Rebellion

The determination with which most of the "old fogeys" rack their brains to find logical holes in the reasoning these students gave the exam board for refusing to sit the exam smacks of powerlessness, more than of authoritativeness, not to say authority.
The truth is, every criticism leveled at them does have a point, in the musty corner it's being shouted from. "All of life is competition." "Too convenient not to sit at that table and get away with it." "What a lack of respect toward the people who bust their backs to give you an education." "You're turning your back on a society that's trying gratis to give you a future."

They make sense, sure, but from the point of view of someone who got caught off guard, and maybe got knocked out cold by an unexpected uppercut. It's like trying to make sense of the promises of a general who has just pulled off a coup, or the cheering of the ringleader of inmates who have mutinied, only to try to take them apart with a bureaucrat's logic.

Maybe it's that I don't spend much time in Italy, and I'm starting to react to news from the motherland in a slightly atypical way, but what I notice about this whole affair is the gesture, more than the explanation. It's a revolt. It isn't a critique of the system, with solid, rational socio-political reasons. It's a rebellion against authority, and so an act of force. The gesture has no meaning. The gesture is the meaning. What catches you unprepared, and so lays you flat, is precisely that it comes from where you don't expect it, from a generation you thought you'd raised, but which has instead already developed a mindset of its own, different from yours, new, unpredictable, partly unknown even to the ones who embody it. So it explores it, tests it, to see just how far it can go in using it as a battering ram.

It's the young animal, a cub until yesterday, challenging the pack leader to become the new alpha male. Except this isn't just about males. There are girls too. With balls, some would say. But that would be the usual regime reading, sexist by virtue of being a regime, like all traditional regimes. These are girls who do what they do with what they have, meaning not balls, and that's what makes them strong.

Besides, nearly all of them come from Veneto, a region portrayed for years as a caricature: servile, bigoted, workaholic, backward. Mocked by regions that have been wallowing since time immemorial in other stereotypes just as ridiculous. Stereotypes that, with every generation, in every city in Italy, fortunately lose a piece or two. I wouldn't be surprised if before long we saw them running the country. And go ahead and tell me they'd be worse than the ones we have now!

Egocentric? They were awkward kids not long ago. They wrote this script in their little bedrooms, or in the back room of a neighborhood café, while we were worrying about them catching the flu. And now public opinion is asking questions. Ministers step in to change the rules. The public comments, scandalized. Is there some egocentrism? It would be surprising if there weren't! But do you remember yourselves at that age? Pumped up if two classmates laughed at one of your jokes. The lump in your throat and the sleep lost before the exam?

A student plans the surprise move in silence, calculates the risks, exploits the wiggle room in the gaps of a system that has run the same way for decades, shows up in front of adults vested with the authority to judge him, greets them, explains himself, takes his leave with a line that lands, and leaves everyone speechless. The plan worked to perfection. And you'd better believe there's egocentrism! The same egocentrism as the forty-something politician or industrialist who checkmated the competition with sinister maneuvers. And who, when he gets checkmated by his own son, reacts like a moralist.

You're accusing them of shying away from challenges? Of refusing to compete? But they tripped you up and laid you flat, when you didn't even know you were in the race with them?

Drafted from Italian with Blog Translator, then revised by me.