The President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella takes the stage at the Convitto Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele II, in Cagliari, shortly before 7:00 pm: here he celebrates the inauguration of the school year and the Sardinian capital is the Capital of Education for a day.
His first message is "a greeting to all Sardinian people", then he turns to the authorities, to the guests including the athletes Marta Maggetti and Alessia Orro (with their teammates from the National Volleyball team) fresh from their Olympic gold medal, to the artists who animated the evening and to the hosts. Then he begins his speech, focused on the importance of education, with long passages on the need to govern the development of technology and its use especially, for young people, through smartphones. And a reference to teachers' salaries: "They are often not up to par".
**The full speech follows**
«School starts again. And with it, hopes and emotions start again, friendships are renewed, new encounters are made. The rhythm of school has always marked the calendar of families and represents a moment of great importance for the life of the entire national community. The start of the school year is repeated at the end of every summer, but in reality it is always a new moment. The girls and boys have grown, physically and mentally. They have changed. Their teachers, old and new, have enriched their experiences, have set new and more ambitious goals. Society has also moved forward, between age-old problems and completely new challenges.
School is movement. It does not stop. It is a road on which to walk together, young people and adults. It is, first of all, a gymnasium of life. For the indispensable knowledge that it transmits. For the precious values that it proposes: trust, responsibility, dialogue, acceptance, respect. It transmits culture and knowledge, it trains professionalism and skills, increasingly necessary in a world that demands, more and more, knowledge and preparation. School educates to be citizens aware of their rights and duties, develops a sense of community, and makes people experience coexistence.
Sometimes, our time, dominated by the obsession of the present, of the here and now, risks making us forget that educational commitment represents a fundamental pillar of the life of the Republic. The future of our society strictly depends on the quality of the educational system. It must be dedicated to adequate indispensable resources, and ideas, care, attention. School is not a bubble, an enclosure, a world apart. But an organism that lives in society and contributes to its progress.
We are immersed in a rapid change on a global level. That forces us, continuously and in every area, to deal with new and surprising realities. School cannot remain still but must effectively insert itself into innovation and change, so as to contribute to it, making children participants and protagonists. The future must not inspire fear. The new horizons are themselves the fruit of human ingenuity and work. The crux of the matter does not concern new discoveries and new intuitions, but the use - beneficial or fraudulent - that is intended to be made of them. The processes of knowledge and new opportunities do not stop: but they must be governed and oriented towards the common good. Young people are more advanced in digital knowledge. They have made it a tool of daily life. Many times grandparents and parents ask them for help and advice and those who do not do so would discover a precious world if they started.
Kids learn from us, from our experience, and we learn from them. To be productive it must be an exchange between equals. Technology and its use must not become a barrier of incommunicability, a fenced-in, distinct, divisive territory between the youth world and adult society. We cannot and must not abandon kids to solitary confinement, in a world dominated by technology in which they sometimes risk being imprisoned. The smartphone is a tool that helps in daily life, but it is not, it does not represent life, which is much more complex, rich, exciting. We cannot run the risk that the technological tool, in continuous evolution, absorbs almost all of the attention, relationships, life. In this too, the educational system has a decisive role.
School and university, wrote Umberto Eco, are places where "people still meet face to face, where young people and scholars can understand how much the progress of knowledge needs real and not virtual human identities." School is a path of coexistence, of legality, of freedom. Freedom of thought, of choices, of course. But also freedom from those obstacles - of a material or psychological nature - that prevent the correct maturation of consciences.
We listened with deep emotion to the dialogue between Mrs. Manes and the young actor who plays her son Andrea, an innocent victim of cyberbullying. I thank Mrs. Manes again for her educational commitment, which has given a shared turning point to her immense pain. Unfortunately, despite many efforts, bullying and cyberbullying are still widespread among our young people. We need to renew an action aimed at repressing and above all preventing, impacting on the root causes - frustration, lack of positive role models, fear of the future - that cause such serious and unacceptable moments. We can no longer turn a blind eye to so many news stories, to so many episodes of varying severity but all intolerable.
There is discomfort among young people and the very young today. It is a discomfort that mixes and overlaps with their extraordinary qualities and the great generosity of which they are capable. It is not always easy to interpret: sometimes the curtain of incommunicability is so thick that, for parents and teachers, it becomes difficult even to talk about it. We need to break down the wall of loneliness and silence. Go out to meet. Listen. Offer possibilities. Build opportunities for dialogue, for sociality, for growth together. Without dialogue, without humanity, without empathy, there will be no technological progress that can fulfill the desire for a full life, rich in relationships, affections, emotions, satisfactions.
Youth hardship is a major and urgent national issue, which must be addressed with all the commitment and means available. Without indulgence or laxity, which are also counter-educational, but without even nurturing the illusion that everything can be resolved through an exclusively security perspective. School is crucial. School is for everyone and belongs to everyone. We must therefore continue the work to remove the obstacles, of an economic, social and cultural nature, that prevent young people from attending school or from fully exploiting its opportunities. School dropout is still an open plague, despite the commitment and dedication of many teachers. In some social contexts, school is the only real hope for redemption. Marginality and violence create barriers to inclusion, but it would be an unacceptable defeat if the presence of the State were to surrender in the face of the problems of some territories.
School integration must continue to grow despite the difficulties. There are various and different fronts to be treated with constant commitment and attention: towards the disabled, towards the less well-off, towards immigrants. It is a commitment that is required by the Constitution. But it is also an investment for the society of the future. Every resource spent on education will be found multiplied for the good of the community.
The cohesion of society also passes through the territories. I would like to underline this here, in the capital of Sardinia. Reducing the gaps that project from the territory onto the same rights of citizenship is also a task that the Constitution directly calls us to. The school, that is, the opening to the world and to the social life of children, adolescents, young people, must be equipped with the structures that favor this inclusion, including, in addition to the tools of classical teaching, the possibility of approaching music, the arts, sports. Unfortunately, many schools, and entire areas, lack adequate means. To this end, we must make the most of the opportunity offered by the great European Recovery Plan, known as PNRR, and which already helps us to increase the safety of school buildings. It is necessary to continue on this virtuous path, making Europe a central investor in strategic sectors that open to the future. The school is certainly one of these. And Europe is the horizon of our school.
In 1958, Aldo Moro, then Minister of Public Education, introduced the teaching of civic education. It was a far-sighted decision, and even today it can help us connect educational programs with the broader commitment to training good citizens. Educating on the values of our Constitution, democracy, freedom, which is full only if equal and effective for all. The opening of the school year is an opportunity to reflect on the level of education of the entire country. It is often said that school is for life, wanting to underline the importance of the formative moment of aware citizens. Today life proposes itself with a longer path and, not by chance, we speak, on the one hand, of permanent education throughout active life, on the other of access to cultural opportunities, once retired, after the years of work. Today, our thoughts also go to these activities and therefore I extend a wish to those who are involved in the numerous initiatives of the People's Universities and the Universities of the Third Age. They perform a valuable function for the benefit of the community.
Teachers, principals, lecturers, and support staff are asked to do a lot; sometimes too much. Even with salaries that are often not up to par with other European countries. This is a very important aspect that must be addressed concretely. All of them have and must always have the awareness and pride of playing a valuable role in our society: that of training and educating growing citizens. The future of our Italy largely depends on their work, often silent and unknown.
Schools can do a lot, but they can't do everything. Active and positive participation by families is essential in the educational process. Unfortunately, there are signs that the educational pact between families and teachers is sometimes cracked. It needs to be rebuilt everywhere. With patience and trust. Parents must always be careful not to transfer their anxiety about success onto their children. They must see teachers not as a counterpart but as interlocutors who help in education, avoiding transmitting to children a sense of indifference or even superiority with respect to the rules that would destroy their future. Some failures, warnings help to grow. You don't help children if you set up a dynamic of conflict with the school or of unbridled competition between the students themselves.
With this day we start again from the center of the school. The center, the heart, the reason for the school is you. Girls, boys, young boys. I wish you a year of growth, friendship, satisfaction, joy, meeting others. The school lights our hope. Good school to everyone!