Convince yourself that the world is you, and strive to save it in order to save yourself. The world is your world, but not the selfish “I”; rather, it is humanity.
So wrote Miguel de Unamuno, commenting on – or perhaps rewriting – Don Quixote. There is something profoundly serious in the protest of the students who chose silence during the oral exam of the maturità. Not so much in the gesture itself, which may seem to many like an immature provocation, an exploitation of a regulatory loophole.
Rather, in the message that it brings to light, consciously or not: that silence is an attempt, however imperfect, to save not only themselves, but also a school and a world perceived as wrong.
The Minister of Education and Merit clarified that, starting with the next maturità, anyone who remains silent will fail. A measure that, if we think of school as a place of responsibility and shared rules, may appear understandable and coherent. The oral exam is a moment of assessment, but also of dialogue, and it cannot be allowed to become merely a platform for protest.
Perhaps this is precisely the point. That silence, so apparently arrogant, is a cry of distrust toward a system perceived by young people as distant, competitive, and barren.
A system that measures performance more than it listens. It is the rejection of what some students have called “a points-based school.”
In parallel, another student voluntarily asked for his grade to be lowered from 84 to 60, the minimum needed to pass, to express solidarity with classmates who had fallen behind. It was a gesture that Massimo Gramellini, in one of his “Caffè” columns, described with the tenderness of someone who knows how to read beyond appearances: a school that is no longer a training ground for competition, but a place of cooperation.
If school is truly a place that educates, then even protest, however wrong in form, must be read and understood as a symptom.
It is not a rebellion to be punished, but a question to be listened to. The students point out that, despite impeccable preparation, they felt there was little attention to people. In other words, what counts is the final grade, not the human journey – made of joy, anxiety, and frustration – that accompanies it.
Ultimately, these students are asking the same question that many institutions are asking today: can school still be only a place of assessment? Or must it become a “broad school,” as the OECD defines it and as I have already explored in the book EroStudente: a system that develops not only skills, but also the capacity for listening, empathy, and collaboration? In this path, university represents the natural continuation of continuous, inclusive education oriented toward the development of potential.
From this perspective, Minister Bernini’s work is positive: she has recently relaunched the University Orientation Plan and the “distributed campuses” initiative to strengthen the educational chain between schools, universities, and businesses. It is a step in the right direction, so that education does not end within the boundaries of school.
A cultural leap is needed: from the school of individual speed to the school of shared humanity. In other words, more listening and less performance. No longer a teacher as a “drone of content,” as the “humanist-innovator” Jeffrey Schnapp suggests, but a professor as a “designer of motivation,” capable of stimulating the desire to learn. From an oral exam as a final assessment to a conversation that becomes a genuine moment of exchange.
This is the real challenge. And perhaps those silences are nothing more than an imperfect way of asking us to face it. We live in a world where performance is the rule. This is understandable: the aim is to protect merit and give everyone the same opportunities objectively. This is also why Valditara wanted to clarify that rules and responsibility must remain fixed points, to protect everyone.
But the problem with the culture of performance is the weight it carries: the finish line matters more than the path, and the result more than the project behind it. The protest is a symptom of a malaise rooted in this culture. We begin to absorb it as children, just think of the apparently innocent question: “what do you want to be when you grow up?” And so the child ends up being identified with their future job.
Doing one’s best is not always enough. And competition does not reward the best person, but the one with the hardest emotional armor. Of course, sugarcoating reality is not useful. But perhaps it is time to stop and look at the causes of the malaise. To return to people, to listen to them, before reducing them to a number. As in health: if you treat only the symptom without addressing the cause, the problem will keep coming back.
If we want to avoid confusing obedience with education, a regulation is not enough. If we do not want to confuse obedience with education, a regulation is not enough. We need schools and universities that are the first not to remain silent in the face of the future.
From “Corriere della Sera” | 8 August 2025
