Autumn of 2008 marked the recent history of student movements. They did the hundreds of thousands of students took to the streets to protest against cuts of Berlusconi, Tremonti Gelmini and our education system (8 billion euro in three years), introduced as one of the first measures the new government.
Who had watched closely the policies of the last center-right government on the issue of knowledge, the motivation was clear: to aim to reduce costs, also cutting the number of teachers, even at the cost of dramatically limiting the investment on the quality of teaching even threatening to leave the education system of our country back a few dozen years behind the rest of Europe, also agreed to cause significant social problems by reducing the number of hours, going to hit, in fact, schools in their more profound role of social elevator of the community.
The right assumes that schools should be a last choice, a lifesaver for those who have no alternative. For those families who are unable to enroll their children to private schools not being able to take advantage of government incentives in the form of bonuses.
unhealthy background to this idea, adding the short-sighted cynicism of a government that faced with the need to raise cash, drawn from sectors such as schools and universities, endangering the operation and free access.
The students and Italian students have responded to this attack together in a fitting and effective slogan that has occupied the streets, squares and the front pages of newspapers for many months: "We will not pay for the crisis."
A strong, spontaneous movement has upset not only for an autumn the public and politicians, including the youth, but also the world of unions and student associations throughout the galaxy of political youth organizations that have been heard - some pleasantly other less- swept away by a protest that led, as in the past, but which were themselves largely party.
The first problem happens right in the heart of the protest, after a hot morning of mobilization. A brawl breaks out between Piazza Navona Casa Pound, far-right movement, and young people from the community centers. Here the "tidal wave" shows his weakness first and the problem goes beyond the fighting, the violence perpetrated by neo-fascist groups in the sight of a police almost compliant.
seems clear that the movement is strong, innovative forms of participation, but immature field of politics, unable to organize the proposal to make it consistent, refusing more to be aware of this limit. Wisdom of the assemblies it was also a source of pride: "we reject any political characterization, not just party." As if hundreds of thousands of people who claim to fight for something they were not themselves political.
The political defeat, not only by the 'wave' as such, but a project that could be mobilized for the first time, and whole, a generation that did not even ever chosen for itself a slogan that represented the occurs after a few months. One senses from the moment when the public begins to digest and then takes up the pithy phrase with which Maria Stella Gelmini had dismissed the first protests, "all students in the square are the conservatives who do not want to accept the reforms. "
The movement would not or was not able to organize themselves to respond on the ground of politics. So upset that the millions of innovators around the country were taken to the streets to defend their rights of students and to return to training, to study the centrality necessary, paradoxically, have been relegated to the role of defenders of a system to know one of the oldest poor and the West.
E 'where all the student associations could have but failed to take the space to build on their policy development. Remained caged on one side of the controversial nature motion, second by not having sensed that the priority this time is not understand how many and which colored flags - or color - the squares, but lies in the ability - and humility - to make the content available a big move, but fragile. Maintaining the political maturity and lucidity to understand how mundane the natural flow of a long wave, but still seasonal, some people have tried in vain to ride surfing, ideas, yes those, like Peter, would remain on the beach policy. And among these, the best they could even change something.
We claim that our presence in movement, not deny. Today, awareness of the need to go further, we show an ability to learn to know what were his wealth and its limits, its like from our mistakes.
to stop looking in the mirror and ask ourselves who we are and who we are, if we are divided or united, if we are left more or less, more or less union, more or less movement, more or less representative, more or less political. To stop doing all this while most of the students had stopped to consider ourselves a real reference point, either inside or outside schools and almost without our realizing it.
To try to revive an idea of alternative school and contemporary, with the idea that student participation can not be reduced to the analysis, challenge and - when it succeeds - the proposed improvement of the law of this or that year for this or that minister but that should be returned to the right to a long-term thinking, today's students the opportunity to dream and to organize to build the school of tomorrow.
To return to talk about school and politics together.
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