I would have liked to say something about the ban on smartphones and tablets in the classroom imposed by Minister Valditara in elementary and middle schools. They are also banned for educational purposes, in case someone manages to learn a lesson better. You feel like saying in your gut: “Thank goodness! Enough of these demonic tools who ruin our children.”
But then you think back to the fact that every morning before 8 you see legions of children heading to school on trolleys, as if they were boarding a spaceship that takes them back to the past. Did you have a trolley to take books to school? Did you have this mountain of ever-growing textbooks? No. And think back to the fact that from the National Recovery and Resilience Plan we have allocated hundreds of millions of euros to the digital training of teachers, that is, to teach them to teach with the aid of smartphones and tablets, not because we want to feel modern, but because those who are under 20 years old they were born in a digital world made of screens and they are not stupid, they are not distracted, they simply have a way of learning and thinking that is different from ours. And if the school doesn’t understand them, these children and these young people, it will lose them forever. We will lose them forever.
I wanted to, but then I read a formidable article by Matteo Lancini in the Press and I decided to borrow his words. I’ll summarize them: it’s right to ban cell phones in class for students, but also for teachers; and also to parents, when they come to school for the end-of-year performance and spend time taking photos and videos to post. Because it is we adults who have built this digital society, we are the reference model that can never disconnect. Only to then attribute to her the responsibility for all the evils in the world because this absolves us parents, we teachers and society as a whole. Instead of trying to understand the profound reasons for children’s anxiety, for their sense of inadequacy, instead of understanding why there are more and more people who tell us “school is useless”. We put them on a spaceship headed to the past with a trolley loaded with books depriving them of the only tool that makes them feel free. But what if we tried to think a little more complex? To question ourselves?