Paolo, a 14 -year -old boy from Lazio, took his life in his bedroom on his day before the start of the school year. According to the parents, the young man was constantly victim of bullying and the teachers would have done nothing to help him.

Despair that we cannot understand

The investigations are still in progress, but we can already draw some considerations, because this story unfortunately resembles others that I have met during my work with the Hikikomori Italia association, which deals with social retreat and therefore also of school abandonment. Paolo was evidently afraid of the school. The choice to make the gesture on the eve of the return to the classroom expresses a real terror towards the school environment. If it has come to much, it means that he had lost any trust in the fact that teachers could help him. And the fact that he waited until the last day to end his existence indicates how, in reality, he wanted to live. It is therefore not a impulsive gesture, but a weighted act, the result of despair that we can hardly understand to the end. It is our duty, however, to try, because in the face of tragedies like these it is necessary to stop and ask ourselves about our responsibilities.

Pressure, threats

The current school, as it is built, ends too often to generate trauma. Many of us continue to make nightmares linked to school experience even years after finishing their studies. To those who, for example, happened to dream of a question for which he had not prepared himself, or to suddenly discover that he had been rejected and having to repeat a year? This happens since during adolescence we have no tools to manage stress peaks of this reach, and inevitably we develop ailments that can lead to burnout and depression: the antechamber of self -harm. We do not know exactly what Paul has experienced, what pressures, humiliations or threats had to endure. However, we can imagine it, because many of us, including me, have known similar experiences. Bullying is not a single sporadic episode: it is a persecutory, continuous behavior that gives who suffers the feeling of being trapped. And if the teachers also show themselves little empathic and sensitive, what tools remain available to a boy? Sometimes bullying escapes us simply because we don’t want to see it.

Bullying should not be taken below

In Japan, for example, there is a proverb: “The protruding nail must be picked up”. Its meaning is simple: those who do not adapt to social norms must be forced to do so, with good or bad. It is precisely this conception of bullying as an inevitable event, or even useful from an educational point of view, which must also be eradicated by our culture. When a teacher receives a bullying report from a pupil must never take it below, but immediately activate supports, in particular psychological. Furthermore, if bullying takes on a persecutory dynamic, as often happens, those who practice it must be denounced because they are committing a real crime. Even the family, in this sense, must not minimize with phrases like “are boys”, “is just joking” or “today young people are too fragile”. It is the duty of every parent to teach the child to respect the sensitivity of others, even when it differs from one’s own. In fact, empathy can be taught, like any other socio-emotional competence: we just have to want it.