The psychologist’s column, edited by Cesare Ammendola
Night after exams.
Girls and boys, many “old men” like me say that high school leaving exams are not as serious as they used to be. And they say that, because of cell phones and social media, you are worse off than the young people of the previous generation.
I ask myself: if the young people of the past were healthier, more mature and better than those of today, why on earth did they leave you such an ugly world?
The politicians in the recent brawl in Parliament were all graduates and had grown up without smartphones. Well, you are already more mature than them. Even Cicero would say so.
Therefore, soul and strength! I sincerely hope that starting tomorrow you will write the Masterpiece that you are and will become.
To all the students who, sleepwalking with anxiety, now walk barefoot on their final exams, I want to send a smile that resembles a strawberry and cream granita in the bravest breakfast at dawn.
I want to hope so. Whatever happens, you are more beautiful than the judgments of any Commission. The originality and creativity of your free and new thinking will save the world. I hope that everyone will be able to see you for who you are in your divergent uniqueness.
Thousands of students are going through an important rite of passage these days. Their effort, their moment deserves absolute respect. And their commitment has value. Authentic. Anyway.
I repeat it here too, I have always had an idea that the nation can happily do without. Calling the state exam (already a cold expression) a high school diploma exam is a questionable choice. Words have meaning. Even when they wanted to be simple allusions, metaphors, conventions. The word “maturity” should be used delicately and carefully. Especially if you try to judge with a number the ineffable dimension of an evolving person.
If you approach the sacred, complex and multidimensional theme of the psychological, emotional and personal maturity of the human being, some innocent terms (and perhaps whispered with the best intentions) become words without grace.
But is this really the measure of the “maturity” of an eighteen year old person? I go further. Of knowing him? Of his intellectual curiosity? Of the culture that inhabits it and possesses it like an impregnable Demon? I hope that the exam conceived in this way, the school experience, conceived in this way, are able to intercept and always represent the often “divergent” form of students in describing the world, a book, a thought.
Many teachers try to bring out what the student, in his dazzling and shy uniqueness, can be and express, involving him, exciting him, fascinating him through the stories and living words of the manuals.
The profound and ideal structure that a student navigates is not a simple Odyssey. Maturity is a whole other story in psychology. Tolerance, sense of community, control of emotions, empathy, humor, introspection, creativity, warmth, openness, communication, responsibility, self-criticism, coherence, autonomy, stability in flexibility, adaptability, respect for social norms, the rights of others, ability to stand out from the mass. A mature personality is holistic, ethical. Like in a disco. So in Parliament.
