Fondazione Pesenti and Fondazione Corriere engage in a dialogue with the new generations.
Monday, March 15, 2021 – On March 11th, the event “ON KINDNESS AND COURAGE. Ideas for an active and responsible citizenship” was held – streamed on Corriere’s platforms due to current restrictions – promoted by Fondazione Corriere della Sera and Fondazione Pesenti, aimed at continuing the commitment to foster dialogue and exchange between generations.
After greetings from Piergaetano Marchetti, president of Fondazione Corriere della Sera, who shared the common commitment with Fondazione Pesenti’s President, Carlo Pesenti, to these meetings on current topics, some young people just over twenty years old, students of the Master in Media Relations and Communication at Università Cattolica of Milan and two scholarship holders of the Intercultura program – coordinated by journalist Elisabetta Soglio – engaged in discussion with Gianrico Carofiglio, author for Feltrinelli of On Kindness and Courage. A brief political and other matters handbook, to discuss responsibility, politics, and active citizenship.
Beatrice Moioli and Julia Szewczyk, who respectively spent time in the USA and Hong Kong thanks to a scholarship from Fondazione Pesenti within the Intercultura project, opened the debate by questioning the writer on topics they experienced firsthand and enriched by their experiences abroad.
Beatrice focused the discussion on the Italian school’s ability to foster dialogue. The author’s book is based on the idea that there are no “absolute truths,” but only “possible truths” to be explored through dialogue. “I found confirmation of this in my personal experience, I learned not to judge and to listen to people with backgrounds different from mine,” said the student, who now studies Anthropology, religions, and Eastern civilizations at the University of Bologna. “Accepting the idea that our view is always altered by passions, desires, and interests is fundamental. To achieve objectivity, it is necessary to listen,” replied Carofiglio, emphasizing the importance of a society that is not rigid, but fluid and capable of positively reacting to change.
Julia, in her fourth year at Liceo Mascheroni, intervened on the theme of courage, asking what role schools and institutions have to help young people take flight and not be labeled as “mama’s boys.” “They can do this by pushing people out of their comfort zones, which the English poet John Keats called ‘the negative capability zone,’ that is, accepting to remain suspended in uncertainty,” was the writer’s reply. The student then reflected on the levers to become truly active citizens; “aware and active are the prerequisites to be a citizen,” Carofiglio stressed.
Following this, the Master in Media Relations students brought the discussion to how to educate new generations – who will govern the country in the future – in kindness, therefore to a “conflict” that does not bring destruction, and to courage, as the opposite of resignation and indifference. An important question to which Carofiglio responds: “It is necessary to educate, through a non-vertical dialogue, not to take anything for granted, and to develop critical thinking, which is formed through the exercise of courage, keeping in mind that often there are no exact or wrong answers, and more generally, suggesting a change in school both in form and approach.”
In his reply, Carofiglio clarifies the meaning of fundamental words: “Kindness means taking into account others’ points of view and listening to the other: it is the tool to face existence and conflict, starting from the assumption that conflict itself is inevitable, not negative, and arises from the encounter of different and sometimes incompatible ideas, an essential mechanism from which knowledge itself is generated, and from which the growth of civilization derives.”
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Rassegna stampa: Bergamo news 11-03-2021| Corriere della Sera Bergamo 12-03-2021 | Corriere della Sera 10-03-2021 | La Lettura 07-03-2021