"Tell me and I will forget, show me and I may remember, involve me and I will understand." -Confucius. Man he was good.
Friday October 10th. We were told to meet outside the McDonald's by the train station at 8:30 AM, so two thirds of us did. One third of us decided--unsurprisingly--not to show. After all, a 7-hour retreat for Peace Education class at Pax Christie--a "peace house," or una casa per la pace--on a Friday (a day when Lorenzo de Medici students are not scheduled to have any classes at all) is quite a commitment...no sarcasm intended. Our teacher, Gianni, showed up and didn't seem to have a plan. Gianni isn't the planning type. On top of that, bus drivers were apparently striking around Florence, so there was no guarantee that we would be able to get a bus back to Florence at the end of the day. But hey...
We ride the bus 30 minutes outside the city center of Florence. Just a few minutes into the ride, trees begin to appear and buildings become rarer and smaller. Ahhh..Tuscany. I think that this might not be such a hard commitment after all, and feel glad that I agreed to come along.
The bus driver gives us a nod in his rear-view mirror and we get off. We step out onto the sidewalk and are standing next to a tiny cafe with a troop of older locals inside. Gianni turns and squints through his glasses at the sign,
"Uhh, we get espresso? Yes?"
We all nod. About 150 seconds and 80 euro cents later we all have a nice espresso buzz going and Gianni leads us--and quickly at that--down the side of the two-lane road. There isn't a path but Gianni seems to know where he is going, so we follow like obedient little American ducks, all in a row. Some graffiti I saw on a wall in Florence comes to mind: Non Credere, Non Obbedire," which means "Don't believe, Don't obey." Whoever scrawled that across the wall definitely hadn't spend much time in Tuscany with Gianni. It's not hard to believe and obey when the sun is shining and there are big, healthy coniferous trees in every direction that we look.
We walk beneath an overpass and notice that the walls are covered in posters, and one section is solely dedicated to a Happy Days themed event. As I am studying the rendering of the Fonzie cartoon character, Gianni stops and says,
"Uhhh, we have to--cross. No one...uhhh...die. Okay?"
Definitely easier said than done. And to think--we didn't fill out liability waivers. Oh goodness...this would so not be allowed in America... Let's just say there were a lot of false starts, lots of shouting, and eventually, success. We walk another 20 meters or so and then turn left onto a road that juts up a steep hillside and doesn't seem to lead anywhere but up and away. This must be the right road.
It gets quieter and quieter. The sound of cars falls away and all I can hear is the heavy breathing of a half-dozen kids who haven't climbed a hill in at least a month and a half and are really feeling it. We walk and walk, passing big white manors every so often. New views of the Tuscan countryside come into view around every bend and twenty minutes later we see a driveway with a PACE flag hanging from a gatepost (pace (pa-chay) means peace in Italian). The manor is gigantic, but sweet and endearing, rather than intimidating and overwhelming. Just picture a postcard-worthy Tuscan manor. There, that's it. Peeling paint and all.
We meet an old man with silver hair wearing a dress shirt and sweater vest at the front entrance, who Gianni--as soon as the man leaves the room--introduces as an ex-convict. The man returns, fires off a paragraph of fiery Italian, and takes us up a wide stone staircase to a library. On the way up we pass a piece of paper pinned to a bulletin board that says, "Ma tu, che fatti per la pace?" Which means "But you, what do you do for peace?" We also pass an espresso machine, the kind that pours the beverage and has a door that slides open when it's done. Weird. I look around and see handmade arts and crafts on the walls and outdated, worn fabric on the chairs. Yup, this is a cute dining area in a Tuscan manor--this machine doesn't belong here at all.
The man gives us permission to use the library all day. He disappears. There are long couches, comfy chairs, a large fireplace, ceiling-high bookshelves (and that's Italian ceiling height), and a balcony overlooking a lush, green yard lined with cyprus trees. Beyond the yard are rolling hills, clusters of cypruses, small vineyards and olive orchards, and small clusters of--you guessed it--red-roofed homes. The man returns with a garish stereo that, like the espresso machine, doesn't fit the setting at all, and leaves it on a huge wooden dining table before he disappears again.
A young kid enters the room carrying a glass tray carrying a pitcher filled with water and glasses. He smiles and introduces himself. He is German and is assigned to work at the peace house as an alternative to joining the army. He says,
"So you must tell me about yourselves. That way I do not have to work."
We all smile, but are put off by his attitude: he doesn't seem to like the manor. All I know is that if I were able to avoid a draft by working and living in a place like Casa per la Pace for a measly two months I wouldn't be so mopy. But who knows, maybe he's lonely, maybe he has to chop a lot of firewood, or maybe his mattress is too firm.
The German kid leaves and Gianni asks us to stand up, remove our shoes, and gather in a circle. We begin the day with some "bio energetics," or stretching to the normal person. After that we spend a few minutes growling and grinding our teeth like hungry animals hopped up on adrenaline.
Gianni chimes in mid-growl, "Our bodies are like giant...recorders. They have very good memories. We must release tension or we--we uhh, explode, yes?" And then he kicks the couch. It looks like it hurts. He goes on,
"We cannot bring peace in the world if we do not first find it in ourselves."
Later, after a brief break--during which we spend some time horizontal on our own respective couches--we move outside to the yard. We pair up and spend the next half an hour doing an exercise in which one partner spends 15 minutes with their eyes closed and the other leads them around the yard, prompting their "blind" companion to feel various plants, objects and surfaces. As I am being led by my partner, I hear one of my classmates yelp. Later I learn that her partner, Ricky (whose father is a police officer and intends to go into the FBI), had spotted a stray cat in the yard and had tried to get his partner to feel it. Non obbedire, non credere. She did not believe Ricky nor did she obey him.
Afterwards, we sat in a circle in the grass and discussed our sensations and our thoughts on the blindness exercise. My partner commented that it was a strangely intimate experience, but she really enjoyed it. We both found that we came to trust the other quickly, which seemed odd considering we didn't know each other at all. We then transitioned into a discussion about good and bad experiences with teachers.
From the outside looking in, it is normal to be confused about why a Peace Education teacher would spend so much time having his students discuss education in a general sense, but he has helped my classmates and I to realize that education is the soil in which peace takes root. Peace Education is not a class in which you become educated solely on peace movements and activists--as most of us thought it would be. Rather, it is a class in which we have been able to reflect on how to foster peace and eliminate conflict and, more importantly, how to eliminate and avoid violence. It is a class in which we work to become optimistic and hopeful, rather than simply agree with the Freudian school of thought and "accept" that all humans are, at their very core, aggressive.
Just as we come to the end of our discussion, a woman emerges from the manor, calling us inside. Gianni says it is lunch time. We slowly amble toward the house and just as we are entering through the tall doorway, a young, stout man appears and hollers,
"American girls!"
As annoying as this phrase is, he somehow managed to say it in an endearing way. Or maybe we were all just feeling to peaceful to be annoyed.
We sit down at a long picnic table inside with the residents of Casa per la Pace at one end and our class at the other. The meal begins with one of the residents explaining the history of the house in Italian while Gianni translates to us. We observe a moment of silence and then the feast begins. We are given aubergine and olive crostini, cheese and salami, anchovy rice, deliciously seasoned chicken, mixed vegetables, wine, and apples from a tree outside. I spend the meal eavesdropping on Gianni's conversation with the lady of the house--which is entirely in Italian.
I can understand enough to know that they are discussing Italian and American students and how they both generally approach life today. I learn that many Italian students reach adulthood and have no direction in life; no ambition. Many remain at home or simply flee to other countries and pursue odd jobs. Gianni in turn, tells her of the American students he teaches and their tendency to be too hard on themselves and to feel overwhelmed by pressure to be "the best," and that many of us--ironically?--also lack direction. he does not know that I understand what he is saying, but even if he did, he probably wouldn't abstain from saying it: it's not like it's secret information.
What struck me was the way he said these things: he would never use such a saddened tone when discussing this with us. He truly pities us. On the other hand, as a teacher, he probably--hopefully--recognizes that members of societies are not all carbon copies of each other and do not all have the same experiences, and therefore, are not all "doomed" to the same fate. American society may be seriously ill in some ways, but that does not mean we as a people are all suffering, disoriented and hopeless. The election of Obama certainly supports this claim.
It may seem silly to reference, but Coldplay expresses it well--albeit ambivalently--in a song called 'Lost!':
Just because I'm losin'
Doesn't mean I'm lost
Doesn't mean I'll stop
Doesn't mean I will cross
Just because I'm hurtin'
Doesn't mean I'm hurt
Doesn't mean I didn't get what I deserved
No better and no worse
I just got lost
Every river that I tried to cross
Every door I ever tried was locked
Oh and I'm just waitin' till the shine wears off
You might be a big fish
In a little pond
Doesn't mean you've won
Cause along will come a bigger one
And you'll be lost
Every river that you tried to cross
Every gun you ever held went off
And I'm just waiting till the firin' stops
Oh and I'm just waitin' till the shine wears off
* * *
We enjoy our meal and our good company. At least I do. I am lost in thought, as usual, when I am startled by a loud, obnoxiously crackly meow that comes from somewhere near my feet. I look down and see a poof of gray fur disappear. The lady of the house quickly gets up and calls out to it, holding a piece of crostini out. She finally wrangles the cat and we see that what we believed was a stray is actually the cat of the peace house. I suppose it's very appropriate that it is gray.
After the meal, once everyone has dispersed and the dining area is empty except for the lady of the house and I, I try to thank her in Italian and tell her that the meal was delicious...but I don't exactly succeed. At any rate, she gets it. "Ohh! sei contenta!" She knows that I am happy. Benissimo.
2:30 PM. I find Gianni and the group outside and he tells us what our activities will be for the rest of the afternoon. We spend the next couple hours role playing (teachers and students and roommates embroiled in conflict), running into each other (a trust exercise...?), and later, back in the library, we figure out if we are buffalos, eagles, mice, or bears (four different personality types).
As we are all lounging around in the library, revealing our personality types and discussing the positive and negative aspects of each, Gianni supplies us with his usual hourly compassionate thought:
"If I can give you one piece of advice, it is to focus your young lives on finding a place in the world, which requires that you look out, but also within."
Some of us smile, some simply nod. Gianni grins and looks around at all of us. I find myself feeling sad that the day is over. It may have been odd, but it was a day of not simply being told and shown--it was a day during which I was involved, and thus I came to understand. Confucius would have been proud. After a long pause, Gianni thanks us for coming. Meeting adjourned. Kind of.
Downstairs we wait to find out how we are going to get back to Florence. Some are anxious to go but when we receive the invitation to see the chapel we accept. We are led down the grand, wide staircase to the floor below. The air is crisp and cold. The woman flicks on a light and excitedly begins pointing at things and explaining them. Gianni hurriedly tries to keep up with the translations. She tells us that every object in the room has a story.
The room is small and the ceiling low, and the walls and floor are made of rough, gray cement. On one side of the room there are several small wooden pews and opposite, there is an altar to match that is draped in a bright, colorful cloth from Ecuador. The walls have tapestries and paintings on them that were all created by peace workers, and there are two glowing stained glass windows letting in light, one of which is perhaps the most beautiful and moving thing I have seen all day--despite its simplicity...and perhaps because of it. In Italian it reads:
"Dove comincia l'amore, finisse la violenza." Which means in English, "Where love begins, violence ends."
After about 20 quiet and special minutes in the chapel, during which the lady of the house tells us that we are all welcome to come back whenever we like, we are led back upstairs and are offered a ride back to town. Gianni, the German boy, an older man, an Italian boy, and all 7 of us students crowd into a white van and head back to the city center. At one point the older man asks us in broken English who we are going to vote for. All in unison and in a similar tone yell, "OBAMAAAA!" and everyone smiles big and nods. We know what they are thinking...there is hope for these Americans yet.
The van comes to an unexpected stop in a roundabout outside the city walls, and the older man bids us all adieu. Disoriented, we all pile out into the street, and as the van pulls away, Gianni asks us, "Do you know where you are?" We all reply..."No!" He points through an archway in the city wall and says, "Go that way. I am going this way." and with a smile, he says 'ciao' and vanishes. We all shrug and simply do what we have become accustomed to doing while abroad: we don't worry or think too much, we just go "that way" and hope for the best.
* * *
If you're interested, I have attached a description of something I had to read for my Peace Education class and a link to the actual document. Don't feel obligated to read every word--the first couple pages are inspiring even without reading the following pages. It is also interesting to note that the pews in the chapel were built by students of Lorenzo Milani--the man who inspired these students to write 'Letter to a Teacher' in 1969.
Description:
Letter to a Teacher by Schoolboys of Barbiana
A forgotten treatise on school education
Kudlu Chithprabha
Most academic courses about education are centered around theories and models produced by academics. It is unfortunate that very few prospective teachers ever get to hear the stories of education written by the best educators of the world - those who have experimented with schooling but do not necessarily have degrees in education. When such stalwarts as Gandhi and Tolstoy are ignored by the academic world, it is no wonder that no one ever hears of a small book written by a group of poor children from a tiny, obscure school in Italy.
Barbiana is a community of about 20 farmhouses in the hills of Tuscany in Italy. Don Lorenzo Milani, a priest assigned to the village, founded the School of Barbiana in the early 1960s, initially intending it as a night school for the working people. He soon realized that the needs of the children on the farms scattered nearby were even more critical. Most of these children had either failed their exams and left school or were bitterly discouraged with the way they were being taught. He gathered about 10 boys, 11- to 13-year-olds, and gave them a full schedule of eight hours' school work, seven days a week. The older children devoted a great deal of their time to teaching or drilling the younger ones. All the students gave many hours to the study and understanding of problems that were directly significant to their own lives, and, in line with such concerns, eight students from the school wrote the Letter to a Teacher as a full-year project. It was first published as a book in 1969 and was a best-seller in Italy. It has since been published subsequently in many languages.
(Above excerpt copied from: http://ct-net.net/tc_ann_6-2_6)
LINK TO 'LETTER TO A TEACHER': http://www.scribd.com/doc/4860567/Letter-to-a-Teacher
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