Without screens

On television, school is in fashion only twice a year: in September when it begins, and in June when it ends, with an extension of interest until July for the final exams. For the rest, barring collapses, accidents, or strikes of various kinds, the entire sector disappears into a sort of winter hibernation. With school, at the end of the summer holidays, the complicated daily routine effectively begins again: work problems, family budgets drained by vacation time, a perpetually conflicting political climate, international crises that keep people awake at night, and so on... why bother the television audience with the morning chores that weigh on millions of teenagers and young people?

It's a machine that kicks into gear following the usual procedures; textbooks to buy, support teachers missing, new teachers arriving, last-minute substitutes, vacancies, class mergers, classrooms without heating... strange noises, creaking gears, ominous snorts... but then, when the fateful deadline passes... everything starts up again. And here are our beloved children posing for the cameras at the school entrance on the first day, smiling, still tanned, happy (at least those speaking on TV), all animated by a magical feeling, the group reuniting, hugs, kisses, eager to begin what, these days, can be described as a new adventure. Yes, because the physicality of encounters, physical contact, eye contact, affectionate caresses, knowing winks are practices and attitudes increasingly watered down by the compulsive use of computers and cell phones that entire generations seem to have replaced reality with.

But since September 1st, at least during class time, something has changed: no cell phones in class, a sort of return to the past that may sound anachronistic but can actually be considered a true revolution. Constantly questioned by cameras, the kids seem to have taken to the new experience well. Four or five hours with their attention and gaze shifted from the small screen and oriented toward a more social dimension of reality seem to intrigue them more than to frighten them, a sort of dive into a past they almost don't know, where connections between people are authentic, not virtual, gestures, the warmth of bodies, not the coldness of screens, the three-dimensional physicality of living beings, not the scaled reproduction of images and gestures transformed into pixels.

Schools educate with books, but primarily with good practices, and this one they have courageously undertaken seems to me to be a good path that could also suggest good practices to many parents who have chosen their cell phones as their educators.


Michelangelo Dotta
NP October 2025