“The houses are full of garbage, the streets are all secondary, all shortcuts that lead nowhere.”
An ideal follow up of what was the first bestseller of Marcello D’Orta himself, the book takes up many of the issues and questions left open.
The book is nice, you can read it in an afternoon, but it’s not as simple as it might seem; with a style of old times it helps to reflect on important issues, mistakenly considered secondary in daily life, but instead of vital importance for the development of Italy.
Divided into two parts, the first with the author’s thoughts on the school system in southern Italy and the second with a selection of new themes by his students, the text has the gift of remaining almost cursed topical.
The events narrated put the Italian school system and the economic and social contradictions of southern Italy on the dock. Overcrowded classrooms, dilapidated buildings and staff annihilated in their aspirations have made the school a place of imprisonment, this affects students and the training of the future ruling class of the country.
We anticipate all objections, such as those in the past were made to D’Orta: we know that it is not like this everywhere, but in a large part of Italy, and in many parts of the south, it is. After more than twenty years, we must see how nothing has changed. From the nineties to the present, the school system has been continually plundered of the few resources it had and the level of preparation of students leveled down. Truthful truths hidden under the carpet of appearances, and the alarm raised several times by the author of the book, who has fallen into the silence of disinterest.
To be framed and made to read by today’s students, the themes of yesterday’s children. Victims of a situation of widespread urban decay, forced at a very young age to alternate school and work, or even to leave their studies, to help support the family.
Enveloped in innocence and sincere disillusionment with life, with a sense of irony typical of Neapolitan culture, even manage to wring a bitter smile from the reader.
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Marcello D’Orta, The dilapidated teacher, Mondadori, Milano, 1997
