post. 5 (of my own choice)

This afternoon I went to see the Kite Runner at the Sharp Theatre at Ramapo College.
Before starting they asked us if we have ever had a secret that we did not tell anyone. Well, yes. And I am going to tell it in this post, which is going to be very personal. In a way it does not have anything to do with media. In another way it does.

Last week I was preparing a lesson for my Italian course about Italian art. And I was thinking about what I should tell the students. I tried to remember what I had learned about it when I went to school. I remember writing many essays on Reinassance art, which would be my favourite ever. Florence, such beautiful paintings and statues...And I got very high grades. On the book it said that this kind of art was expression of the ideals of Reinassance, that the rich merchants would pay many artists and architects to represent their vision of the world. This vision would be the following: man is at the centre of universe, he can do whatever he wants with nature, he should leave behind any moral ties and do like Machiavelli's Prince, dominate fortune with intelligence and wit.
I was charmed: I thought that if this ideals were behind this beautiful kind of art they must be good. I remember believing in them, writing tons of essays praising this kind of art and these ideals.
I was just preparing a power point on that when I suddently stopped. Only when you have to teach someone you really take responsibility of what you think.
I thought: this is complete ****: can I tell my students 'Look at these beautifil paintings, these are paid by rich merchants who believed they could have no moral ties and control nature as they wanted, without even thinking about the consequences of what they were doing? This is what our society believes in now. This is what we have on TV. They don't need me to teach it to them.

At first I felt very ashamed of what I had written in all those essays. I thought I was clever instead I am just a stupid ass. Then I tought of Dante. He was 35 when he found himself in a dark wood and had to confront with three beasts: greed, power and lust. I am just 27. I am still in time. But then I thought that when I was a child I used to have very high morals. Every child could tell you that lying is not fair, stealing is not fair, that you should think about the consequences of what you do. If my lessons have to be biased at least they should teach these kind of things. Those things that any 10 year-old child would think of as pretty obvious.

This afternoon I went to see the Kite Runner. And I think many people in the audience felt like Dante when he started his moral journey. They were crying and they all called it a life changing experience. Too bad that they were all 85 on average (no student there, even though it was free for students).
The story is the following: there are two children in Afganistan in the 1970. When the country was quite peaceful. Before something happened that I don't know and I should look up tonight.
There is a poor child and a rich child. The story is not that the poor child steals something and because he was poor we could justify it. The story was clear. There was a rich child, who used to read a lot. And a poor child. They were playing together and the poor child would defend the rich child. But one day that the bad children take the poor child and get revenge of him defending the rich child, the rich child was there. At that point he wss facing a moral dilemma. He knews very well what was going on but he pretended not to see and ran away. After that day the rich child was tormented by having known and not having done anything and started being nasty with the poor guy. He even accused him to have stolen his watch while he had hidden it under his bed. And the poor guy, very ignorant but with very high moral standards, said 'Yes, I stole it' not to make the rich guy be in trouble with his father. A very good metaphor of our world today. People knowing, because we do. It is clear as the sunlight. But not caring.

I feel so ashamed now for what I wrote in those essays. This is the secret I could not keep for myself. But at least I know now, before 'teaching' stipid things to my students.