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the strength of the monks

The strength of the monks

ENZO BIANCHI

Endless streams of monks walking silent and resolute in the middle of two rows of the crowd with their shaved heads and orange and crimson clothes, unarmed monks squatting in front of soldiers in riot gear. Ports used to the silence antilacrimogeni covered with masks, old and young monks injured, killed, imprisoned, beaten ... The world seems tragically out only at this time an entire country and, at the heart of it, its monks. And, surprise, wonder what inner strength to face them and move them a lever which relies for his ransom a people oppressed by a dictatorial regime. People we hastily judge "out of the world, detached from the ambitions and worries that inhabit their contemporaries, they reveal more able to grasp the roots of a dislocation and the unsustainability of a life, those most able to voice - paradoxically through silence - the stifled cry of the oppressed, taking on the suffering and dignity of a nation. We see them only in extreme situations, like at the time of the monks who set fire in Vietnam, the former Burma in revolt or resistance and exile of the Tibetan lamas, an icon of a people battered, or confine them in a fascinating world poetic, like the protagonists from the Burmese Harp or the most recent Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ... and Spring. Yet they know very concrete grasp what eludes the most: the ultimate root of things. This certainly depends on some characteristics of Buddhism and its monks, via a "monastic" in its essence and structure, which inside every young person is invited to spend time as Monaco in their own learning human society where ordinary people encounter every day on their way the monks who, in silence, trust and abandonment to the generosity of others, ask the street a bowl of rice, food for them, yes, but especially at the donor to pursue righteousness in their lives. Not by chance we saw pictures of monks in recent days that kept ostentatiously reversed its bowl as a sign of extreme protest, as if to say we are willing to deprive ourselves of food, but at the same time deprive the company of unfair road to make a 'meritorious action. But this epiphany in the capacity of Burmese monks to catalyze the feelings of ordinary people especially find some common traits of monasticism as an anthropological phenomenon, even before that as an element internal to a particular religious way. The monastic life, in fact, is a human phenomenon, and therefore universal, which has the same characters at all latitudes, this not only in the history of various religions, but also of some current and philosophical schools. It is a form of life that always affects both men and women that is characterized by the celibacy and some separation from the social environment and often also religious affiliation: elements that alone will explain the nature of minority presence always. As part marginal, emerges from the Monaco area exogenous but, being part of the endogenous system of religion and society, is an external agent that works and is effective inside. Monasticism never stays completely exogenous, "other" - the pain became sectarian and heretical - but neither is it ever entirely endogenous, as if it were a force that was created and developed within the institutional system. This dual membership of Monaco is that, as a minority effective inoculants within the religious and social system which is always a diastasis and jointly building and protest. To some extent the Monaco maintains contact with the culture dominant, but is also a protest, and a collision with this research, conflicting with the "middle way." "Peculiar task of Monaco - Merton wrote, a Monaco of the West so familiar to Buddhist monasticism - to keep alive in the modern world is the contemplative experience and keep it open to technological man of our time the possibility of recovering the integrity of its deeper interiority. " Yes, monasticism is counterculture, that other culture, minority, but for this very reason, able to play a crucial role and effective in the long term. So, why not ask for those who exhibit the Burmese monks: they show for us, wrapped in the richness of our short-sighted person with no sense of the West. Article from www.lastampa.it (09/28/2007)

Babi Italia Carlisle Convertible Crib

A liberal society that wants to take to defend those affected by the change

Il Corriere della Sera, September 23, 2007

Market and welfare, Italy and the Fiat economic scene The intervention of World Sergio Marchionne at the conference of "industry"


The history of Fiat needs to be placed and understood within the social context in which the turnaround has been achieved. Managing a business in Europe means first of all have to do with a model of capitalism that have characteristics very specific. Some economists are convinced that the European system - to improve productivity, efficiency and profits - should converge towards the American model. I do not think that this type of convergence is possible in the medium term, but I do not believe it would be desirable. European organizations are born and raised in a cultural soil fertilized by two historical conditions: a tradition of openness to the relatively new market and a strong sense of social responsibility. There is no single model of capitalism. United States, Asia, Europe are all in competition with each other but no one converges to anyone else. The only common denominator is the market. These organizations give their best when they are made bath and open competition in the global economy.

is the concept of social responsibility that distinguishes Europe from the United States. According to OECD analysis, public social spending is about 27% of GDP in France, Germany and Italy - in Sweden even 38% - while it is around 16% in the U.S.. The difference between the levels of public spending - European and American - is manifested clearly in 1975. Since that time there is a significant increase in spending in Europe while in the U.S. remains constant over time. Investigate what are the reasons is the job of politicians. Whatever the reason, these differences exist, and anyone working in Europe should consider this particular social and political context. I am convinced, not only on the basis of my experience in Fiat, but also in other European industries, which can and must seek constructive dialogue. And the solutions can be found. In

Fiat have obtained important results on the path of dialogue. After ten years-and without an hour strike, which is a quite unique event for Italy was re-signed-business integration. After ten years were recruited in the first young factory in exchange for working overtime shifts. We have signed an agreement with local institutions for the rehabilitation of Mirafiori, the largest Italian industrial complex, involving also launching a new line of production and absorption of short-term layoffs. The results achieved by Fiat show that similar transformations are possible, even in a country with a strong consciousness and union with what the majority of Anglo-Saxon commentators would call "inflexible structure of the work." If I had to choose between trying to resolve the report of General Motors and its union (UAW) to treat or employment levels in Europe, I would prefer the latter.

There is no doubt that the productivity and flexibility are key elements of our industrial development. In this context, Italy is far behind the rest of Europe, but I remain convinced that the path of constructive dialogue that the problems can be solved. If a liberal society must stand the test of time, is in its interest to support those affected by the change.

Europe can and must be distinguished in the creation and operation of free markets, recognizing and dealing effectively with the consequences of their activities on their members. It must do so in an honest and fair, without falling prey to some too protective mechanisms that are already in use in some countries and especially in Italy, can seriously threaten the country's industrial recovery. But the commitment exists and can not be ignored. The development of an enterprise is not just a question di tecnologia o di risorse finanziarie. È prima di tutto una questione di cultura. Le nostre imprese hanno bisogno di abbracciare la sfida del nuovo e pensare al futuro come a una grande opportunità. Hanno bisogno di un contesto trasparente e altamente competitivo. Hanno bisogno di vivere la cultura del cambiamento come una necessità. Di misurarsi ogni giorno sul merito, di fondare le proprie radici sui valori della concorrenza e del mercato. Quello che ogni Paese può fare è garantire che questa partita si giochi alla pari, che le opportunità siano le stesse offerte ad altre imprese in altri Paesi. In Italia non sempre queste condizioni sono così facili da trovare.

Qualche ragione c'è se gli investimenti esteri sono ancora così low. And these reasons are called bureaucracy, services, infrastructure, taxes and operating costs. From my personal experience, I saw that the red tape at the end protect inefficient companies, companies that have no prospects of development and in most cases downloaded costs on to customers. The bureaucracy does nothing but food itself. Because it brings the company to close like a clam, to protect what already exists, without ever addressing the challenges of change. Similarly, there are other important elements to build an economic system that can show "attractive" not only for those who already work in Italy but also for foreign companies. I think the improvement of public services, the creation a network of efficient and modern infrastructure, starting with the road network and transport in general. But I think also to reduce the tax burden and the cost of energy as an issue in Italy is quite disproportionate to the rest of the industrialized countries.

All these arguments apply even more so for southern Italy, where priority is to bridge the gap with the rest of the country. But the perspective from which we must move can not be that charitable. The culture of welfarism produces dependence and off the spirit of initiative and sense of responsibility. The work is created only if the economic mechanisms are efficient and if the market demands are high. In this way the culture of change and competition can find fertile ground. I believe that the case of Fiat is just one example of the restructuring of Europe and force positive change. Our change was made by a group of international managers, many of them Italians, who have embraced the idea of \u200b\u200bglobal competition and are willing to get involved and to involve other stakeholders in the economic system to achieve the necessary levels of competitiveness . Large organizations are the result of the leadership of men and women who understand the concept of service, community, respect for other fundamental and inspiring. There

una storia che oggi non vi ho raccontato. In un certo senso è troppo presto per raccontarla, è la storia della trasformazione personale dei leader che sono stati coinvolti nel rilancio della Fiat e delle persone che gestivano. Ci sono dozzine di esempi simili e indubbiamente più validi e significativi: General Electric negli ultimi 25 anni, prima con Jack Welch ed adesso con Jeff Immelt; la resurrezione di Ibm operata da Lou Gerstner, le esperienze di Robert Oppenheimer nel Manhattan project con il team che ha costruito la bomba atomica, l'incredibile vittoria di Bili Clinton nelle elezioni presidenziali del 1992. Ma l'elemento comune a tutti questi casi è che tutti hanno lasciato un segno indelebile sulla formazione e sulla crescita dei leader. Sono cambiati forever.

We are learning how to live from survivors and we are developing the ability to think ahead in an aggressive and positive. And we're doing in a country that has often been labeled by the Economist structurally and chronically loser with titles such as "Goodbye. sweet life "and" Do not cry for me, Italy. But this is proof that there is hope for us all, not even the British have the ability to go beyond the limits of credulity and imagination. After all, the history of Fiat is the story of the power of leadership and lack of fear of an intact group of leaders committed to achieving the goals. In the words of Mel Gibson in Braveheart: "Men do not follow men. The men follow courage. " And maybe we have to agree with a political theorist much misunderstood - Niccolo Machiavelli - that about 600 years ago, said: "The return to the principle is often determined by simple virtue of a man. His example has such an influence for good men want to imitate the bad ones and they are ashamed to lead a life contrary to his example. " In

Fiat we are building a team led by men and women of virtue. It is thanks to their courage and their virtues if I can now conclude by quoting the end of the book''A History of Two Cities''by Charles Dickens and paraphrasing the last words: "It is a Far, Far Better Thing Fiat does, Than it has ever done. It Is A Far, Far Better Place is going to it Than it has ever gone. " Translated: "Fiat is doing much, much better than it ever did. It's going to a better place, much better than it has ever been. "

Source: www.corriere.it

Lime Green Tea Towels

Telling a story to save the men

Article from The Republic of September 5, 2007, p.. 1

David Grossman

publish here almost exactly the speech with which David Grossman dellaLetteratura Festival opened yesterday in Berlin: an analysis of the language of individuals and the language of the masses against the backdrop of the Holocaust and the relationship that the new generations with the tragedy: the subject of Grossman's most famous novel, "See Under: Love."

Being an Israeli writer who opens literature festival in Berlin is a great honor for me. This sentence would have been unthinkable and unpronounceable until a few years ago and still can not be indifferent to its import. Although between Germany and Israel - and between Israelis, Jews and Germans - are maintained close relationships, a phrase like this is neither neutral nor obvious. Is there a place in consciousness, in the heart, in which certain phrases have to go through the sharp blades of time and memoria, come un raggio di luce, per scomporsi in una miriade di suoni e di colo­ri.

E qui, a Berlino, non posso che cominciare il mio discorso con queste parole, che si scompongono dentro di me attraverso le lame affilate del tempo e della memoria. Sono nato e cresciuto a Gerusalemme, in un quartiere, in una famiglia, dove la gente non era nemmeno in grado di pro­nunciare la parola «Germania». Faticava persino a dire «Shoah». Parlava di «ciò che è successo lag­giù». È interessante notare che in ebraico, in yiddish, o in qualsiasi altra lingua parlata da ebrei, la Shoah è per lo più «qualcosa che è successo laggiù», Unlike "what happened then," for non-Jews. There is a vast difference between there and then. Then is an adverb of time that indicates a past that no longer exists. There is an adverb of place, alluding to the fact that somewhere, at some place, what happened is still smoldering, sirafforza, and could return to explode. It is not a finished thing.

Certainly not for us Jews. As a child I felt very often speak of "the Nazi beast," but when asked who it was adults, they refused to explain.

Dicevano che ci sono cose che un bambino non deve sapere. Più tardi scrissi in Ve­di alla voce: amo­re di Momik, fi­glio di sopravvis­suti all'Olocausto al quale i genitori non rivelano ciò che è avvenuto laggiù. Momik, pieno di paura, immagina la bel­va nazista come un mostro che domina un paese chiamato laggiù, maltratta le persone a cui vuole bene, fa cose che lasciano ferite indelebili e nega loro la possibilità di avere una vita normale, serena.

La mia generazione, quella dei nati nei primi anni Cin­quanta in Israele, viveva in un silenzio carico di presenze, densamente affollato. Nel quartiere in cui abitavo there were people who had nightmares every night, screaming. More than once, when we walked into a room where adults tell stories of the war, the conversation was interrupted. But every now and then we could pick up fragments of phrases: "The last time I saw him in Himmlerstrasse at Treblinka ',' She lost two sons during the first raid." (...)

When I was seven years was held in the Jerusalem trial of Adolf Eichmann and then we began to hear descriptions of the atrocities during the dinner. My generation has lost its appetite, and not just for food. He has lost something deeper than our children, then of course we did not understand and that it became clear later. Maybe it was the loss of the illusion that our parents could protect us from what made us afraid, or the belief that we Jews could one day live safe and peaceful as the other people.

But perhaps most of all, we felt the loss of our natural trust of children in the other, in the goodness of others, in his compassion. About twenty years ago when my eldest son was three years old, in kindergarten that he attended was celebrated, as every year, the day of remembrance for the victims of the Holocaust. He did not understand much of what he was told. He returned home confused and scared. "Dad, what are the Nazis? What they did and why. " I did not want to tell her. I, who was raised in a silence that I had caused fears and nightmares, I had written a book about a boy who was almost mad because of the silence of the parents, suddenly I understood why my parents and those of my friends had been silent.

I felt that if I told my son what had happened there, if I had mentioned, but with great delicacy, something of its purity of three year old child would be contaminated. I felt that when those possibilities had made cruel innocent in his conscience, he would never have been the same child. It was no longer a child.

After it was published in See Under: Love in Israel, some critics wrote that I belonged to the "second generation of the Holocaust," which was the son of "Holocaust survivors." They are not. My father arrived in the land of Israel from Poland in 1936. My mother was born in Palestine before the founding of the state.

Yet they are the son of "Holocaust survivors" because even in my home, as in so many Israeli homes, had stretched a wire load of anguish that we could tap at any time. And even though we were very careful and did not quickly, she felt a constant tremor of insecurity in the possibility of existence of jealousy towards others and what these others might get you when you least expect it. (...)

Anyone who was born in Israel after the Holocaust is brought inside the feeling - that we were forbidden to speak and then maybe we were not able to express in words - that we Jews in dialogue directly with death. That life, even when it is full of energy and hope and fertility of a young nation, under renovation, is more of a huge effort, constant, to escape the threat of death.

In Israel of the fifties and sixties, not only in moments of despair but also those in which the exaltation for the "creation of a nation 'faded only slightly, when we felt a bit 'tired of our terrific revival, in those moments of melancholy, private and national, we could feel the grip of frost that gripped the heart and whispered softly but peremptory: the life fades so fast, everything is so fragile. The body, the family. Death is real, everything else is an illusion.

When I realized that I would become a writer, I also realized that I wrote about the Holocaust. I think these two consciousnesses are born in me simultaneously. Perhaps because from an early age I had the feeling that all the books I had read about the Holocaust not answer simple questions, vital, and I had to ask myself to which I respond da solo.

E più il tempo passava più sentivo crescere in mela sensa­zione che non sarei stato in gra­do di comprendere la mia esistenza in Israele come uomo, padre, scrittore, israeliano, ebreo, fintanto che non avessi scritto della vita che non avevo vissuto laggiù, durante la Shoah, e cosa mi sarebbe suc­cesso se fossi stato una vittima, o uno degli assassini.

Perché volevo sapere en­trambe le cose. Non mi accon­tentavo di una.(...) Volevo sa­pere cosa avrei fatto per con­trastare questo tentativo di an­nientamento. Quale scintilla di umanità mi sarebbe rimasta into a reality whose only goal was to turn it off.

to a question like this everyone must answer for themselves. But perhaps I can give you a hint. In Jewish tradition there is a legend, or a belief, namely that in every man there is a bone called the "luz" - "heart" in Hebrew - placed on top of the spine. This small bone contains the essence of the soul and is indestructible. Even if the whole body should disintegrate or burn, our "core" remains intact, preserve the peculiarity that in every one of us, the root of our be. And it is from this little bone that man will recreate the day of resurrection of the dead.! (...)

The second question I asked myself while writing See Under: Love is related to the first and in a sense comes from it. I wondered how a normal person - as were many Nazis and their supporters - will become part of a mechanism of mass destruction. In other words, what do I suppress, obscure, remove, kill me in order to collaborate on a planned genocide, to be able to kill another human being for wanting the extermination of an entire people, or accept it in silence.

Perhaps I should refine the question: am I working right now - consciously or unconsciously, actively or passively - in a process whose aim is to harm another person or group of people?

"The death of a man is a tragedy," said Stalin, "but that of millions is statistics." We talk for a moment as a tragedy turns into statistics. I'm not saying of course that we are all murderers. And 'course not. Yet most of us seem almost indifferent to the suffering of whole nations, near and far, or that of hundreds of millions of people poor, hungry, sick, in both our nations and in other parts of the world. We learn not to cure us of the pain of strangers who work for us, the suffering of peoples living under occupation - our own or others - or in a dictatorship or in conditions of slavery.

With astonishing ease we create mechanisms that are responsible for us to distance ourselves from the suffering of others. Can we, in our consciousness and emotional level, to ignore the causal link that exists between the economic prosperity of nazioni occidentali e la povertà altrui; tra il nostro benessere e le vergognose condizioni di lavoro di altra gente; tra la qualità della nostra vita, i nostri condizionatori d’aria e le nostre automobili, e le sciagure ecologiche che si abbattono su altri.

Questi «altri» vivono in condizioni talmente terribili che per lo più non hanno nemmeno la possibilità di porre domande come quelle che pongo io ora. Non è solo il genocidio ad annientare il «nocciolo» di un essere umano. Anche la fame, la povertà, le malattie, l’esilio spengono e uccidono gradualmente l’anima del singolo, e talvolta di an entire people.

We will not accept any personal responsibility for the terrible things that happen at a short distance from us. Either through direct actions or to merely express solidarity. We are comfortable when it comes to personal responsibility - part of an indistinct mass, faceless, identity, and apparently free from burdens and sins. And probably this is the big question that modern man has to ask: in what circumstances, at what time, I become "mass"?

There are different definitions for the process by which an individual is confused in the mass or agrees to hand over parts of themselves. And because we are men of literature, I will choose one in accordance with our interests. My impression is that we become "mass" when he stops thinking, to develop things according to our own vocabulary, and automatically accept and uncritical expressions of terminology and language dettatoci by others.

I turn into "mass" when they cease to make compromises with my words and moral choices that are willing to make. (...)

resorts to the figure of the Polish writer Bruno Schultz jew to illustrate the match between an individual who had a very peculiar language and the language of mass "- the meeting between the tragedy and statistics. I refer to the story of his assassination during the Second World War in the ghetto of his town, Drohobycz. The story is well known, and perhaps not even true, is a legend, a story in which over the years has built "the myth of Schulz 'among his admirers around the world.

But even if it was an anecdote, tocca un punto profondo, vero. «Gli aneddoti sono sostanzialmente fedeli alla verità» scrive Ernesto Sabato, «proprio perché sono finzioni, inventati in dettaglio per adeguarsi con grande precisione a una certa persona». E infatti, anche se questa particolare storia sulla morte di Shulz non è vera, ciò che essa esprime è sostanzialmente fedele alla verità ironica e tragica di quest’uomo, all’orrore del possibile incontro tra il «singolo» e la «massa», e quindi la racconterò così come l’ho sentita la prima volta.

Nel ghetto di Drohobycz, durante la guerra, un SS officer had forced Shulz to paint a fresco in his house. An opponent of that officer, who had quarreled with him because of a gambling debt, Shulz came upon the street, drew his revolver and shot him in revenge for the man for whom he was working. According to the rumor the murderess, he then went to his rival and said: "I killed your jew." And he said, "Very well, and now I will kill you."

I learned of this story right after having finished reading the first book of Bruno Schulz. I remember that I closed the book and left the house. I walked for hours immersed in such a fog. I was in a state where, to put it simply, I did not want to live anymore. I did not want to continue to exist in a world where things could happen like this, where there are people like those Nazi officers who thought things like that. Where there is a language that allows monsters like to say phrases like "I killed your jew" and "All right, now I will kill you."

wrote See Under: Love to return to myself, among other things, the will to live, love for life. And perhaps also to heal from offense that I felt on behalf of Bruno Shulz, for the way in which his murder was described and "explained". One explanation inhuman, 'mass'. As if human beings were bargaining chips, or wheels of a system or accessories that you can replace with others, or only part of a statistic.

In the writings of Bruno Schulz, every piece of reality has its own personality. Every passing cloud, every mobile, every tailor's dummy, every bowl of fruit, every dog, every ray of sunshine, every object, even the most trivial, has its own individuality, its own essence, its own character.

And every page in every song, bursting into life, rich in content and meaning. Suddenly a life that deserves the name. Enormous work that takes place simultaneously in all the substrates of conscious and unconscious, illusion, dream, nightmare, senses, feelings, a language rich in nuance.

Each row has a rebellion against what Schulz calls "the fortified wall that rests on the meaning of 'is a protest against the desolation, the banality, routine, the stupidity, the stereotypes, the tyranny of the simple, mass. (...)

When I finished reading the book, Schulz knew that he gave me, with his writing, a key for me to write about the Holocaust. Not death and destruction but of life, of what the Nazis had destroyed mechanically, in an industrialized, mass.

I also remember that, with the arrogance of the young writer, I said to myself that I wanted to write a book that tremble on the shelf. That was vital as a blink in the life of a man. Not a "life" in quotes that spends weak, but as one that teaches us Shulz. A real life, the square in which we must be content not to kill the next but we must make it alive, as time has passed, the visions seen, the words spoken thousands of times, and you and me.

The reality we live in today is perhaps not as cruel as the one created by the Nazis, but some of its underlying mechanisms have laws very similar to that obscure the individuality of man and led him to reject obligations and responsibilities towards the fate of others. And the increasingly dominated aggression, dall'estraneità, incitement to hatred and fear, where fanaticism and fundamentalism seem to get stronger every day while other forces lose hope for change.

values \u200b\u200band horizons of our world, the atmosphere you breathe and the language that dominates it are dictated largely by what we call mass media, expression coined in the thirties of last century when sociologists began to speak of 'mass society'. But are we really aware the meaning of this phrase? Of which process the media have suffered? We realize that most of them not only convey a type of communication to the masses but turn their users in bulk?

And they do it with arrogance and cynicism, using a poor and vulgar language, dealing with complex political and moral simplicity and false virtue, all around us creating an atmosphere of spiritual and prostitution emotional ensnares us, making everything they touch kitsch: war, death, love and intimacy.

At first glance it seems that this type of communication focuses on the individual, the individual, not the masses. But it is a dangerous suggestion. The means of mass communication place the individual in the foreground, even the consecrated, channeling more and more towards himself. Indeed, in the end, only to himself, to his needs, his interests, his aspirations, his passions. In many ways, overt and hidden, they release the individual from what he is nevertheless anxious to break free: the responsibility to other pearls consequences of his actions. And when they do obscure his political consciousness, social and morality, and turn it into a docile material for manipulation by those who control the media and others. In other words, turn it into mass. (...) And 'This is the message of the media: a rapid turnover, so that it sometimes seems that the information not to be significant and important, but the pace of one another, the cadence neurotic, greedy, commercial, seductress who create. In the spirit of the time the message is zapping.

The literature has no influential representatives in the centers of global power that I just described, and it's hard to believe in his power to make some change. Può però proporre un diverso modo di vivere: secondo un ritmo interno, una coerenza personale più adatta ai nostri bisogni spirituali e naturali di quanto ci venga prepotentemente imposto da apparati esterni.

Io so che quando leggo un buon libro qualcosa dentro di me si chiarisce. La mia percezione di essere una creatura particolare si fa più netta. La voce precisa, distinta, che mi giunge dall’esterno risveglia in me altre voci, alcune delle quali erano mute in precedenza. E anche se migliaia di altre persone leggono lo stesso libro nel momento in cui lo sto leggendo io, ognuna lo vive in modo diverso. Per ognuno quel libro è una cartina particular type of litmus.

A good book - and there are not many because the literature, of course, is susceptible to the lures and pitfalls of mass communication - makes the player stand out from the crowd. (...)

When I finished writing See Under: Love knew that she wrote to say that he who destroys a man, any man, in the end destroys a work of genius, unique, specific and infinitely more that we can never recreate, nor there ever will be similar.

Over the past four years I have written a novel that mean the same thing, but set elsewhere, in a different reality. The protagonist is an Israeli woman of about 50 years, mother of a soldier leaving for war. His concern for her son leads her to foresee the tragedy lurking, and she tries with all his strength by fighting to avert the fate that awaits the boy. He makes a long march, covering almost half of Israel and constantly telling the child. It 's so in fact trying to protect him, doing the only thing in his power to make the existence of child more vivid and concrete to tell the story of his life. And one day, the small notebook that brings with it, writes: "Thousands of moments and hours and days, millions of shares, a multitude of gestures, attempts, mistakes, words and thoughts. Everything to create a unique human being. " He added: "A human being that is so easy to destroy."

Soup Restaurant Set Up

Education, the true national emergency

Aldo Schiavone

While - as every September - millions of kids and teachers are to make return, and promises some judicious intervention programs, you can try to speak for once in our school not as a great body is falling apart, but as a laboratory is still active and vital, which is still worthwhile to enter ideas , projects, energy?

Let me try to do so, returning directly to what seems more and more the question of questions, the real issue around which it is embroiled for over half a century, every speech and every practice of reform ' Italian education. I refer to the relationship between general social function of the school, and specific task of early detection and exploitation of the best secondo il merito e le vocazioni delle giovani intelligenze che imparando si aprono sul mondo.

Una tradizione molto radicata nel nostro paese ha ritenuto a lungo che la missione principale di una scuola pubblica degna di questo nome non dovesse consistere nella trasmissione più intensa e creativa possibile del sapere da una generazione all'altra, ma in qualcosa di profondamente diverso. E cioè nel rafforzamento comunitario (nello spazio chiuso e uniforme dell'aula) dei legami sociali mediante una diffusione omogenea delle conoscenze - anche se a bassa intensità - e nell'affermazione di un generale principio di solidarietà e di eguaglianza tra i gruppi e le classi, esibito attraverso le tappe di un processo educativo che considerava l'inclusione equal and the total number of students as its only and final goal.

This view has fueled a lot of thought is a Catholic, or Communist, the founding fathers came up to Don Milani, and has been a major engine of Italian democracy and ideology, exalted but not invented by '68, that he could then combine it with a new and powerful anti-authoritarian thrust and modernizing.

If we do not present these origins and history, and its ability to interpret the initial need felt by a significant proportion of the conscience of the country - I mean a real need to combine school and democracy in a society that had always kept away - we will never be able to understand the meaning and the reasons for the drift and true idea that this degeneration has been since the seventies. Involution of which many of us take responsibility, and that turned that inspiration and practical equality of the flattening stifling conformist and soulless, the unionization grotesque - ridiculous if it had tragic consequences - of each educational relationship preconceived hostility toward each evaluation, all the judgments and distinctions, that we all have for too long under the eyes, and that toppled what had been conceived as a victory for the underdog, in a deadly trap for his own and especially youth socially more vulnerable and fragile, che credono di imparare, e si ritrovano senza pensieri, senza metodo, senza parole - senza niente di niente se non un'inservibile poltiglia.

Oggi, la conservazione e l'accrescimento del patrimonio intellettuale del paese, la piena e precoce valorizzazione dei suoi giovani talenti, è la condizione indispensabile non dico per ogni sviluppo economico, ma per il mantenimento stesso delle nostre libertà. Nelle società "postdemocratiche" di massa non è più la democrazia che deve penetrare nella scuola, ma è la scuola a garantire la vita stessa e il perpetuarsi della democrazia, che ha bisogno, per mantenersi, di saperi che circolano, di diversità culturali, di conoscenze, di senso critico diffuso, di competitività intellettuale. E ha bisogno perciò di una scuola in piedi, con una spina dorsale, con insegnanti che riscoprano il gusto (e i vantaggi) dell'autoformazione, della valutazione (per se stessi e per i loro studenti) e della carriera. Una scuola giusta ed equa, ma che non abbia paura di insegnare ai giovani che apprendere costa fatica - spesso autentica sofferenza - e comporta disciplina, misura, severità, riconoscimento del merito. Questo non significa un'istituzione incapace di accogliere e integrare, o che debba oscurare il significato e il valore dell'eguaglianza: al contrario, la multietnicità con cui dobbiamo misurarci si nutre di eguaglianza, e credo fermamente che don Milani abbia ancora qualcosa da dire ai figli dei nostri immigrati che for the first time they enter a classroom in Italian. But Don Milani, so to speak, conscious of the time that has passed, and was convinced that provide the tools and opportunities to enhance self-awareness and give a gifted child, does not mean discriminating against her companions, but offer all one more chance to be able to see yourself in who is faster and further.
We have a school at risk, but not hopelessly compromised: for many regions, and thanks to many small and quiet daily miracles. Around her, the country has grown a lot in recent decades, from the cultural point of view, despite what is usually considered, and the girls and boys today have between ten and twenty years is an amazing resource for us all. Do not throw him in the wind.

In recent weeks a new party is being born - the world could be better, but be satisfied. It would be nice if he had the courage to make the school suffered a major national issue, I say, "the" major national issue, and had the strength to look like this: as the party of the new school. Veltroni, Rutelli, the leaders who are to be elected to say a word, make a commitment. We appreciate very much.

Aldo Schiavone teaches in Florence, where he directs the Department of Legal History.


Repubblica.it Article from the September 6, 2007