But I don't believe that we are off in our observations; perhaps we simply have a different way of looking at reality than yours, or our life experiences have led us to see the same glass that you claim is half full, half empty. Saying 'you are wrong' as if the correctness of statements were an objective thing on your side seems quite reductive to me, dear Gennarino 😉. You know how much I esteem you and how much I consider you an intelligent person; this is proven by the fact that when we all have dinner together, I am often enchanted by your discussions, but forgive me if I believe here that you are speaking with bias, without knowing what the reality is—the objective one—that surrounds young people. The fundamental problem, since it seems to me that you want to start from the basics, does not seem to be the parents as much as society itself, joined as you say to all the wickedness that comes through TV, internet, etc. etc.
The problem is that, ignorance of parents aside, what forges a boy's character—beyond his genetic heritage and sense of responsibility—is precisely friendships. Let us not forget that very often a boy spends much more time with his peers than with his parents. Whether it's because both work, or because the boy himself is more easily influenced by his peers precisely because, in order not to be excluded, he tends to blend in with the crowd and inevitably equate himself to mediocrity. I could give hundreds of examples of boys born into good families who have achieved nothing. Sons of very famous hospital chief physicians who spend their time doing murals and smoking joints in the street rather than dedicating themselves to culture. Knowing the parents, I really don't believe that they are the problem, as they have done everything in their power to allow their children to approach culture. At the base of everything, therefore, is a mediocre society where the trendy stereotype of a boy is the 'preppy' who does 10 benders a week, smokes weed, and fights with the first passerby who 'looks at him wrong.' As teenagers, you are either like that or you are alone. I too initially fell into this vortex and hung out with questionable people. My parents forbade it, but caught in the vortex, I lied and went out anyway; then I was lucky enough to realize that all of this was wrong, that it was a world I didn't belong to, and I chose the latter. Now I have very few friends but I don't care; I live my life with dignity, in the love of knowledge and in my interests; whoever loves me may follow me, and if no one follows me, all the better! Not everyone, however, manages to make this choice, because with this character you either are born with it or you conform to the masses. What power do parents who see their children at dinner for a couple of hours when they return from work have to pull the rope to their side after those same children have been dragged for 10 hours into the vortex of mediocre society? None! My criticism, therefore, moves toward school for this very reason. Saying that school 40 years ago was a little, little, little, little bit better seems like an absurdity to me... Have you ever entered a middle school today to follow a lesson? Once, there were even slaps on the hands if you didn't clean your fingernails before going to school. If the professor said silence, it was silence. Today, instead, there are scenes like these:
I also invite you to connect to the YouTube video and read the comments (as proof of what I was saying about the mediocre mass, where the comments are not pleas for shame but, on the contrary, for admiration for the idiocies being committed). I experienced these little scenes in middle and high school firsthand; how can I therefore claim that school once was a little, little, little, little bit better than it is today? Do we really want to believe that what happens in schools today used to happen back then, as this video shows?
At this point, I am not saying that parents do not have an important component—they certainly do—but their weight is nil compared to the weight of the mass that acts continuously all day long on the psychology of their children. As for the professors, I don't believe that scenes like these would have passed once; once, you went to school to study, to learn, and the professors taught culture. Today they come into class to explain expressions for 15 minutes and assign 200 to do in class for the whole week while they sit quietly at the desk reading the newspaper, or talk about personal topics that have every purpose except transmitting culture (memories from my middle school years).
Perhaps your observations are the result of an analysis carried out from your point of view, you might have been lucky with the school where you sent your children and certainly your family environment is a healthy one, but it is an isolated case. Out there, what happens is something else entirely! Guaranteed...
