In Barra, a suburb to the east of Naples, a group of middle-school teachers are participating in the ministerial project Chance, that focuses on young people who have fallen by the scholastic wayside, students who haven’t finished their compulsory education. These young people have dropped out of school, they have been kicked out or they have flunked out. Chance isn’t a school like all the others: there are no class tests, no oral exams, no bells, and especially, no grades.

“We didn’t want to dramatize reality, nor did we want to make it seem more pitiful, we only wanted to bear witness: these young people, despite their great hardships and misfortune, live their daily lives with unconscious courage and great irony” (A. D’Ambrosio, D. Di Biasio).