WEBVTT

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I am 10 years old.

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This is the audition day
to enter the Scala Dance School of Milan.

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I am walking up the steps
of a huge stairway

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which takes me to the exam room.

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I am scared!

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I am really scared,

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and as I am walking up,
I see a crowd of beautiful children.

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These are the students
of the Scala walking down,

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they are all beautiful,
thin, and perfect.

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I am neither perfect
nor particularly thin,

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and I am starting to feel different.

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At the top of the stairs,

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stand two ladies
with a rather frozen smile,

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the same smile one needs to carry while
dancing, having unbearable calf cramps.

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That's ballet!

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They tell me, "Here, come in."

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This is a huge room with huge mirrors.

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And I realize that we are
some 20 little girls,

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all rather terrified
by this austere place.

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The piano starts to play.

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I remember it was "Nocturne" by Chopin.

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It was beautiful!

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The ladies tell us,

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"Now you can dance
your own way, barefoot."

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Luckily enough I think,
because at that moment,

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I don't remember anything
from my two years of dance classes

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and I start dancing,
I launch myself into dance,

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propelled by the music.

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And as I am dancing,
I remember the comforting words

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from my professor,
my maestro, Maestro Morucci

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when he used to say, "Listen,
there are two important things:

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technique and passion.

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One day, they will come together as one."

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"You have passion, it is your treasure."

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Suddenly, with a hand-clap,
the music stops.

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Now we have to go through the inspection
with these two ladies

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still holding the same smile.

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Then, one of them starts
to examine my feet

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and my legs, especially my feet.

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She stares at them,
and then she calls someone;

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her friend or colleague tells her
something that I don't understand.

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She also asks me
to turn around in front of her.

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At that moment, the same impression
of being different,

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the one I felt in the staircase

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when I was there, watching
the students, comes back.

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I must be someone very odd.

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I think about my feet,
they are really odd.

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Secretly, I look at
my friends' feet which seem,

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of course, the most elegant in the world.

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Fortunately,
the inspection comes to its end.

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Now, we have to go to another room,
this one is a classroom.

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This is the Scala Primary School
pupils classroom.

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And it is a classroom
with old wooden benches,

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a blackboard, a real classroom.

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"Sit on the benches!" they command us,
"Now we are going to call the roll!"

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And as the names are called,

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we are shown
either the right side or the left side.

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Then one of the ladies,
still holding the same smile of course,

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tells us, "Now, we have made our decision:

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here on the right side, are the pupils
we selected to enter the Scala,

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and on the left, the ones
that we, unfortunately, cannot take on.

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You may leave."

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I am on the left.

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Suddenly, I realize why my feet have
been under such a thorough examination,

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and the confirmation of the fact
that I am someone really odd comes.

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All of a sudden, tears start
running down my cheeks.

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I remember, more than tears,
those were desperate sobs.

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Despite the tears,

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I still manage to get down
the stairs and get to the place

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my mother has been waiting
for me on the first floor,

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and I tell her in a tired voice,
"Mommy, I was turned down."

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Suddenly, in a snap,
my life, my beautiful world

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of a little girl destined to be
a dancer falls apart.

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From good pupil, I turn into someone
bad, a monster with ugly feet.

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I still picture myself in the bus
which was taking me home.

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I was sobbing.

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I also remember,

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all these years when I had to wear
sandals in summer,

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I was ashamed of my feet,
but I didn't know why.

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No one ever told me.

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And then, again, during at least
10 years after this episode,

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my heart was breaking
every time someone,

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thinking it would please me,
took me to a dance performance,

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or whenever I saw one on TV.

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The pain kept coming back, every time,

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as if I had forgotten
the meaning of the word "happiness",

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as if I had lost the right to be happy.

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Fortunately, time heals all wounds.

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One day, I set myself free
from this failure circle,

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and I realized there were
1,000 ways to dance life.

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And then, I realized something else:

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that episode, this child wound
had not broken one,

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even two essential things to me:

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the ability to dream
and the love of life,

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the one I felt when I was dancing.

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So, as a young adult, and even now,

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I started taking lessons, and I still
continue to take dance lessons,

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ballet, tango, tarantella...

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I am not telling you
all this to relate my life.

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There is nothing extraordinary,
it is normal, it is common.

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It happened to me, it can happen to you,

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or maybe it will happen to your children.

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To me, there is absolutely nothing
normal about that.

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This episode is the expression
of an ordinary cruelty

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that our world,
with our educational system ahead,

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keeps inflicting on children,
killing their ability to dream.

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I cannot contribute to this.

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I don't want to contribute to this.

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So, when I started to be

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able to decide for myself,

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I went to the university.

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I first made post-graduate studies,

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and I wrote a thesis
called "Educating to Joy".

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What does "Educating to Joy" mean?

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I first discovered that joy
is my passion today.

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And you wouldn't believe it,

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but I discovered that the word "joy",
its etymology in Sanskrit is "Yuj".

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This means the link,
it is a connection, a relation.

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It's beautiful!

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But what does being linked mean?

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What is being linked? I
think it is very simple.

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I saw it in children,
you experienced it too, I remember.

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My body memory told me,

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it was what I was experiencing while
I was dancing and I watched the children,

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while they are drawing, playing,
doing things they particularly like,

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they forget the world around them.

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They are so absorbed that you
can call them for two hours,

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they can't hear you
and they are learning without any fatigue.

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That's great.

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This relation takes me back

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to what I experienced
when I was dancing without fatigue.

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It was to be in direct contact

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with the world, the sky, and the earth,

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with animals, flowers, people, with you.

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What does it have to do with education?

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A lot!

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Because imagine,
if we based education on that,

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if we started from something
that permaculture has already discovered;

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permaculture, you know,
is an ecological science.

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Permaculture says,
"Cultivate where it is already fertile."

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Can you imagine what it would
mean to start being able to learn

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from our own richness and our treasure?

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Revolutionizing education.

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This would completely change the world.

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It would also mean learning
without any fatigue.

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In the past, teachers,
educators, philosophers,

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had already understood this:
Montessori, Steiner, Freinet.

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They had understood,
but they were not much listened to.

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The good news is, today,
more and more educators,

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teachers, professors, parents,

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not only have taken over
these predecessors

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but are inventing
new educational practices.

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I assure you that I see
many, many of them.

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These are people who invent new methods

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that are all based on the freedom
and respect of the child's rhythm

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and the ability, their ability to dream.

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My own joy is to connect,

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to be in contact with this relation.

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This is why, with a group of people
who still know how to dream,

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I founded an alliance,

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an alliance for the renewal of education
which is called the Spring of Education.

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Because everything is already there,
all we need to do is connect.

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This is educating to joy.

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After all, it is remembering
Maria Montessori's words when she said,

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"Joy of learning is
as essential as intelligence,

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as breathing is to runners and dancers!"

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(Applause)