The complex relationship between generations in a faster world | Katia Provantini | TEDxMilano

It is problematic to build a future if the golden age is placed behind us. What happens to the new generations in this era of change? Faced with a sense of failure and fear, Katia Provantini, in an interview with François de Brabant, invites us to change our knowledge paradigm. Let's begin from the adults, to rediscover the connection between generations and give-back the future to kids.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community.

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FdB: Katia. KP: Here I am.

FdB: Big and fast changes. KP: Very fast.

FdB: Very fast.

What's happening to teenagers?

How do they live it?

What's happening?

KP: Hard to say,

because teenagers today
usually described in opposite ways.

We speak about adolescents

by representing their demotivated
and superficial traits.

We represent them
as listless and fragile boys.

Or we praise them

when we think about extraordinary,
out of the ordinary people

and we fall in love with them,

but we fail to channel these specialties
within the big contemporary generation.

Should we draw a bottom line
from help requests to doctors,

we have to think about
a generation of teenagers

that's substantially sadder
than the previous one,

more introverse,
less prone to express outwards

their rage and aggressiveness.

So they're less inclined
to fight and shout,

they rather risk
to end up becoming introvert

and quitting their project of growth,

drenched in a gloom
that leaves them demotivated.

FdB: An example may be interesting
to make us understand.

KP: I think the examples
that many of us unfortunately know,

not only those that work in clinics,
among our relatives, cousins, friends,

are stories about boys
that once were special kids

that were described enthusiastically
at the nursery and primary schools:

"That nice little kid,
fast, smart, always moving,

all figured out,

maybe a bit too hard to handle;

but you can see their own nature,
their own personality,

he may be destined to be
rebellious and unsubmissive.

And he may be one
of those who will be able

to find their own amazing path.

When this child goes to primary schools,

although he says:

"I want to do this, to study birds,

I want to study animals;
no, only dinosaurs;

no, just fishes, I don't like this stuff."

This signal is warmly welcomed

because it means they're all figured out

and they're connected
with their predispositions.

Yet once he's at the secondary school,
this view changes completely,

and the same features
that were first welcomed with:

"Wow, look how much energies,
how many opportunities",

at the secondary schools
are seen differently.

It gets worried, alarmed, because:

"Oh my god, he doesn't follow the rules.

We gave him instructions
that he didn't follow.

He may even fall behind with his studies,

just because he's not able
to use the trails

that someone else's has left before him.

So the view turns from skillful
to alerted, worried

and sometimes even disgusted.

So adults' view of teenager

can also be like this.

And these kids, that suddenly clash
with a view they'd have never expected,

as they were raised in ten welcoming years

of extremely positive regards,

first they try to understand
what happened, who made the mistake:

those who came first

and maybe saw a talent,
a genius that didn't exist,

or maybe the blames are
on those that came next

and are hostile to adolescents.

And so they're indolent.

But all this questioning
soon loses its importance

as what really matters
in the mind of these kids

is that things went the wrong way,

thus they sure have failed on something.

And they may feel ashamed
for this attitude and humble façade,

but also for this failure
to keep promises.

Then shame and guiltiness alternate
and at that point the pain is too much,

there's no more future.

What happens next is that
these kids become more introvert,

they stop to believe
that there's a future project

or that it actually makes any sense.

You suffer less with lower expectations,
locking yourself up in your home,

also for the fear of showing
yourself to the other people

who will note the differences
between the primary schools' cheerful you

and now you dramatically show
how average you are.

Thus, a total failure
of the growth project.

FdB: But what went wrong?
Who's responsible for that?

KP: From a certain perspective,
it's everyone and nobody's fault,

which means maybe we should
start all over by accepting the idea

that both a positive and negative judgment

is in the view of the one who observes,
not the one observed.

We have a very serious problem nowadays -

I mean we as adults -

in modulating consistently
educational models

between childhood and adolescence.

We are the adults that feel betrayed,

because they've seen a future -
I would say assured - vanish.

Sure, you had to do things,
to have a future:

a bit of responsibility, a bit of effort;

but then that positive future
was not questioned.

Today it is,

and we've convinced ourselves
that the future before us

is spoiled, gone.

And we're also adults
that experimented firsthand

how dramatic is to teach rules,
stick to the rule

with no awareness, "mindlessly",
thus with a subordinate view,

a mind that doesn't reason

and that doesn't question
the rule we enforced.

And this has determined a burden
that we adults put on children,

the youngsters,

by telling them they must be brave,
they must be strong

they have to find out very early
what their skills are,

in order to be themselves
and find their own path,

so that every challenge
they are going to face,

will also be an obstacle
they'll be able to overcome.

But we didn't consider adolescence,

which, compared to childhood,

contemplate the other,
the different, and the unknown.

So, for us valorizing a child

means that we're teaching him
the rules into the relationship:

"Do it because I love you.

Do it because I've invested a lot on you,
and I know what's good for you."

It's an internal rule,
that comes from a familiar environment

that we value because it belongs to us,

but the adolescent,
if he does his job well,

is destined to go further
into the unknown,

the different, unexplored.

At that point we adults,

as we're still used
to supervise their growth,

because we know the rules,
we know responsibility,

we get scared, we don't know how to react,

there we go back to the old model fashion,

we ask them to submit to the rules
on behalf of responsibility,

in the name of becoming adults.

We ask them to stick
to the very model we rejected,

as we saw it didn't work,
but we don't have an alternative one.

And we are - while waiting
for better options,

by acting like this,
we unintentionally dismiss

the possible creation
of an opening toward future.

FdB: Given your experience
and the number of cases

you analyzed, went through and helped,

what can be done?

KP: Many things, thankfully,

because retreating boys
are always a growing number.

Social retreatists are those
that lock themselves up at home,

but there are always
more cases of mental retreatism,

meant as a mental shutdown,

not thinking at all,
so as not to feel the pain.

We really need to start again,
aware of the fact

that we're the actors
that can make a difference.

The project of giving
so much value to children

and then taking it back as adolescents,

thinking that this way they'll be tested

and their attitude
strengthened and tempered,

is in fact a suicidal project
for contemporary adolescents,

because it means assimilating them
to a relationship, to a particolar view

and then suddenly,
without any prior warning,

take that support back,

taking away that safety area,
the relationship with adults in general,

the closest ones, but also teachers
and all adults surrounding them.

This means handing them over to fear,

to solitude and gloom.

Then we have another serious problem

that is a consequence of the speed
you mentioned during the introduction.

Changes happen so fast that institutions

are stuck in a very difficult situation,

because it's evident that today
we have to modify our knowledge,

we have to create knowledge
not the way we approached it,

not the way we learned it at school.

That was a knowledge made of contents,
straight linear passages,

made of relations between who knows
and who doesn't know,

who has to learn

and so has to receive those contents
and learn to repeat them.

Nowadays, knowledge
is evidently procedural.

It's in motion, it's constantly evolving,
it needs exploration,

it takes thoughtful minds,

minds that experience knowledge.

And here we are still within a model,

those books we talked about this morning
that rest high on top of the shelves,

which are not able in fact

to create devices for mind training.

Complex competences can't be trained,

without getting the kids' hands dirty,

and without modifying those tools
and making them flexible.

We also have another problem

still about knowledge
and how we figure it out.

We adults are grown -

since the technological
revolution of writing,

we relate through names with a knowledge

made of definitions, made of casuistry,

of packagings and analysis,
of differences telling us:

"We learned this notion"

And we apply this view on everything,
even when we give grades,

when we give a judgment,
when we do a diagnosis.

So, whether we're parents,
teachers, clinicians,

in fact we apply these kids
a taxonomic logic.

We tell them: "You're like this,
before you were brilliant and skilled,

then suddenly you become one
that makes us worried,

you don't follow the rules.

Maybe we can't get along with you,
we don't know what you're doing.

How can we supervise this path of yours,

which already has arguments,
contents and manners we're not aware of?"

Here we put labels on it,

unaware of the fact that,
if identity is in movement today,

one becomes himself,

and you need a life
to become more and more yourself.

we need adults

to question the deep meaning
of their functions.

It's not a label that can help us through,

beyond the label, we need to think
about why it happened.

what's the meaning,
what resources can you activate,

how did you activate them.

Last big topic,

huge topic

but we should try
to talk about it between adults,

before involving kids.

We condemned these kids
since they were children,

in this passage from a formal family

made of rules, of absolute values,

of the affective family,
made of relationships,

We gave them an addiction on our sight.

We are the ones giving value,

and indeed when we get scared
we take it away from them,

so these kids heavily rely on us

and on our happiness, in some ways.

When we get scared, we shutdown,

we got worry

and we declare that at that point
the future is all wrong, all lost.

At that point these boys
have a problem at surviving.

But they also feel burdened
by the responsibility

of having somehow
disapponted us, damaged us.

And it becomes a schism mechanism,

where all subject go their own way,

struggling and in distress.

The most evident example

of this running apart,
everyone on his own,

is the fact that since the kids
are very young we tell them:

"Find your talent, find your gift,

run fast, decide as soon as possible."

The infamous "I either
study dinosaurs, or don't."

The idea that your path
must be focused on yourself,

on your ambitions, besides of competences.

Actually, as that knowledge
should be co-created,

co-experienced,

you have to consider the others' existance

and enter a project
of co-responsibility of knowledge.

So much so that today kids
renounce to the project of growth

and to the project of knowledge,

if their knowledge
is detrimental to someone else.

It becomes one of the most common
risk factors in a classroom,

when it's clear that competition

will privilege someone
and dismiss someone else.

You can notice this aspect
in the individual,

as well as in groups,

because at this point
it's not enough to state:

"We must give space to kids

because they aren't superficial,
nor incompetent.

They're strong instead,
use technologies, have their own future".

We should begin from this point:
it's their future

and ours, as we visualized it,
doesn't exist anymore.

But we cannot step aside

and let them deal with everything

because they are kids we raised

to share, to participate emotionally.

Now we have to participate to the building

not only of knowledge,
but also of the future project.

It's like if we said:

"It's not how we expected anymore,
everything is different,

we don't even know what will happen,

but if we do that together
we will get something back."

It's like stating we're not
supervisors of the whole process,

but we supervise the fact
that it's worth it.

And together we can still
co-build a future.

FdB: Wonderful message.

(Applause)