The Italian-style idyll of parents and teachers united in the pupils’ struggle

Parents and teachers alongside students in struggle. There is a certain charm to this idyll. Harmony, serenity, a blend of ideas and behaviours, mutual defence and protection. How marvellous. What a comfort. Power—that is, the police, police commissioners, prefects, presidents, uniformed officers: all excluded from this idyll, all confined to their grim roles, embodying the state, authority, private property potentially under threat, guardians of order—this idol or puppet made of ice, incomprehension, devoid of emotion, truth and love.

To the best of my knowledge, this had never occurred before in Italy. It certainly does not happen in France, a country which, for better or worse, retains a barbaric streak – it beheaded the king, and whilst it was at it, the queen too, followed by the Jacobin executioners – a country where parents and teachers may well be on the students’ side, but if they protest, they do so with their own marches, their own trade unions, their own slogans, their occasional acts of disorder, and their specific penchant for the guillotine.

A political and institutional system devoid of authority and a school system that fosters not-so-subtle forms of libertarian anarchy are the ingredients of this universal embrace that robs young people even of the pleasure of standing out – at least on the streets, at least in a group, at least whilst following the banners of ideological and political adolescence, first and foremost the extremely dangerous, incongruous and omnipresent banner of a free Palestine.

They somewhat resemble the crowds of tourists when flight delays escalate at holiday airports; they are ‘protected’ and, if necessary, as they say, ‘re-protected’ – the scramble for a spot in the Maldives or Greece is accompanied by refunds and the substantial safeguards of the super-defensive cordon organised by parents, grandparents and teachers. Yet they style themselves as antagonists. The reference is not to the likeable rebels of Askatasuna but to a specific group—French-style students outside the social centres, in solidarity with the burnt-out bins on the boulevards and the tarte tatin at the corner bistro, self-proclaimed enemies of Italian-style fascism, which is the government led by a young woman, a Ducia, pro-European and more liberal than anything else, and of a Home Secretary who has the allure of a prefect and the manners of the usual gentleman who changes his colours – in a good way – who knows how things work, knows how political life works, and stands guard over a concept of public order so different from that menacing caricature that was in vogue in the days of the ineffable Salvini, an order, if possible, without any messes and—let’s not even mention the dead—as preached by the sleazy tabloids of the most vulgar right wing, but not even a single injury amongst the little ones and their dads and teachers.

The picture is the usual one; it is not bad, and everything will be fine – there is no doubt about it. Let us hope nobody goes over the top, and that the intervening forces of the ‘parental’ UN and the ‘educational’ UNESCO play their part to the full in a society and a state where everything is about connection, everything is about pedagogy, everything is about sentiment and the heart. The fortune of an extremely civilised peninsular culture is incomparably superior to Gallic barbarism.