A class with just one student on Stromboli
After twenty years without classes, the small school in the hamlet is reopening its doors
Ginostra – In this hamlet on the volcanic island of Stromboli, which is not accessible by road, a school class will resume classes on September 10. Twenty years after it closed, a single six-year-old will now sit at the blackboard in the community hall of the San Vincenzo Ferreri parish, taught by a teacher assigned specifically for her.
Ginostra lies at the foot of the volcano, separated from the main town of Stromboli by rugged lava fields, and is accessible only by sea. Ferries dock at a small landing site only when the sea is calm; there are no paved roads or cars in the village; narrow paths and mule trails connect the few houses and are still used today to transport goods. During the winter months, the hamlet is home to barely more than three dozen permanent residents, according to estimates; in the summer, vacationers join them. To this day, there is no permanent connection to the power grid or a continuous road link to the rest of Stromboli, making Ginostra one of the most isolated inhabited places in Italy.
The elementary school had closed twenty years ago after the last school-age child left the village. The municipality of Lipari, to which Ginostra belongs administratively, applied for its reopening in January to the Messina Provincial School Board, and the region approved the one-room school a few days later. The parish provided a building free of charge to serve as the school, and the Archdiocese of Messina and the municipality shared the cost of renovating it. In the future, the student will be taught individually in a so-called “pluriclasse,” a common arrangement in many small Italian schools when there are too few children to form a regular grade-level class.
This case is part of a trend affecting many mountain and island communities in Italy. Declining birth rates and the exodus of young families are leaving classrooms empty or forcing schools to combine multiple grade levels into a single “pluriclasse.” On the neighboring Aeolian island of Filicudi, for example, a ten-year-old girl faces a similar problem because she would have to leave the island to attend middle school. Similar one-child schools are also found in remote regions of Scotland, northern England, and the mountainous areas of Wyoming, though they generally receive little attention beyond their own communities. Ginostra thus serves as a prime example of how closely educational opportunities are linked to the survival of small communities.
