education Always in War with Bad Teachers Pierluigi Battista, a journalist working for La Stampa [a liberal Italian daily published in Turin], measures himself against the third factor of The Risk of Education: “What has struck me over the many years that I have known CL is this will to strive to understand, to measure oneself personally” edited by Maurizio Cripp In order to explain what struck him about a particular way of judging, of building culture in freedom and with a passion for oneself–that “critical freedom” that Fr Giussani taught from the start–he borrows a category from Elémire Zolla. This is paradoxical because Zolla, the famous scholar of cultures and religions, is, amongst all the “masters,” one of those from whom the Movement’s history, after assessing him, has “kept least.” But a rejection more intelligent than the norm, regarding what is already known, is quite familiar to a journalist like Pierluigi Battista, an acute critic of the dominant culture. On one hand, there are the “civilizations of comment,” based on a “strong, shared dogmatic truth,” so immutable that, generation after generation, there is nothing else to do but repeat the content mechanically and at most comment on it, adding a few footnotes. On the other hand, there are the “civilizations of criticism,” those for whom the data acquired is always provisional, open to verification, and the search for new roads towards truth is the only acceptable rule. It is evident that “the civilization of criticism” is the modern form of lay thought. It is evident that, in the seventies, “in my personal experience as a young student of the left,” Communion and Liberation was the incarnation of the “civilization of comment.” “A dogmatic group–integralist was the word used–in which the critical capacity was actually banned. This prejudice led to rejection, and the enemy was ‘rubbed out’ in effigy, but not always only in effigy.” It is clear that today Pigi Battista sees things differently, and this is why his path led him far from those ideological shallows. What effect did it have on you to discover that in a movement like CL freedom to criticize not only exists, but is an essential characteristic, an element always stressed? It was an encounter, even in the professional sense, in the course of my work as a journalist. In those years, when the ideologies were crumbling, I found myself discovering a way of judging reality, of measuring myself against others, that I found humanly interesting, and I was able to share many passions with it, albeit as a “non-believer.” In those years, I would read Il Sabato, and I found in it a freedom in criticizing the dominant culture and a curiosity for discoveries that could be found nowhere else, least of all in newspapers. It is the same inquisitive freedom that moves the Rimini Meeting. I saw and discovered it for myself, and it wasn’t the “critical passion” typical of intellectuals: these were young people and adults who were meeting other people and who were measuring themselves with politicians and artists in a non-formal way. This struck me. In The Risk of Education, at one point Fr Giussani writes, “Criticism is first and foremost the expression of the human genius that is in us, a genius all intent on discovering being, on discovering values.” I think this is a fundamental characteristic of the CL experience. The first time I happened to meet Fr Giussani, for an interview, what struck me, apart from the words, was precisely this human and existential curiosity. To anyone who isn’t blind, the history of CL is striking for this capacity to meet people and to look for teachers, for traveling companions. Then there is what St Paul teaches: “Test everything, and keep what is of value.” Leopardi, Pasolini, characters like Testori, many of these “teachers” we have followed have scandalized the dominant culture. And you did this in a world that is blocked, where I find it hard to find the same openness. It’s an experience that is not common. I think the point, the method, lies precisely in this attitude: “in the world, but not of the world.” Building culture and judging, but without feeling yourselves a fortress under siege. Fr Giussani has always insisted on another point: “The cultural phenomenon begins, for anyone at all, in front of a person who communicates himself, his way of relating with reality as a whole.” How do you think this attitude is received today? In a situation like that of today, this is most important: you have to know that a critical encounter with the other is not throwing away your own identity. But today there is a total lack of identity. It’s also a problem of education. In your work, you have often criticized the “bad teachers.” But the bad teachers are not the only ones responsible. They were immersed in the dogmatic dream of their own time; to put the blame on them alone is like saying the others were innocent… In any case, there are more bad teachers today than before; they are the intellectuals who constantly use ideological intimidation: “This is right, that is wrong; you can say and think this, but not that…” It is the dominant culture. Going on repeating the same abstractions. Now, to get back to Zolla… Those are the real dogmatists, those who claim to be depositaries of a truth that others may only accept and repeat. They are those people, or power-groups, who make systematic use of intimidation to keep people quiet: “If you don’t agree with us, you have no right to speak.” This is the opposite of critical education. I can say that what has struck me after years of knowing CL is precisely this desire to strive to understand, and to measure yourself personally.