STUDENTS DEMONSTRATE AGAINST EDUCATION REFORMS

STUDENTS DEMONSTRATE AGAINST EDUCATION REFORMS

(ANSA) - Rome, November 17 - Thousands of student protestors took to the streets across Italy on Tuesday for International Student Day demonstrations against the government's package of education reforms.

Organizers said 150,000 protestors turned out in at least 50 cities to demonstrate against cuts in education spending and moves towards privatization in the university system.

Vowing to ''block the streets from Bari to Milan'', student activist group Unione Studeni said it demanded ''more funding'' for public education system and a stop to government attempts to curtail the autonomy of Italian universities.

Chants like ''education is not for sale'' and ''we're taking back our future,'' echoed demonstrations against cuts on education spending last fall, which paralyzed cities around the country.

Apart from a few minor incidents of disorderly behavior, police said the marches were mainly peaceful.

In Milan, four students were arrested for overturning trash bins while protestors in Turin hurled eggs and rolls of toilet paper at a provincial administration building.

The demonstrations on Tuesday came a month after the Italian government launched a merit-based university reform aimed at reducing nepotism and stemming the flight of Italian researchers abroad.

The reform would also cut the range of curricula and places indebted universities under the authority of government-appointed budget commissioners, measures the protestors say will reduce their autonomy and pave the way for privatization.

Author of the reforms and target of many of the protestor's slogans, Education Minister Mariastella Gelmini said that the demonstrators were mostly ''fringe elements that don't represent the millions of hardworking Italian students who need schools to prepare them for the world of work''.

''Italian young people understand that we have to start making some brave choices,'' Gelmini said.

''Chanting these old slogans, as if we were still in the 1970s, is hardly the way to go about modernizing our schools''.

International Students' Day commemorates the Nazi execution of nine student leaders from the University of Prague in 1939 and a 1973 student massacre in Athens during a protest against the Greek military junta.

This year, students from across the European Union will converge upon Brussels to demand a European Union charter for students' rights. Photo: a scene from a protest in Turin