The books of a great author all guard a secret passage that accompanies you in a space of mirrors, of reverberations, of exchange. what happens with the collection The school will save us by Dacia Maraini. The book, which comes out today, Thursday 8 April, for Solferino publisher, is made up of writings – articles, memories, stories – which reconstruct a journey through the desks shared over time and interrupted only by the pandemic. But the synthesis of a commitment that lasted decades immediately proves capable of taking a leap from the simple addition of pieces. On the contrary: it starts precisely from a gap, from a revelation. While asking readers what is happening at the school ?, with the intention of animating a community that quickly finds answers, the writer is not afraid to question herself first of all. Sometimes I wonder if the fact of having lost a child in the seventh month does not affect my desire to meet, talk, compare with the boys. A stupid historical habit of maternal care?
Clear and determined in her desire to know and recognize herself, Maraini appears on the threshold of the schools of Italy: every time she is eager to ideally embrace young people. As if it were the gift of Perdu, that son I could not see grow up, already the protagonist of Happy body, novel of 2018 (Rizzoli), and surprisingly returned in the opening words of this essay.
Reflection after reflection, meeting after meeting, are the boys and girls to stitch the narrative with their voices. The sensation is that of leafing through a collective class diary, between memory and actuality. Both the girls and boys met during the tour in each region respond to the appeal, as well as Dacia herself at 6, wrapped in a cape and hat made of braided sheep’s wool and accompanied to school by her mother – sometimes even by Father Fosco , on skis – in a distant snow-covered Sapporo. On everything and everyone the cover image: a student in a white T-shirt takes flight in a clear sky thanks to a book open on her back in the shape of wings. A light backpack and a simple message: any restart, today more than ever, will not have to let the school slide down the pyramid of national priorities. Why not Dad, the distance learning that has emptied the classrooms since March 2020, is the source of the problems in our educational system. Remote lessons – torment of teachers, pupils, parents – have exacerbated communication difficulties and delays in programs; they have deepened the gaps between more or less equipped institutes; they accelerated the dispersion where it already existed. However, as Dacia Maraini writes with apprehension as she traces the sequence of her interventions for the Corriere della Sera, I find, as then, towards the school system, a sad inertia, a shared silence, a bewilderment and a lack of faith in the future that every time surprise and dishearten me.
Right now, in the crisis, something is perhaps being born. We have glimpsed it in recent months by marking the infinite, often tiny protest initiatives on an ideal map: peaceful, never ideological, passionate, finally able to weld all the worlds of education together in a horizontal line. In the name of this awakening, the writer urges, the school needs trust, enthusiasm, love for the great power of knowledge. We need an ethical and emotional investment as well as an economic one. It will not be one more debate to save us, he seems to suggest, because debates end up burying the impulses under mountains of words and dust. More effective to watch the hands that are raised, hands that want to tell. Like those of Magda, a thin girl with a sad face. She tells me that she was born in Italy of Moroccan parents and that she doesn’t feel completely Italian. This seems to embitter her. I tell her my story as an Italian girl who went to Japan at one year and lived among Japanese children, speaking Japanese; at ten she returned to Italy and had to change language and habits and it was not easy. What helped her in that leap between hemispheres? Books, classmates, finally the awareness that two countries do not divide you, they enrich you. And then there is the case of Tumana Lamin, a 9-year-old Saharawi girl who came to Italy to be treated for anemia and hosted by the Berni family from Castiglioncello. Tumana is studying successfully, he wants to become a doctor because he has seen what good doctors can do to the lives of others. Nobody seems to have anything to object to, says Maraini, until the young Lamin comes of age and is called back by her father to take up her place at the service of the family, in Morocco, in the Auserd camp. It is impossible not to ask oneself, in the face of a destiny like this, to what extent one can and must intervene so that a girl is removed from the habits and customs of a people that nevertheless respects itself.
These are the stories, the questions that the author collects wandering around the schools and punctually reproposes in the spaces of the newspapers that host his columns. Foreigners who become scapegoats instead of revealing themselves as levers for reasoning about a new citizenship, the social changes that teachers armed with passion and talent know how to intercept much better than official decrees, the call that students make to intellectuals to get their hands dirty like Sartre said. In the distrust of political specialists, these young people are asking for participation in public affairs by everyone, especially those who have access to public listening. a nonsense question ?. It almost seems to see her advancing along the rows of benches, Dacia Maraini, never in the chair. The bright gaze, more interested in listening than in teaching. Up to the amazement in front of a girl with a child’s face who turns the Fridays of cities all over the world upside down before the pandemic freezes the demonstrations. Evidently Greta was the fuse that started the fire, but the fire was smoldering. I, who attend the schools, have written this several times: under the surface of an evident political disinterest, under the much criticized apathy, there was a fire that just needed a spark. The spark came from a little girl with braids who guessed the right words.
Greta who speaks to the United Nations, Greta who accuses the powerful and demands solutions immediately, in time for his robbed generation of the future. Greta, now just eighteen, appears so far from Dacia as a child and then older but always lost in novels. Maraini what are you doing? You are distracted as usual, sometimes the teachers of the Santissima Annunziata in Florence pick up on her. I just read. I always have a book under the counter and I read …. It unites them by the same tenacity, the same will not to resign. To seek oneself, to cling to the best of the present, which often the school – and sometimes only the school – can offer. In one of the three stories that close the volume of Solferino, one professor among many is described, a professor who did not care about the discipline, let out whoever he wanted, anxious to explain his lesson in the best possible way. Those few who remained in class crowded around the desk and he was happy to have them close.
To students who remain on, even with the cameras off, and to professors who are not discouraged, even in the dark of moonless nights, this book with wings is dedicated: the wings of the memory of a girl who read between Sapporo, Florence, Palermo, Rome and the never closed wings of an intellectual in love with words, imagination, dialogue.
Your time.news
On April 16 at 4 pm the interview of Elisabetta Rosaspina with Dacia Maraini will be online on the Corriere website
Meet them
The school will save us by Dacia Maraini comes out Thursday 8 April for Solferino (pp. 192, € 15). The book collects writings related to the theme of the school, memories and stories born from meetings with students. The calendar of presentations: Friday 9 at 19 with Marino Sinibaldi at Passaggi Festival online, in streaming on the Facebook profiles of Passaggi and Solferino. On April 16 at 5 pm with Vanessa Roghi, on the YouTube channel of Libraries of Rome and on the Facebook pages of Biblioteche Di Roma, Casa delle Letterature and Leggiincircolo. On 30 April at 5 pm with Andrea Coratti on the Facebook profile of Filosofia in Movimento. On 2 May at 5.30 pm with Federico Taddia on the Facebook profile of the Bper Banca Forum Monzani. On 4 May at 6 pm with Stefania Auci in a meeting organized by the Circolo dei readers of Turin on her website and on the Facebook page
April 8, 2021 (change April 8, 2021 | 08:25)
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