“To meet people. To make new friends." So the social worker responds to little Shota in Japanese movie “A Family Affair”, directed by Hirokazu Kore'eda and winner of the Cannes Film Festival in 2018, as well as nominated for an Oscar for best foreign film. The child, protagonist of the complex story of a family of "invisibles", one of many who live on the margins of urban societies, had just asked: "Children who go to school are those who cannot study at home. Otherwise why go to school?”.
The question, paradoxical and dictated by his condition as an orphan "adopted" by the couple Osamu and Nobuyo Shibata, who she can't afford to enroll him in school and indeed teaches him to steal from shops, ironically appears today. In recent months, the opposite of what Shota imagined has happened: millions of kids, in Italy and around the world, have been forced to study at home because they could no longer do it in the classroom, and not vice versa.
In September, however, we will try to physically return to class, and in a certain sense it will happen precisely because there are children, and teenagers, who, as Shoda said “they can't study at home”. The theme of access to the Internet, of the possibility for everyone to take advantage of online lessons correctly (the so-called Dad, distance learning), even for those who do not have the tools, or for those who have to share them with other family members, is deeply felt and it is one of the main reasons why the same minister Lucia Azzolina, in Italy, is pushing for a return to the classrooms.
There is however another reflection that forms the background to this question, and which also concerns the adult world, i.e. all the workers who fortunately have not lost their jobs but who have been forced to work at home for months, not seeing colleagues, having endless meetings and conversations via chat , to share the spaces of the house (not necessarily large) with the partner-relative-child who also works-teaches-studies from home.
It is the one recalled by the words of the social worker: meet people, make new friends. In fact, school, just like work, also has this function. And this is why today, if pupils were asked what they prefer, most would answer that they can't wait to go back to class, to hug their favorite companion, to play group games at recess. And why not – and this also applies to adults in the office – to fall in love, to comment on football matches (which is starting up again in the meantime) while sipping a drink, to understand each other at a glance if you have any doubts about a lesson or a work dossier, rather than engaging in an endless video chat session, with background noise and a dropped connection.
At the end of the film, the universe of that poor family is revealed far from moving and comfortingand there is no happy ending. The film doesn't talk about school, but the message that passes is that human warmth, even in its most unpleasant imperfections, remains the best solution.
