Also in Lockdown, Time is Precious

Daily pills to help students (and families) organize their study in Covid-19 times, when almost one billion children have seen their schools close. Signed by Marcello Bramati and Lorenzo Sanna, deans and teachers at Faes High schools in Milan. As reported by Time magazine, they are teaching online during the lockdown, in an ongoing experiment in remote learning. Every morning at 8.30 a.m., their advice, tips and good practices for students of all ages.

As ancient Rome philosopher Seneca writes, «everything belongs to someone else. Only our time is our own». What kind of time are we talking about? Let's try to understand, going into the rooms of our young students. Let's dare to open the door and cross that precious threshold that separates the familiar space from the more reserved corner of our kid.

The room door represents the threshold of modesty, the fundamental border between what can be public and what is protected, even hidden, as an intimate and personal sphere. Before this period of forced isolation and forced cohabitation, the room was often the object of assaults by parents: shy, sometimes secret, sometimes harshly fought attacks. Parents supervised the order, the decorum, the real progress of the study. They checked that their teenagers were not holding the smartphone all the time.

Now everything has changed. In remote learning, some struggles are difficult to face: tablets and smartphones are as necessary to study as books, if the latter have not been left at school. The student must now necessarily isolate himself in his room, in order to seek concentration. His room isn't anymore the place where he locks to finish afternoon homework, now it is the workstation from where he follows lessons, faces tests and answers oral questions.

Not infrequently, the young student rediscovers a new and unexpected pleasure: the joy of privacy, of some time all for himself, intimate and private. Some time for his study, for his desk (real or virtual), for his notebook, for his book, for his drawing book, for his computer. It is a new space, because it is safe not only from parents, but also from the continuous and whirling times of smartphones and social media chats.

This is the novelty. In a time pervaded by technology, there is space for more, besides the smartphone. This is the novelty that can be preciously treasured, even when the lockdown will end. Students can discover that it's not so bad to leave the smartphone and take time for themselves. In their rooms, calmly.