After participating in the 20th World Congress of FISE (World Federation of Teachers' Unions), affiliated with the WFTU (World Federation of Trade Unions), USB Scuola joins FISE.

A reasoned and strongly desired choice.

The condition of teachers is similar in many parts of the world: underpaid, abandoned by governments, alone in an educational process that, in different ways, is intended to serve the capitalist production system, they struggle for the deeply formative and humanistic function of their “profession”.

International capital wants to mould young people to make them functional to the system and wants first-class schools, reserved for the ruling classes, and second-class schools for the sons and daughters of workers, to be trained to become slaves to the system.

FISE says no to all this and asserts one of the central functions of education: the emancipation of young people from the working classes.

Alongside this, the trade unions affiliated to FISE are fighting for better pay and working conditions for teachers and school workers. These demands, in that part of the world that is still exploited by an increasingly imperialist West, lead to fierce struggles and a level of repression that is currently unimaginable in old Europe. In some of these countries, the wars caused by imperialism and the contradictions of capital put the very lives of teachers and students at risk (first and foremost, we think about the Palestinians, but also about teachers and students in many African states where the West dumps its contradictions).

This makes us even more proud to be part of this great union, which looks far beyond the now crumbling citadel of old Europe.

In FISE, it is also possible to engage with representatives of teachers from countries that are trying to live outside the dictates of capital, that are trying to build a more equal world (from Cuba to Sri Lanka), allowing us to think about another possible school and another possible world.

Convinced as we are that the struggle of teachers (and all workers) cannot in any way be resolved within the narrow confines of a capitalist nation in decline such as ours, we stand with joy and pride alongside all our comrades and colleagues around the world, hoping to take up the baton from men such as Mario Alighiero Manacorda, who was a member of the FISE executive board in the distant past.

Long live FISE and long live WFTU!