EroStudente

Life largelearning: The desire to broaden our horizons

Giovanni Lo Storto

• Publisher: Rubbettino Editore
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9788849856453
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

The world has utterly changed before our enthusiastic eyes. How we communicate, how we buy, how we interact. All has changed, but education, for some reason, has stubbornly clung to the age-old formulas. Today's youngsters are an entirely new breed. Much more than digital natives. Our traditional educational tools no longer fill their needs. They prefer to be apprentices than students, laying their hands upon knowledge, seeking and creating answers to their questions. Such a vast horizon of information and ideas calls for an educational rajectory that reaches far beyond a handful of fixed learning methods. All fonts of learning must be seized upon with vigor, whenever and wherever they occur. The time has come to make knowledge inclusive, broad, large. Large, but not cumbersome. Agilely large, astoundingly rich. We know we should be learning throughout our entire lives. Now we need practice, vision, emotion and an insatiable hunger to learn. We need a new educational model that will combine a solid theoretical education with practical experience. A lifelong learning that expands and evolves into life largelearning, yielding the richest, broadest, largest learning on offer. Playing host to entirely new opportunities and providing generous room for growth and enhancement. This book puts forth the case for a broader education, theoretical but also practical, which champions the skills that students often neglect in the words of the students who tried this new form of learning first-hand. They immersed themselves in humanity, in slowness and in diversity. Arguably the most challenging and profoundly rewarding training that we can ever undertake.

Diversity

The diversity that you’ve never really known: total poverty

EVERY POOR SOUL HAS HIS OWN STORY, different from anyone else’s. Every face that evokes misery has its own story of decline and suffering, the face of a life that slides down the slope of existential ruin. All pour souls are different from each other and terribly different from us. All this I have learned from volunteering at the Binario 95 Centre at Rome’s Termini station. The Centre provides various services, particularly to the homeless, through the work of the Europe Consulting Cooperative.

As volunteering students, we basically had two tasks: to assist the visitors who would randomly arrive to take a shower or perhaps wash their clothes, but also to help of residents who were working on a program of social reintegration.

Shower and laundry. Two simple domestic acts that are here transformed into a direct, almost dramatic impact with diversity in its darkest form, steeped in abject poverty. For each guest, the same procedure was followed, almost like a rite. Soap was handed out, a fixed ration to avoid waste, then the guest was accompanied to the shower, water turned on and its temperature regulated, a thorough check that the space was clean. We wouldn’t use a dirty shower, so why would we expect a homeless person to settle for less? At the slightest sign that the shower unit wasn’t pristine, we would scrub it from top to bottom. As for the laundry, the guest would load his clothes into the washing machine, then we would add the disinfectant and the washing powder and start the wash.

For the residents, however, our contribution was radically different, and apart from the normal chores the most useful contribution we could make was to listen. A poor person usually has something to say, even if he or she may not want to say it. Listening is the key to a real connection with diversity. With David, for example, I played countless games of scopa, an Italian card game. It was the only game that both of us knew, and during each hand, bit by bit, episode by episode, he told me the story of his life: the collapse of his life due to alcohol addiction; getting fired, being disowned by his own family. And a sense of torment, a condemnation almost worthy of Dante’s Inferno, for no longer having either the will nor the means to read as he once loved to do.

The homeless people that stay at the Centre tell stories that are at once desperately sad, terrifying and fascinating. As a volunteer trying to offer practical assistance, you must come to terms with these harrowing accounts of lives gone astray. Even when certain elements of the stories you are listening to don’t add up, or give the impression that not the whole truth is being told. I served coffee to Olga, gave her shampoo and shower gel, prepared her shower, helped her to wash her underwear. Throughout, she told me about a man who had destroyed her life, with threats, violence, theft and abuse. True or false? Hard to tell, but I can tell you that I didn’t waste much time mulling over the question. All that mattered to me was the desperation of a person that seemed so different from me and yet beseeching in the way she asked for help and needed me to listen.

The first story that I heard, told with words that were spontaneous, immediate, simple but profound, made me ask myself this: Am I still in Rome? In this metropolis, which has declined in terms of human relations, it is extremely rare to be able to communicate with people outside of our circle of friends, family and work colleagues. Those who are different to us are excluded, almost by definition. Under the roof of this train station, however, amid the tracks and the swarms of travellers, you realise just how essential it is to have this line of communication with people who are experiencing a completely different reality. To understand, to share, to lend a hand. Without looking for something in return, and fully prepared to accept any insults that might come your way, because misery often leads to anger. One day as I was serving food to Tiberiu, one of our guests, he exploded in a fit of rage and invective against me. Other volunteers had entered with some blankets for another guest. All hell broke loose. He railed against Christians, Muslims, mean Italians, and threatened to rob us because we deserved it.

The drama of absolute poverty usually takes place within the family-work perimeter. An unforeseen separation, the constant shocks of an imploding family unit, a job loss due to an economic crisis: poverty strikes from afar and often hits you in the back when you least expect it. Vincenzo, for example, is a cultured man, well versed in literature, theatre and cinema. He speaks as if he is accompanying you to a concert and is determined that you understand every detail of what you are about to see. Then, out of the blue, comes the story of his fall from grace. A financial consultant who suddenly finds himself with a lot less work following the financial crisis. And with unmanageable debt due to a costly and traumatic divorce. At this point, his life descends into a vicious circle that forces him to struggle with hardship, sapping his energy and hope, although somehow his dignity has remained intact. The theme is a recurring one. Look, I had it made. A good job, a wonderful family. Then my life slipped away from me.

It is almost pointless to pry further for more details of Vincenzo’s decline. It makes more sense to simply listen to his life story as he tells it while I offer him something to eat. Others are there to offer him deal with the trauma. Specialists are on hand to offer him psychological assistance, but also to help him with his curriculum and cope with the complications of the job market. To find a possible route towards a new home from which he can rise again and begin a new life.

Direct contact with those less fortunate than us, beyond a simple act of solidarity or the handover of small change, leaves its trace on you and does create a sense of anxiety. You understand, for example, not only the importance of communication but also the importance of how you communicate. If you can’t find a point of connection, or common ground, with those who are far from your own experience, all avenues close. All that remains is the abyss of silence and non-communication.

Another thing that you realise is how dramatically easy and possible it is in life to slide down into a dark, endless well. You have a job, a family, a life that may have its difficulties but is nonetheless workable. Then suddenly, a chain of events hits you and you lose control. You fall into a chasm that imprisons you. Your only company is a heart-wrenching loneliness and perhaps a voice of self-commiseration.

Becoming poor is a lot easier than might be imagined, and this voluntary experience brought home to me how fundamental such work is for our country. Our state can’t manage on its own, and perhaps it will always struggle to provide for so many people with such drastic needs. Thankfully, the gap is filled by countless thousands of volunteers such as those that I met during my experience.

Their extraordinary generosity builds a bulwark against the stark increase in poverty that has occurred since the beginning of the present financial crisis. This commitment is opposite in form and substance to all kinds of indifference, indifference that we are pushed towards by the anxiety with which we face our daily tasks or routines. A commitment of this kind, when seen up close or shared, turns out not to be an act of heroism but simply a way of being oneself among many different people who can experience the joy of a smile in a life dominated by tears.

Diversity defeated in a vegetable garden with autistic children and gardeners

My son was very happy to be a gardener for three months at a common vegetable garden a thousand square metres in size. He is autistic. Introverted, weighted down by the effort and uncertainty of his condition and his struggle to interact with the world around him.

Perhaps it was the ability to overcome this burden while gardening that gave him such satisfaction as he hoed, raked, watered, planted vegetables and small fruit trees. Just like a real gardener. He shared the contagious enthusiasm and harmony that had been created in the group from the very first day. Little did I imagine that one day I would see my son return home, scruffy from work in a shared garden, with a wide grin imprinted on his face. A rare thing for him. His happiness stemmed from the fact that he had eaten the vegetables that he himself had planted. The greatest joy from the smallest of gestures.

What did this project teach us parents of autistic individuals? And what did we take from this experience, an experience that all of us eagerly asked to be repeated? The first thing of note is that through a sort of playful entertainment we succeeded in providing training which was quite serious and highly useful. They learned and developed a range of specific abilities. They achieved tangible results (the vegetables that my son ate after having planted and then picked them himself). They established empathy with the other members of the group. They trusted each other and overcame, in a surprisingly short period of time, whatever perplexity or resistance that may have existed. My son, along with the other children, enjoyed a significant boost to his self-esteem and – invaluably – an awareness of his real and significant potential.

Secondly, and this is to the enormous credit of the creators of the project together with the parents of the participants, these individuals - so often described as ‘special’or ‘different’- are here given the chance to be the same as others and to produce a positive result if they are motivated in the right manner. If they are given the right kind of attention and are included without being made to feel ‘special’. Two details in this regard are things I will never forget: the sparkle in my son’s eyes and in those of the other children from the satisfaction of having achieved a goal, and being able to touch him on the day that we gathered our crop from the garden.

Lastly, of central importance to this project is the quality of those who assisted our autistic offspring to approach the world in as open a way as possible, despite the considerable drawbacks of their conditions. The garden was awash with all manners of specialists, a staff of around thirty people ranging from the university’s professors to psychologists, therapists and agronomists who managed to run the project while fully conscious of the limitations caused by autism. Normally, autistic people require quite a lot of time to adjust to unfamiliar aspects, whether that might be new people or a specific life context. In the garden, however, everything became simple and fast. There was an immediate acceptance of the new people, probably because here finally was a project specifically designed for the needs of young autistic adults.

This is a novelty for Italy. Normally, due in part to a continuing lack of information, one only hears about ‘autistic children’, even at legislative level. We forget that autistic children, like all other children, grow up and become adults. As adults, they have a new set of needs. Needs that must be discovered, interpreted and converted into strengths. The opportunity to be autistic and gardeners gave our sons and daughters the pleasure and awareness of a great dignity earned through many small but important results at a practical level.

One thing that I am sure of, however, is that everybody concerned has grown from this adventure. When you manage to build a relationship or affinity with a person with autism and share a common activity of this nature, it is a moving experience, whether you are an expert or a student. University is the ideal place for training and research, but just as with our young adults with autism, it must not be closed to the harder reality of the external world. There must be an openness, a positive contamination, and it must seek to broaden its relations ever further with the territory and social fabric that surrounds it.

This is life, and thus a highly authentic form of training. The shared vegetable garden is a symbolic space, a gym where each of us has shaken off our usual garments, habits and daily routines to tend to a place, and even more so to care for and get to know others. Others that are so different and so near that often we do not see them.

Upon listening to the many voices of those who participated in the project, I was particularly struck by a comment made by Gianluca Nicoletti, President of the non-profit organisation Insettopia and father of one of the young autistic men: “It was a truly marvellous experience for the youngsters. Now they are ready for the next step, to present themselves as resources as opposed to a problem for society or a package to be stacked somewhere”. For us parents of young people with autism, to feel even for one second that we are parents of individuals that have discovered their considerable potential has been an extraordinary gift. A leap of joy for us and for them.

The passion, the volunteer work, the fields

I had no idea that there existed something called the Starleggia potato, also known as the ‘blue potato’ given the colour of its skin and pulp. And yet I was to discover just how unique it was, with its unmistakeably strong flavour and antitoxin properties (it contains cianotin, a blue and violet substance) during my voluntary experience in Valchiavenna.

We had arrived in this splendid alpine region, in the province of Sondrio, with two precise objectives. We would clean up the mountain zones that had been abandoned in recent years by the local population and tend to several plots where the Starleggia potato, by now at risk of extinction, was one of the featured crops. We arrived in the heart of an Italy that was suspended between a present that no longer showed ties to one’s territory and a future marked by abandonment and solitude. The end of a history, a culture, an identity.

My personal discovery of the Starleggia potato, and the effort that we made in contributing to its continued existence, made me aware of how sustainability, the environment, the protection of our territories and cultures (including cultures of production) are all pieces of the same mosaic, the same unknown (incognita) and opportunity. All is not lost, but it is up to us younger generations to decide if we are prepared to continue the battle or give up the ghost.

The Val Codera and the Chiavenna area, where we spent our two weeks of work experience, are both marked by the same phenomenon. Recent years have seen a veritable mass exodus, a total abandonment of areas which has led to near-total depopulation apart from the summer months, when a few tourists make their way to this environmental paradise. Not only has this depopulation broken the economic and demographic equilibrium of these areas, but it has also emptied them in every sense. From head to foot, including the soul. The result is a waste of authentic beauty, (which should be safeguarded and nurtured, not only by volunteers), and a parallel eclipse in the production of goods that form an integral part of that world-renowned Made In Italy brand in terms of agriculture and food.

In the old world, which has disappeared over the course the past few decades, Valchiavenna could boast of an agricultural economy and society which even gave value to ‘poorer’ goods such as barley, rye and potatoes, along with its much-esteemed cheese, a speciality of the region. In the new world, few inhabitants remain in the mountains, whereas all the others have moved to the valleys or to other regions. Saving this territory here, between...

Table of contents

• EroStudente
• Colophon
• One. To Observe
• Two. To Learn
• Three. To Orientate
• Four. To Try
• Five. To Broaden
• Six. To Learn
• Seven. To Share
• Eight. To Slow down
• Nine. To Desire
• The Backstory
• Awareness
• Opportunity
• Diversity
• Epilogue by Jean-Paul Fitoussi
• Acknowledgements
• Bibliography
• Indice