Here we go again. Another athlete who comes back from a weekend of competition and who falls victim of another of those teachers who asserts, and i swear i am not making this up, that the fact that the already mentioned athlete (16 years old) has declared that the Mesozoic era started 150 million years ago rather than 250 millions, is certainly due to the fact that over the weekend she was wondering around, “playing with swords”.

Now, given that kids’ duty is, indeed, that of studying, which theoretically implies for them to know this kind of notions as well (even though i swear that despite my good cultural level and the remarkable amount of books in my personal library, something like 12000 volumes, i have absolutely no idea of when the Mesozoic era actually started!) i wonder if the reason why a lot of kids stop playing sports when they get to high school, could be attributed to the stupidity of some teachers, who define themselves as such, yet they are not even close to actually being one.

However, because it’s a matter i really care about, i want to clearly analyze it.

If we take a look around, we can easily realize that almost every educational place in which kids aggregate has totally failed. Family, school, Continua a leggere→

One of the gesture it fascinates me the most in fencing, is the act of constantly shaking hands. When you enter the gym, after every assault and every lesson, to say goodbye when you leave.

It comes so naturally to us, that we don’t even realize how weird it must seem from outside, that 7/8 year old kids use such a gesture. An adult way of greeting in kids’ small hands.

Yet, the more i think about it, the more i realize that this “exchange” of hands, which even Giorgio Gaber used to sing, it has represented for me a constant act of learning and an instrument of education.

Anthropological studies assert that we learned using our hands as the evolution of our brain was taking place. After all, the ability to move our fingers is one of the most evident difference between primates and us. Then, as they usually say, if the eyes are the mirror of our soul, maybe the hands are the reflection of our mind. By shaking hands i can communicate a lot of myself to the other person. It’s a greeting which entails for me to use a part of myself. Hands don’t lie. That first gesture could say a lot about the person standing in front of me; it’s somehow his business card. And at the same time it’s also a sympathetic gesture; indeed i can’t shake my hands without taking account of who is in front of me. The act of shaking hands physically takes me towards Continua a leggere→

In a couple of hours i will leave to Croatia with 7 boys and girls between 16 and 23 years old. We will drive by bus up to Zagabria for a 4 day training programme with other boys and girls around similar age. And like every night before every departure i find myself with the same emotions i used to feel when i was a child. A mixture of anxiety, excitement and happiness. And i like to imagine that those 7 boys and girls are feeling the same way as me. My mind goes back to the many trips and away competitions i have made in the last 30 years, and i try to find in them my own memories and impressions. Strangely enough i am not worried. I am surely not the only one who criticize this generation, saying that kids nowadays are totally different from the kind of kids we were.

I am not the only one picturing them as unreliable, disrespectful and without any doubt, immature. And indeed, newspaper and tv programmes of recent years seem to confirm all of it. Yet, i don’t want to think about it today. I don’t want to analyze a whole generation, neither i have the desire to look for social nor anthropological reasons Continua a leggere→