Translator: Robert Tucker Reviewer: Ellen Maloney
It was a real privilege for me today
to be able to stroll the streets of Matera.
And I thought that we, Italians,
almost take for granted such magical places,
where our past, a glorious and ancient past,
really exists, and we see it, and we still live in the middle of it.
And it's not just an Italian thing,
it's really the Mediterranean,
which is often called the 'cradle of civilization',
and I, working for Al Jazeera, often also go to countries
on the southern shores of the Mediterranean -
and, of course, there's ancient Egypt,
there's the Palestinian territories, Israel, the Holy Land,
Syria, where Aleppo, I believe,
is the city with the longest continuous habitation in the world.
Also, even staying on the European side,
we have Greece with its history.
But it also made me think
that a glorious past is not an obvious guarantee of a good present,
or a good future.
Because let's look at these countries:
Egypt seeking a functional democracy that is just,
and still more or less failing to do so.
Syria, which we don't discuss, is torn by a civil war
that has now been going on for years with no end in sight.
Greece is hit by a deep crisis that is thoroughly wearing down society.
And we also well realize that we've serious problems ourselves.
We call it an 'economic crisis',
but perhaps, you might also call it a 'metamorphosis'.
Because I believe that the crisis has highlighted problems
in a system that did not work.
And who calls the shots for us?
Well, the young.
It's said that Italy is not a country for young people,
and it must be strange, it seems to me,
to be a young person on the streets of Matera,
walking about, being surrounded by this so glorious and so ancient past,
but at the same time, having a sense of depression for the future,
always almost feeling unfortunate
to have been born in a time that everyone says is a crisis.
So what are these guys doing?
Well, many of them are leaving.
I've been living in London for 20 years,
and the last few years have been distrubing.
I hear Italian everywhere:
lawyers, bankers, the guy who makes the coffee,
also at Al Jazeera,
in our finance department, there's an Italian girl.
We're really becoming quite multitudinous.
And I'm a big fan of doing work experience abroad,
but that's different, that's not the 'brain drain',
which is everyone clearing off because they no longer see a future here.
And what are they going to look for in London?
They are looking for that magic word
that we hear so much in national discourse here in Italy.
And that word is 'meritocracy'.
We see meritocracy as the solution to many of our ills.
Perhaps all our ills, starting, of course, from nepotism,
which we know has to change,
which we know is not giving our country the best chance.
But, in my opinion, and I say this after 20 years in London,
and a life abroad, unfortunately -
I've always missed Italy, I didn't take the decision to leave:
our family left when I was only eight.
And I believe that, in the Italian national discourse,
it has been misunderstood what is, in effect, meritocracy.
Because it is seen as an antidote to nepotism,
as an antidote to everything,
it is seen as our solution, it is seen as a good thing, and it is,
but it has more than a positive side:
meritocracy also has a negative side, or, at the very least, a ruthless side.
Because meritocracy, as I see it, does not reward the good,
meritocracy does not reward those who have studied.
The meritocracy doesn't care if you got 110 cum laude.
Meritocracy does not reward those who work hard,
and in a sense meritocracy doesn't reward the deserving.
Meritocracy rewards the best, and others just get the leftovers.
5,000 immigrants arrive in London every week.
And it is an immigration of the educated, and all enter into competition.
In London, there are many opportunities,
but when there is one job and a thousand applicants,
the job will go to one person, the best.
And therefore, for me,
it's very misleading to talk about meritocracy
if you do not talk about its twin sisters,
perhaps not identical, but definitely twins:
competition and ambition.
I sometimes talk with two Italian boys who arrived in London and asked me:
'Barbara, I don't know what you mean.
Competition?
I see a job, send in my CV,
what else am I supposed to do?'
And I've thought a lot about the answers that I try to give,
and an argument I had comes to me
that I had many years ago, when I was 20-21 years old,
with a friend called Matteo, Italian, much more Italian than me,
in the sense that though he now travels, he was born and raised in Italy.
We were talking about tests in class.
I confessed that not only was I such a nerd I'd never copied,
I never have and never would have let my assignment be copied by a classmate.
So I never helped a classmate
allowing him to copy my work.
Heaven forbid!
Matteo let loose,
'You are rotten!'
'What the hell is it with you?' 'Why couldn't you help a friend?'
And then he said to me,
'You never know when you might need help!'
And I thought about it a lot.
Because when you fight with a friend -
and we're still friends now, so our friendship survived the quarrel -
when you argue with a friend about something so mundane,
then you think, 'Well, is it me that's wrong or him?
How can we be so different?'
And so I thought about it, and after years got to it:
the fact was I had gone to English schools.
The marks given us
were awarded in a very different way to those given to Matteo
who went to schools in Italy.
For Matteo, assignments were marked out of 100,
so 60 per cent was adequate, 70 per cent good, 80 per cent very good,
90 per cent or over was excellent.
And it was based on what you did.
Your marks were not given relative to the others.
For me, on the other hand, in an English international school,
my marks went a bit like this.
This is called:
[English marking on a Gaussian curve]
It's complicated to explain,
but my marks were awarded relative to my classmates.
Which is to say, that out of a class of thirty pupils,
as you can see on the right, only 10 per cent would be rated excellent:
of the 30 pupils, only three were rated excellent.
And it didn't matter because all the marks were placed on this curve:
the majority in the middle,
plus the failures and the excellents,
but only a certain percentage would have been excellent.
What did it mean, then?
You could get 99 per cent as a result of an assignment,
but if there were three people with 100 per cent,
you didn't get the excellent grade.
This explains why copying
is socially acceptable in the Italian system.
I am using the example of school assignments,
but, in fact, we know that it can be applied to other situations.
Socially acceptable in Italy but not here.
If you let your friend copy you in Italy, you are the good guy,
you're the friend who helped the other,
the two of you together won against the system,
you didn't harm anyone.
If I, here, am one with an excellent mark, say,
help a classmate who might have got a 'sufficient'
to instead, with my help, get a 'very good',
it is no longer a victimless crime,
because people with lower grades than he
will get lower marks still because I let him copy.
So allowing someone to copy is not socially acceptable.
On the contrary, I am no longer the class nice guy,
I am the idiot who is degrading the others' marks
by helping someone who, in the end, didn't put in the study.
Now, this may seem like an example that's a little simple-minded,
but it shows how in the English system, where I went to school,
competition is literally taught for nine years,
the length of time I was receiving marks this way.
So it is inculcated.
And I notice many young Italians are not used to this,
because it's not restricted to schools,
but all the universities in America and the UK are closed to many
since you need to apply, and it's always competitive.
When you apply you must give your grades:
schools always show on your report card
if you are in the top 10 per cent, if you were among the best.
Italians are not used to this,
and I am very sorry to say that when I see their CV's,
and they do send them to me at Al Jazeera, those interested in journalism,
or if they just contact me for advice,
which I am more than happy to give,
it's an honour,
it's obvious that they are not used to the system,
because the truth is that the CV's of Italian students
show that they are not at all accustomed to competition.
No sentence makes me angrier than when I turn on a talk show in Italy,
and hear: 'Yes, in London there's meritocracy,
your CV is all you need.'
Well, so, I'm going to show you
the CV I received a couple of months ago from an Italian girl,
but in a way even less Italian than me.
Her name is Costanza Maio,
she was born in Perugia of Italian parents
who, however, moved to Philadelphia in America
when she was just six years old.
Let's say, her Italian accent is even worse than mine.
Anyway, here is her CV.
Costanza is now 21, she was then 20.
So here we see all her education.
She is now at New York University,
and did various internships in Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates,
and then also in Paris, a year's sabbatical in Spain,
and this is no rich kid's vacation,
these are all scholarships and things she won.
But this is only the first page,
this is her education, awards and scholarships.
Costanza shows me immediately when and where she excelled.
The second entry, 'Dean's List',
that's what I mentioned before, the top 10 per cent of a school.
And she continues, look there, the 'Global Impact Award' from 'buildOn',
which is a non-governmental organization that she has often worked with,
so obviously nowhere she got paid.
Here we see her professional experience.
You can see down on the right,
she gained her first professional experience at eighteen,
and you can also see the second is 'Casa Italiana' in New York -
which if we go to New York, we should go to -
and from what she told me, she was practically just the receptionist.
So no work that had an impact on her studies
or in which she could see her future,
but work experience.
And so it continues!
International experience, you even see here, 19, 18,
the first was to Mali, Africa at 15 for two weeks.
And here extra-academic experiences, all the things she did outside her studies
that universities in America look at
because they want to see people who are really active,
who may not be the best academically, but have other interests.
And here her skills at the end, in brief:
she studied languages, which she let me see.
But what really is awesome about Costanza's CV,
looking at it likes this, looking at the columns.
The column on the left is from 15 to 17,
then the other columns are at 18, 19, 20, and 21.
There's only one entry because, when she did it,
she had just turned 21.
Look at the column on the left: 15 to 17 years old.
These are chores or what we would call chores.
But they are experiences,
and it is also the column, in a sense, more filled with things.
On this column depend all the other columns.
Now I'll tell you something: when I see the CV's of young Italians
who send their CV's to me in London:
That column does not exist.
And there's nothing really at 18, 19 years old.
Or if there is, it's minimal.
Now, I know that it is very difficult in Italy:
as a matter of mindset we're not used to it,
I know many families, in short, see their kids taking work when young
in a way that is a little negative.
I know it's very difficult to get an internship.
Speaking with Beppe Severgnini of the 'Corriere della Sera',
a dear friend and colleague,
he said something that made me laugh,
which was that it's easier to get a jaguar
into the office at 'Corriere della Sera'
than a minor.
So I know that there are many difficulties,
but whenever I get a CV from an Italian,
I always have the instinct, justifiably or not,
of wanting to help an Italian, bound of blood,
but when I see it, and I see that is quite wrinkled,
there's a part of me that wants to ask:
'In the summer of those years from 15 to 17,
with all that summer experience,
in the summers when you were 15, 16, 17,
were you three months on the beach with family and friends?
In the summer when you were 18,
were you on the beach with family and friends?
For three months?
The summers you were 19, 20, 21,
were you on the beach with family and friends?
Because if you were on the beach for all those years for three months,
I don't know that you really have the right to come crying at 23
that you have no work experience
and can't find an internship.
(Applause)
I don't ever say it to Italians, because I know how things are,
but the reality is that they maybe send their CV to me,
and me being Italian, I understand, and maybe help.
But if they are in London,
they send them to people who are not Italian,
and they don't understand, and that's the mentality they have.
And they are the competition, so I ask myself about Costanza,
who, from her CV, doesn't look easy to get on with,
though she's kind, good and so pretty.
And I asked her, 'But Costanza, what was it that spurred you on
when you were young to do these things?'
'Well, ambition.'
Uh, ambition!
Another word you never hear in Italian.
I remember one time at RAI talking to a colleague,
when I said to her:
'Well, I'm really ambitious.'
And she said, 'Shush!'
I said [whispering] 'Why?'
'You can't say it!'
'Why can't I say it?' - just like that, whispering.
She goes, 'Because it doesn't sound good.'
Because when we speak, to be ambitious doesn't sound good,
it smacks of social climbing, it smacks of pushing in,
of being privileged.
Then, a woman and say you're ambitious -
well, good luck!
But ambition is key,
because, throughout this talk, another word that comes out in Italian
smacks of privilege.
All this experience abroad.
What I'm describing
is the European version of the American dream.
The American dream, what's that?
It was our ancestors -
because my mother is Sicilian, I'm half Sicilian.
Our ancestors, not of centuries ago,
but of the last century, just after the war maybe,
who had nothing,
they understood here they'd have had no future,
and ambition spurred them to go to America with nothing.
And competition and meritocracy has meant that now,
after two generations or whatever,
you hear Italian-American names in all the highest positions in America.
That is ambition:
it has nothing to do with privilege; but the opposite.
It's the way to get ahead if you aren't born lucky.
Now, there are two reasons -
(Applause)
there are two reasons why I wanted to talk about these things.
One, because it really strikes me
what's going on with all the young Italians arriving in London.
A couple of weeks ago
I had a man of 31 years who started crying on the phone
because it's so hard up against this wall,
above all when you have left Italy with some bitterness.
So I wanted to explain a little.
It's not just a question of who goes, because real work is to be found here.
And Italy must change, and change now.
And maybe this system is not right for us.
Therefore I think we need to talk about meritocracy,
to use it in the right way, and to use it in our way.
We do not want to be a poor copy of countries like the UK and America,
we want to be a fairer version,
more competitive, one of our own culture.
For a future aware, Italian style.
Thank you.
(Applause)