confront themselves with the German and the Italian culture and learn the two languages without losing their own identity. This school system started with the first form of primary school and nowadays continues up to the graduation forms of higher secondary education.
Every village has an own primary school (except Colfosco) where the children spend their first five years of education. Successively children move on to middle school (lower secondary education): in Val Badia there is one in La Villa for the villages of the upper part of the valley, one in San Martino in Badia for the villages of the central part of the valley and one in San Vigiglio di Marebbe for the villages of the Marebbe Municipality. In Val Gardena there is one in Ortisei and one in Selva. After middle school the children have the possibility to attend a high school (higher secondary education): in Val Badia they can choose between a commercial and a linguistic high school; in Val Gardena between a commercial high school with two courses, either business management or tourism, and an art school with courses in sculpture, painting and graphic design.
In the other three Ladin valleys the school system is based on the teaching of all subjects in Italian, except for some hours of German culture and language and some hours of Ladin culture and language. The reason for this lies in the fact that the valleys Fassa, Livinallongo and Ampezzo belong to the provinces of Trento and Belluno which are historically more distant form the German world and culture. Here as well, every villages has its own primary school, whereas middle schools are again more centralized. The students in Val di Fassa can choose between an art school, a ski college with a linguistic high school. The students in Ampezzo can choose between an art school, a school for catering and hotel service, a commercial, linguistic and a scientific high school. The students in Livinallongo, on the other hand, have to commute either to the neighbouring Val Badia or in direction of Belluno to attend classes of higher secondary education.
As far as pedagogic education was concerned, everyone intending to work as a teacher had to choose the language of his education as none of the five valleys had a pedagogic high school. But in the last ten years, at the Free University of Bolzano, a Faculty of Education was established with special courses and a chair of Ladin studies. This faculty offers the possibility to those who want to work in the world of Ladin school to prepare themselves for the system of equal language teaching in German and Italian. Accordingly, at the Faculty of Education the students have the possibility to prepare half the subjects in Italian and half the subjects in German with some courses also held in Ladin. Since schools in the three valleys of Fassa, Livinallongo and Ampezzo don’t have equal language teaching in German and Italian, their teachers can be trained at an Italian school. To keep in touch and in order to keep the door to the German world open, sometimes there are students who decide to attend a German high school or the Faculty of Education in Bressanone.
To support, to administrate and to develop the schools in Val Gardena and Val Badia, a Ladin school authority was established in the 70s for the Ladin linguistic group. It deals with the different aspects of school.
There is also a Ladin Pedagogic Institute which provides further education courses for teachers, works out didactic material and does research for the Ladin linguistic group of the Bolzano Province.
For Val di Fassa there is the O.L.F.E.D. (office for Ladin education and didactic research) which prepares didactic material for Val di Fassa and which also prepares the training for the personnel working in the schools. For Livinallongo and Ampezzo there is no institution which deals with these tasks and the teachers have to look for Ladin didactic material by themselves in order to teach their curriculum.