"One day I saw a girl in an empty classroom playing a Chopin prelude on the piano. I went in and said to her, 'You're good, congratulations! Your passion for music is really great!' At first she was shy, but she began talking to me. At the end I said to her, 'I'm glad I met you. All I want is to be your friend!' She started crying and said, 'Nobody ever said anything like that to me before, or at least not this way… You know, they always thought I was "different," because I asked myself certain questions about life and for this reason they always left me out. You ought to come with me to see my psychologist!' Her teachers the year before had persuaded her to go, and that was her only hope to be able to live with others and survive. She absolutely did not need a psychologist, but just somebody who took her and her questions seriously. Hugging me, she said, 'I'm glad I did it!'"

An invisible war
This episode, recounted by Francesca of Varese at the GS National Meeting last December 8th, is one of the many signs of a story that continues, the story of the Kids of '99. These are young people truly in love with their lives, forced to come to terms with a school that tries in every way possible to harness their questions into the narrow cogs of the institution. This is a school that in its circulars talks about the centrality of the student in fact works against the person, because it has a limited concept of personality, to the point that Caterina from Ferrara says, "We too are in a war, the one that does not let us realize who we are." "An invisible war" that the kids of '99 are called to fight "not so much to destroy something, but to recapture our awareness of our own 'I.'"
Ciro of Ferrara describes his study obligations in a simple manner. "In the morning I go to a plant nursery at San Giuseppe and work for four hours, learning new things and perfecting them as I go along. In the afternoon I go to the Scuola Bottega to prepare for the middle school general exam. In this new experience I have begun to take things and myself seriously, because it is I myself who is on the line, I and my desire to be happy with everything I am doing, in my relationships with my parents, my friends, in my studies, and in my work."
Ester of Udine told her story. "A few days ago Sara and I hung in the classroom, a large sheet with a quotation from Tarkovskij: "For some time now, Western man has burnt the knapsack and staff of the wayfarer, with his poignant aptitude for questioning. Man's dwelling place is no longer the horizon, but the hiding place, where he no longer meets anyone and where he thus begins to doubt his own existence." Our Italian teacher, reading it with perplexity all over her face, asked who had put it there, and why. We replied that we had wanted to say that school can be approached in a different way. She asked me what is meant by "hiding place." I explained that school too can be lived as a hiding place when you come into class thinking only about the questions you might be asked or about how to make the time pass. I was afraid of this teacher, so when she started asking me questions, I couldn't talk. I would have liked to talk about my friends, but I just couldn't do it. The teacher ended by saying that she didn't think it was a good idea to hang up in class quotations with an evident ideological content. I went home with a great burden of guilt, angry with myself and the teacher because she had taken advantage of my fear. The next day two of my friends said that what happened was a grace. Christ had put me to the test so that I would understand how important that phrase was for me, because it was the symbol of my desire to live, testifying to my teachers and schoolmates what I had encountered. That same day the teacher, coming into the room, was amazed that the sheet was still there and told us to take it down. I rebelled, saying that I did not agree and that we had tried to give a judgment. After hearing this she couldn't object any more, even if she was opposed to our convictions. This fact has struck our schoolmates, because it was evident that we could not have acted this way only in the name of an ideology."

Taking the lectern
This ability to be in the situation is the one that guides Lidia from Catania in her relationship with her teachers and schoolmates. "I gave my teacher the book Ragazzi del '99 [The Kids of '99] and photocopies of two articles by Citati and Scalfari on today's youth. One day my teacher came into class saying, 'Today we're going to talk for a while,' and he made me come up to the lectern. He asked me to explain my opinion of today's youth and said that he did not see the passiveness that the articles talked about, maintaining that perhaps young people are less motivated because their prospects for work are dim and things like that. I said that I did not agree with Citati when he writes that he likes today's youth because they never define their 'I.' The teacher responded that this could be a good thing, because it means being open to lots of viewpoints. I answered that you have to have a point of departure, a core on which to base your judgment, and my teacher said I was right. After about ten minutes of discussion I changed the subject slightly by asking the teacher why we had to go to school. He replied, 'First of all, because it is your duty,' and I said, 'That can't be the only reason. Why did you study all these years?' 'Terence's words explain it: I am a man, I can consider nothing that is human to be foreign to me. And why do you study?' I answered, 'For two reasons: the first is an interest in man; the second is that the Christian experience I am living leads me to investigate everything and so school too becomes for me an occasion to seek confirmation of what I believe.' He came back with the statement that in life you have to look for a confirmation of everything. So I said that either school is lived as something in itself or you risk alienation. At this point one of my classmates said, 'Professor, this school, as it is now, is useless, I don't like it, I would eliminate it.'
And the teacher: 'Don't you think you're over-reacting?' 'No!' So he said, somewhat disturbed, 'Then it's true what your classma te said, we have alienation.' At the end of the hour I went up to him and thanked him for giving an hour to the debate."

Freedom, freedom
Gabriele from Forlì, referring to the gathering in Rome on October 30th, recounts: "I thought that the Pope's appeal was centered only on the problem of school parity, but every word made me understand better and better that his appeal was addressed to whoever wants to be free in life. In the five minutes while the shout of 'freedom, freedom,' echoed loudly through the square, I asked myself, 'What experience am I having of this freedom?' Everything I had done up to that moment as an institute representative seemed to me very little. After talking with my friends in GS, I decided to go talk with our principal about what had happened a few days earlier in a meeting of the Institute Council. Some teachers had said we couldn't sign the name of our association to the flyers we had made to invite our schoolmates to the Cineforum organized at school for Saturday. I told the principal that denying me the freedom to use my own name was a denial of the freedom to be present. In the most recent Institute Council meeting a GS friend and I asked to be able to sign the flyers with the name of our association. Our proposal was accepted… and the principal invited us representatives to eat a pizza together. That evening we discussed things for a long time, and at a certain point the principal asked me why I cared so much about being present as a person at school. I answered him that once a friend of mine had said to me that there were two kinds of people in life: those who can say 'I was there' and those who can't say it. I get so involved in things because I want to be free and to be able to say 'I was there.' The principal said he hoped that I would be able to keep up my positive vitality. I told him that this was possible because I had friends close to me. I said that this friendship was special, because these faces remind me that the encounter I have every day does not tame my questions, but makes them ever more vivid."
The fact of getting involved in the different school organizations in order to defend freedom for everybody was emphasized also by Tommaso of Rome, who told about his work in the Student Council. Tommaso pointed out how for him and his friends the work was meeting all the young people who participate in the Council, and fighting so that this organization can guarantee to everyone who works within the school the freedom to be there and to take initiatives.
Finally, Cecilia from Varese told that, going beyond the narrow limits of ideological debate and urging her schoolmates to say what kind of school they want, it came out that the majority of students want a school that is free, where they can choose between the various cultural and educational proposals of the teachers and where the person and his or her demands are truly at the center of school life. From this discussion emerged "The Students' Manifesto for Freedom," asking the Minister of Public Instruction Berlinguer for freedom for the schools. This was proposed to all the students so they could sign it.