There is a big narrative today about students wanting to go back to school. And there is a gigantic competition, in my opinion, to misrepresent the content of their claims. I am no longer of age to pretend to be a translator of their emotions, what I can do is correct other adults who (more or less at my age) are writing equally stupid narratives, and I can do it by injecting a robust dose of facts.

First, the school is seen as the Apple Weather school. We study, we make friends and why not, even the first crushes. Okay, but Apple Time was a movie that came out, let's say, a long time ago. France was still a country that spoke to young people, Sophie Marceau was still a little girl, and so on. All right.

BUT.

But "school" was not and is not just that. When kids say they miss school, we talk about a MUCH larger amount of things. Which only offers school, and nowhere else. And the fact that the school is the ONLY place to offer the same things must be discussed.

• school is a material place for socializing, and it is free or almost free. If we exclude going to see each other in person in a square (which in any case will sooner or later require to consume something, that is money), we see each other at school every day, and it is not required to spend money to be there and participate. This begs the question: “but how is it possible that EVERY other social place is now a place where you go to spend money (restaurants, bars, if you have empty pockets you cannot practically go to any other social place).
• the school offers a certain degree of security, always free of charge. for this you can let your children go to school reasonably (apart from extreme and very rare situations), believing that they will not be kicked to death by a fanatic martial arts dealer. On why school is the only safe place for children, we must reflect.
• school is the only place where a teenager can talk to an adult who is not a parent. It's true, there are also sports venues, where there are coaches, and once there were churches. But if we talk about tens of hours a week of continuous dialogue with a dozen adults from different backgrounds and perspectives, there is nothing else besides school. Even if we included dialogue with parents, it would still remain minimal (in terms of time) compared to continuous dialogue with teachers. We are talking about 7-8 months a year, five / six hours a day. Which parent spends a lot of time with their children? And here too we should ask ourselves questions.
• the school is independent of family and geographic geometry. It is true that everyone goes to the nearest school, but if the boys were left in the wild, they would do what was done in our times without the internet: they would be with the boys from the neighborhood, from the block, perhaps from the little bar. At school (if we are talking about superiors), better or worse you meet people in a circle that, to encompass all students, can be as big as a province.

Ultimately, then, students miss all of this. They express it by listing “the things we can't do” because they were the things they did inside the school, and this suits that trade union world that wants to reduce the whole problem to Dad / Non Dad.

So let's get rid of the DAD issue first:

if distance learning does not work it is because the Italian school is made up of people who are intrinsically unable to think digitally. DAD can be done differently.

The teaching is based on the idea of ​​a teacher who does not trust the student and therefore has to control him. Check that he is careful, check that he is not copying, check that he has not read on the internet, check that, check that, the teaching is based on the police professor.

Anecdote: my daughter goes to a Montessori / Dalton school . Not all German high schools are, but one thing is certain: it is measurable that Dad damages them less. Because'? Because the climate of police suspicion is not present in the Montessori method. (I'm not apologizing for Germany, Montessori was Italian, remember?). Even with the fact that in Germany high school starts at 10 and lasts until 18, not even in the first years of Montessori high school have I seen professors starting from the idea that kids who have additional sources are "cheating". Okay, he read it on Wikipedia. Did you get it? He knows? Good.

Moral of the story: DaD only works if the school abandons the vision of the suspicious policeman and the trials made to make sure "it's really your thing." One of my daughter's professors told me that if he doesn't want the kids to copy one from the other, he simply asks them for group work, with marked contributions (like the credits: who did what). And it should be explained why a group work is not "copying". Answer: in the school of the Heart book there were no group works.

So I'm sorry: the failure of the DDA in my opinion measures the difficulty that the school has in adopting methods less ancient than the 1800s. The school of the heart book does not work with the DDA. Dad simply shows that the following dialogue:

• I graduate in history of the medieval sacripante.
• and then what work will you do?
• I do the competition for teachers: the real social elevator of the useless, the dump of the lazy university student.

it does not produce a school capable of withstanding the tests of reality.

Having said that, let's get to the point: school is much more than teaching. Those who are under the illusion that the boys are nostalgic for Charlemagne and Dolce Stil Novo have not really understood the material facts of the school I listed above.

And let's go and see them in practice, because I don't want to be a translator. We list facts.

• we have transformed EVERY youth social center into a place where money is spent . If I go back to my childhood, I remember that we could stay in the courtyard of the bar as long as we wanted, even without consuming. Of course, every now and then we consumed, every now and then someone went to play the video game, but one played and 5 others watched. Today the obligation to consume is implicit. We could be in public places practically at will, and not all public places were a shopping center, or populated like a shopping center. At the time there were arcades, where some played occasionally, but it was a 1:10 ratio on average. The managers knew they had to have a bivouac of 100 young people to have 10 playing.

Obviously the boys today have the school as the ONLY place where they can camp in 100 without having to consume everyone. If 100 go to a football school, a gym, anywhere else, they have to pay all 100.

Who is responsible for having transformed every place into a place where there is a shop, a shopping center, a club, and having removed (with the excuse of homeless people) even the benches where the boys sat to see each other? Covid?

• the security. When accompanying parents to school, parents are relatively certain (barring terrible and very rare cases) that they will return safe and sound. The rest? If it is a small town, you can still trust it because you know the place they frequent. But we know that when a parent in town lets a child go out, he is on apnea until he comes back. The feeling was relieved by cell phones, sure. But the roads are TOO risky.

Who has transformed cities into criminal sewers, with the sole exclusion of places where one spends money and schools? Covid or who wanted people to regiment themselves in the places where you spend ? Because let's face it, if your kids go out and go into a mall with the usual night watch at the entrance, you feel better. But why is the shopping center safer, or rather: why is the city LESS safe? Is it Covid?

• the place for dialogue with adults. Already'. Here we are in the situation where one should be ashamed. Churches and oratories are hunting grounds for pedophiles. If once we could go to bars populated by adults, today adults go to the aperitif, brunch, in places too expensive for the average teenager. Exceptions? Of course, adults with specific legal responsibilities: music course, gym, football course … coaches and tutors. Everything, guess what…. for a fee!

Once the parents knew very well that going out and going to the town square, the children would somehow interact with "random adults met on the spot". Today, the thought "random adults met on the spot" is enough to freeze the blood in your veins. With the exception of the random adult who has the gym, the random adult who has the soccer association, the random adults inside the shopping center… and so on.

Over time, after the first years of school, the children begin to make raids in an ever wider range. We took scooters as elaborate as an F-14 and we went further and further. Today… ni. Public transport is a place to be avoided, they go out of service very early, riding a scooter in the dark is a bet against SUVs fired at crazy speeds, unless you do something organized on an organized route. And it costs. As a free and safe faraway place, only the school remained.

One thing simply needs to be admitted: kids don't just lack teaching. One place is missing, the ONLY place left, where you can exist with empty pockets, talk to adults, be with friends, get out of the family, get out of the neighborhood, and be safe.

The rest is paid. EVERYTHING else is paid. Everything else has a cost.

This is what nobody wants to talk about.

Every city is, in every single square meter, a place that you pay for, if what you want is safety, fun and sociality.

Safety, fun, sociability and the benevolent presence of adults are all paid for. Except at school.

Teaching is exactly the last thing kids miss. They miss the world. Which you simply narrowed down to school.

School is everything for them, for the simple reason that outside, unless you pay, there is NOTHING.

And with this, Covid has NOTHING to do with it.