No words are as effective as silence at the right time. But the opposite is also true: there are silences more stupid than any wrong speech.
It came to mind when thinking about what happened to a student at the Foscarini Classical High School in Venice, one of the oldest and noblest in Italy – Gentlemen are born, idiots too – who launched the first “oral strike” in the history of the Maturity exams. It happened that after the publication of the results of the Greek written exam, where she got 6.5, a grade she considered “absurd and humiliating”, in protest (the new generations protest for the climate, for fascism, for patriarchy, for housing, do you want to not protest for a bad grade?) she decided to go to the oral exam and act silly (sorry, it’s a stupid typo: “scene”) and stay silent. However, she can afford it: she is already enrolled at Miami University, Ohio…
Maybe she’s right, maybe the teacher was wrong, maybe there’s something else. We don’t know. But we know (the girl has yet to discover it) that injustices exist in life. A good test of intelligence, character and maturity would have been to appear before the commission, take the exam and then, if necessary, ask for explanations and express your displeasure.
But in the end it’s our fault. We are the generation that should have killed the fathers and instead devastated the children.
Oh, right. We forgot. And the student?
She has no problems. If things go badly, she’ll become an influencer. Or the MEP.