Margherita: “School, we hated you so much that now we can only love you”

Dear school, I am writing to you, so I get a little distracted.

Your gray classes, your banquets too small for the Montanari dictionary, the classmate too close and now infinitely far away I hardly remember them anymore. I don’t remember the pain of running to get there on time at the first hour why woe to never miss even five minutes of the philosophy lesson, and I no longer remember the taste of the cappuccino enjoyed with all the tranquility at the bar, when the train was late and then the first hour was lost.

I hardly remember the shoves of the people at the interval and the brioches in the bar, always too many and too good. I no longer remember how to fold the protocol sheet, with sweat-dripping hands, and the small piece of paper on which there are ten lines of an unknown language to be translated in a maximum time giving the best of himself. I no longer remember the feeling I felt listening to the teacher who turned and leaned on us as he explained, because he was not talking empty but he was telling the stories of those who changed the world. And how hard the bench was when I put my head down on Monday morning because Saturday night had lasted a little longer than it should have.

We hated you so much that now we can only love you, because you are our world and in a few months I will never see you again.

When people take to the streets for you, remember that they don’t do it because they are capricious or bored staying at home, but because it is you who educate us to be someone tomorrow. And it is you who have the responsibility, in addition to parents, to raise us, whether we become lawyers, doctors, teachers, bankers, electricians, scientists. And when we scream and condemn the infamous DAD we do it because, inside us, we know what your worth is, even if we never fully realize it.

E there are those who can survive without you, because it has a good Internet connection, a computer and a quiet place to listen to lessons, but there are also those who, whether they hated you or not before, whether they came to class willingly or not, they don’t have a computer and a quiet room either.

There is no person who a March has complained of your absence. If we get angry, if we rail, now, it is because we have been preparing for a long time, energy and money have been spent to make everything work, but obviously not enough.

Those who cry to you, are not selfish and indifferent to the horrible experiences that the pandemic forces us to live, they are eager to have you back because they have understood that it is also with you that we can rebuild the future so much talked about when everything is over.

Those who discredit us for aperitifs, those who praise us, those who study us, we generation Z, always seem to forget that first of all we are adolescents, living beings with a beating heart, a mind “messed up»(The only adjective that describes it perfectly, even if not very formal) and above all an infinity of dreams and goals. And school, given that everything else is suspended for health reasons that we all understand well, is the fertile ground for not repressing the conatus, the power to act, within us.

Margherita, eighteen years old, fifth classical high school, Liceo Ginnasio Statale M. Gioia (Piacenza)

You can send your letter to the school at: [email protected]. The letters are published in the special Dear School, I am writing to you …