The Lithuanian community in Italy were appalled to see a geography textbook group Lithuania and the other Baltic states as part of the “Russian region”. Both the community and the Lithuanian ambassador have appealed to Italian authorities to correct what they see as blatant misrepresentation.
PensoGeo, a textbook for the seventh grade published by Pearson Italia, contains a chapter on the “Russian region” that supposedly includes seven countries: Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova as well as Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.
Exercises accompanying the chapter ask students to compare the seven countries’ sizes and describe which seas they border.
Daiva Lapėnaitė, leader of the Lithuanian community of Sardinia, says the textbook is used in a school in Cagliari, on the southern coast of the Italian island. She has posted a photo of the textbook on Facebook, receiving many negative reactions. “All Lithuanians in Italy are horrified, as are Italians themselves,” she has told LRT.lt.
The community has sent letters about it to the publisher, as well as Italy’s education ministry, the Geographical Society and the Association of Geography Teachers.
Elzė Simonkevičienė-di Meglio, president of the Lithuanian community of Italy, says there are plans to review the content of other textbooks used in Italy in order to present a comprehensive report about the misrepresentation of the Baltic region.
“We know of two other textbooks. I wonder what the situation is with history textbooks. We cannot tolerate this,” Simonkevičienė-di Meglio has told LRT.lt.
Lithuanian ambassador to Italy, Ričardas Šlepavičius, has confirmed he is aware of the textbook. He is planning to meet his Latvian and Estonian counterparts shortly in order to coordinate their efforts. Šlepavičius is also planning a meeting with advisers to the Italian education minister.
“As a geographer myself, I am able to talk about this concrete case. I can say with competence that this is anti-scientific content that has no basis either in terms of natural or social geography,” Šlepavičius has told LRT.lt.
According to him, a more accurate classification – adopted by the UN, for example – would group the Baltic states within the Northern Europe region.
Approached for comment, Italian Ambassador to Lithuania Diego Ungaro has told LRT.lt that he is aware of the issue, as are officials in Rome.
“In my opinion, rather than an act of deliberate disinformation towards Italian pupils by someone under Russian influence and an intention to manipulate geography in a revival of the USSR, I would consider it as blatant evidence of poor attention not only to the changes which occurred in the last 30 years, but even more to a serious understanding of what a ‘geographic region’ is. Bad marks in two disciplines,” Ungaro has said in a written comment.
According to him, Italian schools use many different textbooks, not all of which are “of this low level”.
“I intend to reach the publishing house to inform them of the negative reaction their lack of professionalism has created, in addition to the bad information provided to the pupils,” he added.
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