Last week, Italy was deeply shaken by the heinous murder of an 18-year-old in La Spezia, brutally killed at the hands of another student. Confessing to stabbing his peer to death, the killer explained that the victim had exchanged pictures with the girl – an old friend of his – from when they were young.
While aware of the growing culture of violence across young people, Italy is fortunately not accustomed to terrible news like this. The tragedy resulted in a wave of emotions and solidarity with the victim’s family and friends, as well as his school and local community.
A chilling homicide
The murder sent shockwaves across the country for multiple reasons. It wasn’t only the killing of a young student: the stabbing took place within the school’s walls, a place viewed as the most secure. After murdering his victim, the killer returned to his classroom still holding the knife, before being disarmed by his teacher.
Even more chilling, there is a chance that the murder may have been premeditated. In fact, the murder weapon – a kitchen knife – may have been carried by the killer directly from home, signalling possible premeditation. Whilst the additional charge of premeditation is under scrutiny, the aggravating factor of futile motive was formalised by the preliminary investigation judge. At present, nothing seems to indicate that the exchange of pictures leading to the fatal stabbing was anything more than an innocent demonstration of affection between two friends.
Politics’ belated response
As often happens, the political response was belated, reactive, and therefore inadequate. The Minister of Education, Giuseppe Valditara, issued a statement expressing his condolences and wishing for a comeback of a “culture of respect” in high schools. In the wake of the murder, far-right party Lega revived legislative efforts to enhance security measures, including installing metal detectors at schools to prevent the entry of knives or other potentially dangerous objects in high schools. The Egyptian nationality of the killer seemingly played a role in the push to approve the umpteenth legislative package of security measures by Lega. It is noted that Lega vehemently opposes immigration and, like Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, often links irregular immigration to high crime rates.
An immigration problem?
The supposed causal nexus between illegal immigration and crime notoriously represents the main vehicle of consensus for right-wing political forces across the West. In the specific case of Italy – a country geographically exposed to more immigration routes than others – the picture is considerably more complex.
A report on immigration statistics by Italian research centre IDOS (2025) highlighted that the incidence of arrests and crime rates among foreigners appears to be higher than among the resident population (in 2023: 33.7% vs 8.9%, and 5.1% vs 1%, respectively).
However, these data are often misleading. For instance, data relate the number of arrests during a given year, not to the number of individuals that were subject to them (e.g., the same individual may be subject to multiple arrests). Similarly, immigrants are subject to offences such as illegal entry into the country, which clearly have no correspondent in the resident population, skewing the overall picture.
Research undertaken by the London School of Economics, based on official data, reached similar conclusions, seemingly disproving the widespread perception of a link between immigration and criminality.
The dangers of short-term politics
Data only tell you the real story when they are considered in context, and it is ultimately up to citizens to take the trouble to verify such data and understand the underlying picture. On their part, some politicians may be inclined to selectively present just the right amount of data to serve their political agenda.
The figures above suggest that ascribing criminality, including the brutal murder of an 18-year-old, to an immigration problem, is deeply reductive – not to mention fundamentally xenophobic. Likewise, expediting legislation in response to events instead of addressing the root causes is a fundamental failure of politicians.
This is because addressing the cause is a long-term plan, hard to explain to voters hungry for immediate results. It better suits politicians’ short-term consensus needs to cure the symptoms (more people in jail, more metal detectors in schools) rather than addressing the root causes (economic inequalities, social fabric deterioration, lack of rehabilitation).
This approach may be the worst response that an age of instability, uncertainty and fear like ours needs. My generation, the Millennials, have come to terms with the fact that our lives will certainly be worse than our parents’ Baby Boomer generation, but overall will do alright. Those who will suffer the most from the long-term consequences of short-term politics are today’s youth (Generation Z) and even more so, tomorrow’s (Generation Alpha).
Keeping education relevant
To me, the above-mentioned data seem to point to a wider issue, which ties many topics at once: the rise of violent behaviour among adolescents (often manifesting as sexism), the weakening of a composite social fabric, the schools’ misplaced identity and, last but not least, the use of new technologies in education.
The issue is: how are education and culture evolving in these times, and what is the best way to address them? How can schools best adapt their practices to remain influential on young people, inspire them, and teach them a culture of behaviour, not just a culture of notions? How can schools remain effective in teaching what good writing or critical thinking look like when students may be naturally inclined to outsource the effort of writing and thinking to ChatGPT? How can schools provide leading, practical examples of a “culture of respect”, when technology risks making minds lazy and intellectually less fertile?
In other words: how can education remain relevant when students seem to be lacking trust in institutions and technologies challenge its status quo?
Education and AI
I’ve been wondering these questions over the last few months, when I have gone through a period of deep professional development and returned to studying for exams, about 8 years since my last formal degree. Back then, I didn’t have ChatGPT and my studying followed very traditional methods: memorising, absorbing, contextualising notions and using them to shape my judgments, both in my professional field and personal life. After all, that is what culture should be about: not just knowing things, but knowing what to do with them.
When I returned to studying, AI had entered the picture, and I suddenly noticed how the dynamics of studying had profoundly changed. Things were easier, as now I had a teaching assistant that could simplify complex mathematical concepts I didn’t quite get, providing metaphors, generating alternative explanations and additional resources.
Overall, I would argue that studying got much easier. However, I did notice the downside of potential overreliance on AI as soon as you don’t understand a concept. Before, lacking other venues, I would try to push myself to get the hardest concepts. I still try to do that today, but I know I can rely on ChatGPT. Before, studying was a stimulating activity because you had to push yourself to uncharted territories. Today, there is a risk that a struggle turns into surrender (to technology) rather than continuing to fight.
But yes, it was easier for me, because I belong to the (last?) generation that, back in the day, studied the traditional way. For young people today, however, there wasn’t a harder “before”: there is just what we perceive as an “easy today”.
A long-term-focused politics should recognise exactly that. The first step to answer the questions above is to come to terms with one reality: just like in many other fields, in education too AI is here to stay. Educational institutions can either pretend it’s not there, or embrace it, integrate it, and adapt to it. This doesn’t simply require a new directive from the Ministry of Education. It demands a necessary, genuine and, if you may, inevitable mindset shift from educational institutions.
We’re not expecting that a student will not write an essay with ChatGPT or Claude just because their teacher told them not to, are we? Can you – marketing professional – possibly imagine stopping using AI just because it’s not the right way of doing it? Can you – corporate leaders – possibly demand that your staff not use AI for tasks that can be easily automated without any negative impact on the business?
Saving the youth: the idea of debates
One idea to save young people from the grip of violent behaviours and, simultaneously, accompany a new AI-ready educational course would be to establish mandatory debate programmes in high schools.
This idea has been simmering in my mind for quite a few years. In fact, when I look back at the gaps that education left me with, I can clearly see now how debates would have equipped me with more valuable tools to be successful at university and work. I wish my school had done debates among peers.
Debates could focus on any agreed topic: domestic or international politics, micro- or macro-economy, social problems, environmental issues, and so on. They could take the form of a one-to-one debate, group against a group or, for particularly courageous students, 1 vs 20, echoing the popular format of the Jubilee debates. Each debater would offer a position on the selected topic, taking care to back up their stance with sound research. They would need to present evidence and data in support of their opinion, showing that their views are profoundly rooted in objective information that was researched and analysed in context. Schools may train students in research methodologies in advance of the debate to best prepare them to excel.
There should be basic but strictly enforced rules, violating which could result in debate disqualification.
· Never resort to insults or any kind of discriminatory or defamatory language
· Never attack the debater, but highlight the weaknesses of their arguments
· Any evidence or data cited must be provided in hard copy during the debates
· Each debate is marked solely on the quality of research done
Why debates
The idea of debates is likely to serve multiple purposes:
1. Developing research skills. To excel at this programme, students would need to learn and develop research skills. They are often required to research topics when they need to present a paper or similar assignments, but rarely are they ever trained on how to research in a structured way. They often don’t know where to start or how to distinguish reliable information from unverified claims – simply because no one taught them. No one did when I was in high school, and yet I would have strongly benefitted from it in my later years at university and at work. Even more so, considering I would have become an analyst.
2. Boosting confidence. You will find both show-off kids and very shy ones, with varying degrees of self-confidence in between, in every school. Debates would level up these behavioural differences. Relying on little else but their own research, the shy kid would be required to articulate their opinion, learning to speak out loud and make his ideas known to an audience. The overly confident kid would be required to prove the robustness of his convictions. If his opinions are solid enough, he will probably learn that it’s not necessary to act like a braggart to be strong. If his opinions are proven weak and jumbled, he will probably rethink his behaviour and come back with stronger evidence next time. I know for a fact that participating in debates would have strengthened my self-confidence in public speaking.
3. Forming rational opinions. Carrying out sound research and being able to communicate your views to others is the bedrock to form robust, evidence-based judgments. If it becomes a practice for students to do research first and form opinions later (and not the other way around, like many adults appear to do), they will probably embed this modus operandi in their later years. If this school practice becomes incorporated as a mindset (which is the ultimate goal), they will not be able to form an opinion without researching the topic or feeling knowledgeable enough on it. This will stimulate curiosity, make them more resourceful citizens and more demanding voters. For instance, they will be less likely to look at the data, see higher crime rates and automatically infer that immigration drives crime. They will be more likely to consider the context and avoid jumping to conclusions.
4. Practising respect. There is a good chance that telling an adolescent not to do something is the best chance for them to do that out of rebellion or principle. I don’t want to slide into any generalisation here, but adolescents do tend to be rebellious – and thankfully so, I would add. You can’t just tell them, “be respectful because it is right” and expect them to obey uncritically. You can’t even show them, because they will call your bluff straight away. Instead, they have to practice it, and debates are a great way to do that. Debates are a process in which, after practice and if rules are followed, students will internalise respect for the opponent, viewing them as human beings that you merely disagree with. This learning will go a long way in their lives.
5. Learning logical fallacies. As a risk management professional deeply concerned by disinformation, I am aware that there is no more fertile ground for disinformation than logical fallacies – reasoning mistakes that invalidate an argument and are often used to manipulate or persuade your interlocutor of false assumptions. Students should be taught logical fallacies as part of their preparation to the debate rounds, so they can spot them in the opponent and call them out. If embedded in their thinking, they’ll start recognising the very same deceptive techniques in public discourse, including politicians. If you’re attacking the opponent instead of their argument, you’re falling into the ad hominem fallacy. If you’re misrepresenting an opponent’s argument (by simplifying it to the extreme, for instance) to make it easier to attack, you’re falling into a strawman fallacy. Logical fallacies are countless and are leveraged by disinformation actors to spread false information. In the context of debates, students will call out opponents who are appealing to irrational arguments and lacking logical flow in their reasoning. In their everyday life, they will become more demanding voters.
6. Defending your arguments. As a former due diligence risk consultant, I have produced many corporate investigation reports and communicated my findings to clients. Often, information on the subjects of my investigations was limited, contradicting, and hard to turn into actionable insights. Yet, I had to paint the most complete intelligence picture based on available information, and present it to clients with the highest degree of confidence possible. Sometimes, I could infer the likelihood of a certain event, for instance using benchmarks or resorting to syllogisms. However, I would incur a high risk of making the same mistake of those who argue that immigration drives criminality (see above). In other words, I had to defend my findings in front of clients who might have credible reason to believe that things weren’t the way I wrote them in the report. Debates could prepare tomorrow’s professionals doing just that: accountability for their own work. It would get students used to be as thorough and detailed as they can in their professional endeavours. In doing so, no stone would be left unturned and they would be certain of the quality of their work, when clients challenge it. I learnt this the hard way years later, and I wish school had better prepared me for that.
7. Mitigating the negative impacts of AI. Stemming from the above, students can use ChatGPT to generate an essay they were supposed to write themselves, but whatever ChatGPT wrote – can they defend it? Can they contextualise it? Can they prove they’ve done enough research to frame it in the wider context? Embracing and adapting AI will require some trade-offs: probably less writing practice on the one side, access to vast amounts of knowledge on the other. The point in question is preparing students to use the most appropriate way and make the most of it. Debates might be a tool to achieve that.
AI as a possible solution
Some of the suggestions above have been discussed in a recent video by IBM Technology educational YouTube channel, in which IBM engineer Jeff Crume discussed how to best embed AI in current education practices. Crume interestingly asks why should a student learn writing cursive, as his (and my) generation were required to do, if future professionals are going to write on a keyboard? What is the point of memorising the whole periodic table when the same information can be looked up in a database? What is the point of learning how to calculate square roots, when you’re always going to have access to calculators?
These are uncomfortable questions, which will be viewed as the opposite of what education should be and certainly encounter resistances in today’s school. But change will come, whether schools like it or not. It may feel too early to ask these questions for some, but sooner or later they will be asked. As Crume argues, AI is like a train: you can decide whether to ride it or to be hit by it – but it’s not going to stop. You cannot pretend it’s not coming, as much as we cannot pretend students are not going to resort to ChatGPT to write essays.
Maybe the forthcoming need to integrate AI in educational practices may provide some suggestions to address the anxiety and lack of direction suffered by younger generations. The changes that AI adoption in education demands may lead the way for a new way of teaching – one that is more tailored and inclusive in practice, not just in good intentions. The key to the young people’s suffering, which manifests today in violent behaviour and hopelessness toward the future, may be right under our nose, where we least expect to find it. That, and a more forward-looking approach from politics. For the time being, let’s stick with the former.