A school not a school
And yes, if we want to take care of our school we will have to reflect on an indefinite and indefinable organism that is far removed from a true and dignified institution dedicated to cultural growth and therefore to human enrichment. We will not pay attention to the wounding of the teacher in the Milanese institute: it would be redundant, belonging to the past, to devote oneself to the now consolidated upheaval of a system such as the school system. See our news of 3 September 2020 – The school and its needs, 13 December 2021 – The school and its rebirth, 26 August 2022 – The school and its decline.
The episode unleashed a deluge of statements, analyses, and positions which had the merit of highlighting the inadequacy of the insiders with respect to the comatose state of the school universe. The theater of visibility was opened by the Minister of Education announcing psychological support in all institutes and tutors to support the personalization of teaching, educators to insist on civic education, all seasoned with the modest and improvident consideration: “Following of Covid, the discomfort of the boys has greatly increased ”. Faced with this prospect, the president of the Council of the Order of Psychologists joined with great satisfaction and expressed the need to implement the presence of his colleagues, experts in school psychology, not only in support of the students but also of the teachers. “We must not only deal with discomfort but at the same time support positive resources”.
Once the entrances to recruitment are wide open, the ranks of experts in psychological education, sociology of communication, school medicine, pedagogy, and why not, social service for school-family relationships are swelling, In short, a great leap for the mental health of the participants and for the serenity of the school’s daily life, which thus finds its presumed holistic function. The voice of the trade unions could not be missing, first of all, the CGIL which with its Federation of Knowledge Workers, a denomination as pompous as it is presumptuous, warns that it is necessary to “abandon the logic of humiliation, merit, competition”, for a shrewd knowledge (ed).
The reasoning of the UIL Lombardia secretariat is of the same thickness: ”The Italian school is an excellence in Europe. But the company talks bad about it by constantly discrediting it, in the end the kids are involved in a company in disarray “. The teachers carry out a commendable job every day, the school must be single, state and secular”. Not even the Napoleonic school, despite its rigidity, had shown itself to be so clear-cut. “Society and politics need to change, the school just needs to regain its prestige, the teachers know how to manage conflicts and have a good preparation that should be recognized by adequate salaries, unfortunately the kids who are not used to evaluations can’t handle the pressure”.
Let’s leave out the analysis of the National Headmasters’ Association which is reduced to invoking a psycho-pedagogical supervision in schools, in line and in support of the ministerial position without a hint of self-criticism or a semblance of self-evaluation, considering that they are a component of the shambles. Then the psychotherapist on duty, following the trendy narration, entertains us on the existential failures suffered by the students due to the pandemic. Thus we learn that school produces anxiety and frustration due to stress, competition, evaluation, lack of perspectives and three years of uncertainty, just as university students are stressed, by what? From learning fatigue? If this were the case, it would be appropriate to set out on paths that ensure happiness. Leaving aside the inconclusiveness of the suggested remedies, we continue by raising a hymn to the Covid producer of science and professionalism in search of employment in what they call a school that has become a Babel that welcomes a recoverable youth through expert treatments.
What about our politically incorrect, after all, we had anticipated inadequacy, poor analysis, carelessness and inconsiderations of these ancient and new professionals. Dwelling on their suggestions we feel, this time yes, disbelief and anguish for the school future of mentally disadvantaged young people who are offered a sad and depressing daily life. Fragile, scared, marked by Covid, not used to pressures, rhythms and assessments, our Baudelaires discharge their pain of living in aggression and opposition. Apprehensive about non-existent pressures and evaluations, in fact 99.98% of the examinees pass the final exam compared to 80% of French students and with not exactly selective study courses.
For the psychiatrist, with whom we agree, Paolo Crepet: “The school has failed, we have an education problem, not discomfort”. Of course, between a fragile and confused school, on what should be its centrality in youth development, and the family that increasingly dilutes its role and presence, the condition of youth can take on connotations of loneliness, harbingers, for small minorities, of character mismatches. When the Minister of Education, with regard to the final oral exam, argued that it could develop as a panoramic chat on the future of the candidate, he worked to recite another De Profundis. An incredible series of Ministers of Education affected by an empty modernism and by the need/ability to convert students into friends/enemies of the school contributed to the transition which has now taken place, let us remember them for future reference, in chronological order: Letizia Moratti, Giuseppe Fioroni , Mariastella Gelmini, Francesco Profumo, Maria Chiara Carrozza, Stefania Giannini, Valeria Fedeli, Marco Bussetti, Lorenzo Fioramonti, Lucia Azzolina, Patrizio Bianchi and Giuseppe Valditara.
Our criticism and our pessimism are not only referable to contemporary decadence, the intrinsic complexity of taking charge of the cognitive aspects of future generations has, over time, stimulated the considerations of thinkers and non-conformist restless minds. Here we are miles away from third- and fourth-rate politicians who, in recent decades, in the name of presumed and incomprehensible renewals, have committed suicide by the subject to be rejuvenated. Even more, how far away from a trade unionism, in fact interested only in the appearance of a ramshackle corporatism.
With our liberalism, on the other hand, how much proximity to the school of Plato for the search for truth, and with Aristotle for the belief that education is an intrinsic principle of the person. In more recent times, two different and distant personalities in ideology and culture, Giovanni Papini and Pier Paolo Pasolini, tried to draw attention to the negativity and criticality of the educational process. The first with a provocative writing of 1914 “Chiudiamo le Scuole”, particularly caustic with teachers unable to transmit confusing the receptive brains where, with lucidity, it emerges that the complexity of the teacher / pupil relationship is a central node in the life of young people. For teachers there is a need to earn their living with a profession considered noble supported by inspectors, principals, janitors, preparators, assistants, publishers, booksellers, stationers: it would be advisable to ensure annuities for all and for teachers to save students from State morons.
Anticipated by 109 years, we find contemporary considerations, the widespread fragility of teachers, corporate concerns, the interested supply chain in support of the teaching body, very little compared to what is expected to help today’s mass of disadvantaged. In the Corriere della Sera article in 1975 “Let’s abolish TV and compulsory schooling” Pasolini emphasizes the need for an education reform where we speak of useless things, and if this is teaching, in the first case even worse, these are examples where young people are defenseless and exposed to a culture of crime; and here how not to connect to Karl Popper’s Bad Teacher Television of 1994. Utopistically, at least how not to suspend compulsory schooling in favor of many and varied readings to foster imagination and intelligence. Pasolini’s sensibility also takes care of teachers and television executives who, in his opinion, can take advantage of layoffs. Having thought about teaching and examples at the same time confirms the need and validity of a systemic approach to the teaching emergency which is far removed from contemporary carelessness.
And yes, we firmly believe it, the lack of authority of teaching cannot fail to be one of the paragraphs of a complete reflection on school. Meanwhile, the conviction that humanization and joy should first of all be breathed in the classrooms presupposes the leader’s ability to inject them, but we really believe not, we are in the absence of many necessary awarenesses.
Autonomy and intellectual independence, freedom of thought, inclination for knowledge and the discovery of man and his environment, were exalted and singled out as the core of the function and utility of a high school by the young Nietzsche and a friend of his. It happened in a literary staging in which the two young men conversed with an old anti-modernist and anti-academic philosopher in whom the figure of Schopenhauer can be glimpsed, and reported in the fifth conference of a cycle held by the young Nietzsche in March 1872 “On the future of our schools”.
The old man, not agreeing with what he heard, spoke of the intimate interiorization that should be felt, as a profound Aristotelian condition, in the eternal and always equal search for truth. The custom of self-education must not allow one to submit to the spirit of an academic culture. The education of young people, warns the philosopher, is measurable with respect to the trinomial philosophy, art and Greek-Roman antiquity, but the professors, having belittled philosophy and neglected art, cannot even discuss the Greeks and Romans. Cultural education, warns the old friend, must make use of aims, methods, models, teachers and companions; any culture that begins with subordination, discipline, and obedience also needs guidance, just as the leader needs those who are led. We believe that study communities need harmony and joy to which it should be firmly pointed out that violence is the antithesis and denial of truth. After all, teaching should presuppose having a clear method and a maieutic operation, but if everything is due it is equally true that there is nothing to teach.
We are aware that this last part of our story will be perceived and interpreted as obsolete and out of time, that’s right, we too agree. It would be gigantic for legislators and insiders to go back in time to a school set up for mass psychotherapy and for the maximum extension of its teachings ready to diminish its very being a school. In fact, everything that politics, information, supranational bodies consider to be a teaching subject is introduced as such, they define it as education of all kinds and of all kinds; Road, Sexual, Sentimental, Environmental, Emotional, Civic, Food, Aesthetic, Moral, Legality, Peace, Citizenship and Constitution, Sustainable Development. Ridiculousness needs no comments, yes a definition, and this is cultural statism. In the same way, we do not think we are talking in detail about the introduction of non-cognitive subjects wanted by the former minister Bianchi (2021/2022).
Luigi Einaudi was right when he warned, in Prediche Inutili, that a system should not be condemned by listing its drawbacks, as well as when he wrote that the past rightly dominates the present and the future.
So, concluding these reflections with Einaudi’s convictions, we could argue that cornerstone for a possible return to school, understood in the fullest sense, cannot fail to start afresh from the abolition of the legal value of educational qualifications. A myth that must be overcome if we want to separate the link between a bureaucratic certification and the passion for culture and knowledge, perhaps, the launch of effective institutions for this purpose.
*Director of the Free Society
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