A student urges: “It is said that the first victim of the war is the truth: what sources do you rely on?” She rings the bell, there is recreation at the Marco Polo technical institute in Florence, but the boys don’t get up, she fries the desire to understand. The questions are in flurry, also coming from other institutes connected at a distance: “But the role of China?”; “How can we speak of neutrality, that of Russia is invasion …”; “What need for Ukraine and Moldova to join NATO?”; “And Syria then?”. And here is the unsettling question, fired at the last: “But will nuclear weapons be used?”.
Don’t Look Up Generation
Between fear and the desire to understand, the generation that does not know the film Day After but the apocalyptic Don’t Look Up, who has experienced pandemic anxiety and shouted to the world that there is no planet B, is disconcerted by a war that comes out of video games and enters Tik Tok, knocks on the doorstep: “But how is this possible?” . The conflict in Ukraine in the classrooms is a tsunami. Prof, can you tell us about it? Prof, what do you think? Prof, but when will it end? Will end?
“The atomic bomb is a stranger to them”
“They need an adult to guide them, a space to discuss it,” he says Fabrizio Di Pietro, 43 years old, history teacher at the Volta high school in Milan. “I had grandparents who went to war, they didn’t grow up with these stories at home. The atomic bomb is even more unknown, they weren’t born at the time of Chernobyl, I remember my mother instead of sacrificing the balloon on the terrace because she didn’t you never know with radiation. With those of the third the need was to rewind the tape, from Russia in the Middle Ages and Tsarist to the modern era. With those of the fifth, who have already studied the Russian Revolution, it was necessary to teach international relations. On contemporaneity, where history programs do not arrive, we need to put our hand to it and we need precise and measured in-depth study “.
Born after the Cold War
The dean of the Marco Polo in Florence offered it to his students, Ludovico Artinviting Francesco Petrini e Simone Paoli, professors of International Relations at the universities of Padua and Pisa. Two hours of debate with children born after the Cold War: from Putin’s underestimation of the Ukrainian resistance to the rearmament of Germany. With the foresight to distinguish facts from opinions, the need to help children find a thread in the flow of news. “At this moment it is important for schools to provide information”, explains the manager. Not all of them, but there are those who have stopped with the programs.
Ukraine, the school mobilizes for peace: aid, flash mobs, children’s letters to warlords
by Ilaria Venturi
Spinoza can wait
“I had to explain Spinoza, we are behind, but how could I have seen them so upset?”, He reasons Gloria Ghetti, Philosophy teacher at the Torricelli-Ballardini high school in Faenza where the daily newspapers were suddenly snapped up in the janitor’s lodge. “They began to read them – observes the teacher – I dedicated the hour starting from the Cold War and trying to get them out of the friend-enemy logic, from the identification of Russia with Putin. But I gave up when they asked me if the war will come to to us: guys, I don’t have the sphere. I was struck by the silence with which they listen to you, they are hungry for knowledge and urgency to do “.
“Prof, will they call us to arms?”
Lessons and collections of goods for refugees, experts in Teams and lobbies filled with boxes with clothes and medicines: this is how the Italian high schools reacted. The fear of being called to arms runs in adolescents, the story that comes out of the books is scary. And then other hands raised: “Prof, shall we go to fight?”. In the classroom Luca Malgioglioa literature teacher at the Di Vittorio-Lattanzio institute in Rome, in the Prenestina area, tried to understand their anxieties: “In addition to the fear of direct involvement, I saw them frightened by the violence of finding themselves in front of something they don’t understand. to us, school is knowledge “.
“Troubled by rumors about Tik Tok from peers in the bunkers”
Elena Dal Pozzoteacher of law at the technician Salvemini of Casalecchio, he read with his fifth grade students the Sole 24Ore analyzing the economic consequences of sanctions. “It is necessary and appropriate to address the issue of war, we have felt this responsibility a lot: transmitting knowledge serves to contain their emotionality”. Maria Angela Binetti, professor of Italian and history at the Giulio Cesare linguistic high school in Bari, has scanned the maps of the ISPI (Higher Institute for International Politics) because at least that way they know where Ukraine is and much more. He tells of a fourth particularly disturbed by the testimonies, followed on Tik Tok, of their peers who ran away or were in the bunkers.
“Geography is back in fashion”
“Initially there was bewilderment and they were poorly informed, then I found them more and more aware, even if you have to explain to the little ones what NATO is and resume the coordinates of geography, a matter that has almost disappeared”, the testimony of Daniela Bernagozzi who teaches at the Peano-Pellico high school in Cuneo. Spread their arms, the teachers: school programs are inadequate, but the world is in a war, let alone. At least, they sigh, the infamous hours of civics were served. At the Copernicus high school in Bologna, Francesco Strazzari, full professor of International Relations at the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Pisa, was confronted with all 60 classes: lessons suspended, at current affairs school. Because guys, the expert tells them, “it is not a good time that is preparing”.