Italian Children Lose Respect for Authority

The biggest concern about children in Italy - and it has been mounting rapidly in recent months - is over an apparent breakdown of respect for authority among the young.

Last week, Italians were appalled to learn that a police officer who died in a riot outside a football stadium on Sicily on February 2 is believed by investigators to have been killed by a rock thrown by a 17-year-old.

Soccer hooliganism, once dismissed as a purely British phenomenon, has reached epidemic proportions in Italy, with several hundred police and fans injured in each of the last three seasons.

But it is evidence of bullying and other forms of violence in schools that has aroused the greatest concern recently. Several instances have come to light because of videos captured on mobile telephones and then posted on websites.

Last November, four secondary school students faced charges in a juvenile court in Turin following the appearance of a video showing a handicapped schoolmate being beaten up in a classroom. Another sequence provided evidence of an attack on a Ukrainian child adopted by Italian parents.

However, the most disturbing for many are scenes of the systematic humiliation of teachers. In the most notorious of these, also posted to the internet at the end of last year, a teacher sits impassively at his desk while a teenage boy points a gun at his head. It has never been established whether the gun was real.