Before the resumption of lessons, a circular arrived that couldn’t wait, not because the calendar dictated it, but because school time, even if caged, trampled on and ridiculed, is never neutral and can really have value. The circular establishes that that silence will take place on Wednesday, at an agreed time, for the victims of Crans-Montana. Said like this, it risks sounding like a procedure, an organizational provision, a necessary formality destined to wear out quickly, as often happens to gestures that are regulated: instituting a minute of silence means calling into question a gesture – in certain cases usual, and for this very reason sometimes worn out, faded – a gesture that today puts us in difficulty, because silence has become an alien practice, requiring concentration, depth, waiting, and which due to lack of habit of all this is increasingly often abbreviated, scratched, sweetened with background music, as happens even in stadiums, where the “minute” lasts a few seconds and sees its meaning watered down by applause, embarrassment, whistles.
A tragedy that goes through the kids
Also for this reason, the circular brings with it a weighty request, because it forces you to decide what to do before and after that minute dedicated to a tragedy that this time has affected the children. We live immersed in a continuous flow of overwhelming images and news which, by dint of accumulating, seem to lose specific weight. Venezuela, with its crisis and the worrying acceleration of these times; the images that arrive from Kiev, where war has become a structural condition of existence; Gaza, where Christmas is spent in the cold, without electricity and without any peace; the shipwrecks in the Mediterranean, which continue to occur involving hundreds of nameless human beings for those who, like us, read the news of their deaths and move on. All this happens continuously before our eyes and yet remains, for many of us, at a safe distance, filtered, mediated, observed.
Proximity that changes everything
Crans-Montana, however, isn’t: something happened that pierced the general indifference – I’m not alluding to particular sensitivity! – and encouraged us to talk about it at home, to read something beyond the news, to ask ourselves some questions. And then Crans-Montana touched our students’ peers, crossed their same ages, their own imaginaries, their own spaces of possibility. I teach in a high school in Milan, and I have no difficulty imagining that someone in those classrooms knows someone involved, or knows someone who knows who was there, or simply – and this applies to everyone – recognized themselves in those faces, in those dynamics, in that idea of a holiday that suddenly turns into tragedy. This is what changes everything: not the exceptional nature of the pain, but its proximity.
Return to class as if nothing had happened?
For this reason, returning to class on Wednesday and starting as if nothing had happened, opening the Italian, history or Latin book, would not simply be “professional”; it would be cold, almost stinging, as if nothing had happened between the last time we saw each other and today. And instead something happened, and ignoring it means missing an opportunity, because the human soul investigates itself with Dante, of this I am convinced, but in this case also showing itself affected and ready to touch on a tragic episode that happened at a short distance – spatial, temporal, vital – from them, indeed from all of us.
The role of the school and the risk of getting the tone wrong
This circular, then, helped me to put my mind back on returning, thinking about the students I teach and looking for a path of meaning so that the school also makes a contribution, immersed as it is in present society and not just an increasingly incomprehensible and impermeable institution, and does not leave them alone with thoughts that they will carry with them anyway. The problem, at this point, is to understand what to do from the teacher’s desk, knowing that there is no right answer, but only the risk, always lurking, of being in the wrong register, tone, everything.
Words, silences, open spaces
We can indicate a reading, an in-depth analysis, an authoritative voice – I am thinking, for example, of the reflections of Alberto Pellai, who for years has tried to give adult words to the emotional world of adolescents and who, among the many very valid interventions published in recent days, I have chosen as the closest to my sensitivity – but it would be a mistake to think that it is enough to rely on the expert to bring order to something which, by its nature, has no order. I will try to do it like this: I will say that this news caught me in the midst of particularly peaceful holidays – and perhaps this was not the case for everyone – and that this is also why it struck with particular violence; I will mention the fact that, as a parent, the harshness of what happened imposed itself on me in an even more lacerating way; then, for those who feel like it, I will open a space, not to explain, not to conclude, but to try to make a provisional point together, perhaps suggesting and welcoming some other article or reflection.
Avoid preaching
There will be those who, with different and better expertise and skills than me, will talk about death, some about chance, some about God; who will have clear words and who will remain silent, and even that silence, if authentic, will have full citizenship. One thing, however, seems certain to me, and it is worth saying it without too much caution: we must avoid veering, even with the best intentions, towards preaching against the high, towards the list of faults or generational imprudence. That kind of comment was certainly heard and read by our students on social media, often overflowing with resentment in this case too. There will be time, and there are serious reasons, to address the issue of fun, limits, risk; but this is not the time, and we don’t need a news episode – let alone a tragedy like this – to address a crucial topic by trivializing it with moralistic tones, distancing the kids and tying this tragedy to a lesson on prudence or decorum. Let’s not make this mistake.
Hold the silence
Ultimately, the issue remains in the silence that the circular requires and in the discomfort that that silence brings with it. The minute itself can be respected or violated, shortened or accompanied by background music; but what really matters is whether, at school, we will be able to handle it without immediately filling it with explanations, conclusions, “serious things” to do immediately afterwards. On Wednesday, from the classroom, it will not be easy to understand where to stop and when to speak. The only thing to avoid is to chase away what happened and is still there in the craw, doing as if it weren’t there.
