School, Bianchi: ‘our country reacted in difficult moments, at the beginning dad was a problem’

“I thank all of you for this initiative which reflects the right need to rethink this period. There is no capacity to continue, to move forward, if there is no capacity to recover all that we have suffered, grasped and innovated in this period. I imagine a stopped country, I imagine a country that has been torn down, but this does not correspond to reality. Once again our country has shown that in the most difficult moments it has been able to react. Our school has been able to react. Yes, it is true, at the beginning the dad was a problem, but the dad is not the alternative to the presence, it is the alternative to total absence. This must be remembered because at the beginning the dad was the alternative to an absent teaching, of a abandonment that would have been even more dramatic “. This was stated by the Minister of Education Patrizio Bianchi during the presentation of the 9th national research report of the “Proteo Generation” observatory. “We have always been accustomed – he added – to thinking that the lesson is me, my book, my students, and at a certain point we put a computer in the place of my students and the students on the other side. But we discovered that all our children from 0 to 18 were born in this century and all teachers were born in the last century. Therefore all our children were born with a mobile phone, they were born with a computer and therefore it is clear that the tools disposition have changed since our time. Writing is the measure of how time changes. But our kids have learned one thing more than us. They were born in the age of social media, in the age in which everything is remote and everything is present, they tell us that it is not enough, they tell us that they want to go beyond the tools that their age is giving them. Kids want books and they want to be together with their companions. When I was young we used to go at school to find information ion that you were missing, but today, given the use of technology, the school has been stripped of the obligation to give information. Despite this it is more school than before, because it must give critical ability, the school serves to allow everyone to use the tools that our age is giving us “.” But be careful – concluded the minister – to use the tools not to be used by the tools. Every now and then the doubt arises that we are used by the tools, just look at our obsession with the mobile phone. We too must learn from our children in rediscovering the beauty of the need to speak and write. We must rediscover the pleasure of writing which means the domination of the word, it means rejecting the banality with which we have lived in past years when words seemed only feathers in the wind. The school serves to understand, but above all to make community, that is the idea of ​​having someone with whom to develop a relationship that lasts over time, like with the friends you make at school “.