Yesterday my university sent me to a scu high school, to give a lesson to children between 16 and 17 years old.
I prepared carefully.
I prepared texts, videos, images.
I felt an additional responsibility compared to the ordinary one of university lessons.
At 8.45 I went through the school gates. It was like going back thirty years, when I started working right in the high schools of the island.
The first impact is always with things and it was exactly the same as when I started out. Schools are not ugly, or neglected and unmaintained buildings. But they are almost never beautiful buildings. They are never dirty buildings, but they are almost never perfectly clean buildings. It is not clear why, but then as now, entering a structure frequented by many bears the scars of the place not recognized as theirs by anyone, of a compulsory and temporary place of residence. And as I walked along the driveway, the magnificent words of Pino Daniele's Napul'è echoed in my head: Napul'è una carta chitarra / e nisciunu se n'importa.
main hall. Remarkable glance, but then come the details. The projector is a bit old, the audio isn't the best (and for a history of language and linguistics lesson it's not the best), but the staff is very courteous and efficient (the recommendation to use the toilets before recreation): everything is settled. In short, that accursed feeling of precariousness and fragility experienced on the threshold is strengthened.
Then the boys arrive.
Perhaps I read too many medieval texts; perhaps I bear the traces of my rebellion against decadence – a scourge – when my colleagues read Huysmans and Wilde (someone else, out of devotion to the terrible and very racist teacher of the time, set about reading the great plagiarist D'Annunzio) and I flaunted the little volume of The Little Prince, recognized by Gide as the epic reaction to the mold of complacency of the twilight, but I still love the courage, the freedom, the heroism of youth.
I look into their eyes. I was looking for them laughing and wild, like Perceval's before the duel with Cavalier Vermilion, and I found them shielded, distrustful, masked by tiredness and satiety, without a reason.
The postures. The postures were manifestations of states of the soul. There were the loungers; there were the greedy; there were the cold compounds and the vital compounds; there were the anxious wits; there were the wary ones. The most attentive were strictly in places not accessible to a direct gaze: you had to look for them.
The teachers were wary; only a few greeted me and only at the end did the official mask melt into a smile.
There was one absent: hope. We have all done our part, but hopelessly, as if we were performing an obligatory ritual.
Yesterday I had the confirmation of why no more children are born in Sardinia.
Then, finally, while I was putting my computer back in my bag, a boy appeared, with bright and lively eyes, straight back and soul, to ask me where I taught and to look me in the face closely. Perceval had taken his horse, detached himself from the mob, and come to greet me. I walked away with a hope.
Paolo Maninchedda – University of Cagliari
