Education, Education, Education.

Monculi's school is new, surrounded by open space, sports fields, and equipped with a primary and secondary department. The Nursery and Infants is run by the nuns in the former primary school and needs separate consideration.

The pupils are not from other villages; neighbouring villages have schools of their own, and the schools are much of a muchness. Which is no criticism because the muchness extends across Italy. From the ages of 6 to 11 pupils study reading, writing - both hand and style, mathematics, science, Italian grammar, language and literature, Italian history, geography (in the wider sense of physical and economic and social geography) and English language (that is International English, not the high English no longer offered in UK schools). This programme runs in 3 year cycles; once the children can read and write etc., they begin the first study of the rest of the material when they are 8. Completing what can best be thought of as a road map of what they will study again in more complexity after 11, the examination to proceed into the secondary school is a serious business; the examination to be allowed up into the next class with all your friends at the end of each year is a serious business too. Muck about enough and you stay down until you learn.

Secondary school repeats the subjects in detail and with heightened analysis; this is an excellent way to work as the students know where they are going and what is involved.

After the obligatory school end examination, all who pass may enroll in their specialised school of choice. Those who have had enough can take work within their extended families and connections in the local community; those whose parents might never have thought have the chance to see their offspring studying the sciences, the classics, or the feeder courses for surveying, teaching, agricultural management and best practice, etc., (to mention the more popular specialisms in a Monculi ethos).

And yes, the teaching could be better, and yes there is violence in some schools, particularly in the large, mixed population centres, and yes, there are problems of favouritism and class clusters around very good schools.

But most children go to their local school, most children are taught (and some are hauled) through to where they wanted to go, some of them discovering their destination on the way, and best of all, none of them are in any doubt that they are Italians with a staggering cultural heritage (if some very iffy bits), and identity; whatever their country of origin, or their parents' class.

They also wear navy blue overalls over their normal clothes so there's none of that appalling school uniform in viscose and plastic, with ties, rubbish either.