From: corriere.it - I tell the courier
Dear Aldo,
I was struck by the letter from Mom crying on the broken dreams of young people who have to overcome the closed number at the university. My generation at 17-18 years, except for a few cases, worked: some studied in the evening; others did double work. The word "dreams" did not exist. Too many universities are a frustrated factory. The history of the State of Milan is emblematic: full of people who in a few years, with a piece of paper in their hands, will claim a proper job.
Piero Vittorio Molino piero vittoriomolino@libero.it
Dear Piero Vittorio,
It is certainly true that his generation made sacrifices that today we can not even imagine, reconstructing a destroyed country, starting from almost zero. And it is just as true that the rhetoric of 'stealing us the future' and the plagiarism is unbearable. The future depends first and foremost on us. You know, however, that there is another rhetoric about which Edward Bennato was ironic for forty years ago: "In my days you want to dream / just have to work."
The word "dream" is always handled with care. For example, defining dreamers, dreamers, the children of foreigners illegally entering the United States is a smart disposition to give a social question a humanitarian and romantic connotation. Think of the distorted use of the Shakespearean quotation "we are of the same substance that our dreams are made of." Shakespeare meant we were shadow, dust, vanity. We leave dreams and dreamers to literature, and let's deal with a very concrete thing: work. Well too scarce, and despite this too taxed. Much sought after by words, often rejected in reality. It is right for graduates to do a job that is consistent with what they have studied; especially those who have come to a professional degree like the one in medicine. But it is just as well to recover the taste of well done work, including work done with hands: craftsmanship, art craftsmanship, and even care work. Work is dignity, inclusion, community, the ability to build one's destiny, to make a family, to carve out an independence. The rest are paid or income of citizenship; that is, assistance, private or public.