Posted on 27 February 2014
A new educational programme destined for Secondary Schools (12 – 14 years of age) was launched at Villa Salviati when the Historical Archives of the European Union welcomed on Monday 17 February 24 students from the Calamandrei School in Florence.
The Archives’ educational programme is part of the Florentine extra-curricular activities for schools managed by the Florentine school authority and proposed to public and private schools in the brochure: “Chiavi della Citta”. The aim of the Archives’ programme is to introduce secondary school children to the history, aims and objectives of the European Union, to its governing institutions and to its archival memory at the European University Institute in Florence.
The programme called “Florentines: Citizens of Europe” consists of two sessions, one in school and one at Villa Salviati. During the session in school, the students are introduced to the history of the European Union and to its institutions through a series of presentations, quizzes and interactive games. The second session at Villa Salviati gives answers to what is an Archives, what do archivists do and what exactly are the Historical Archives of the European Union, followed by a session on deliberative democracy where the students learn to take part in a parliamentary debate. For this session the students become Members of the European Parliament and are called to debate on the concrete and often controversial political issue: “Water – A public good”.
For the debate, the students form political groups and prepare arguments for the rapporteur of each group. These arguments are then discussed in plenary session and at the end there is a final vote on the priority attribution of water in Europe in case of scarcity and need.
The debate by the students from the Calamandrei School raised a number of interesting arguments. The Green party group asked for reduced wastage of water by the industrial sector and private households and a general investment in alternative resources. The Industry group put forward their role in providing jobs, which counts for a lot in times of economic crisis. Being a sector in great need of water for production processes, the industry group called for a priority attribution of water to their sector. The Agriculture group was against the industry proposal by arguing that the primary production of food and food security prevails over all other sectors’ requests. Therefore agriculture should have priority in water supply. The group of Southern countries concluded that they should be given priority in the attribution of water resources to guarantee the development of the industrial and agricultural sectors in these regions of scarce water resources.
The workshop ended with the final vote which was won by the Green group and their motto was: to consider water as public good and to use it to the good of all while protecting the endangered nature and environment resources.
More information on “Le Chiavi della Città”