The school of yesterday
Parables and Illustrations for Values Education |
There was once a man. After living for almost a hundred years in hibernation, a day it turned itself and was overwhelmed by the amazement of so many unusual things that I saw and could not understand: cars, airplanes, skyscrapers, phone, television, supermarkets, computers... He walked stunned and scared by the streets, without finding any reference with his life, feeling like a counterpoints branch from the trunk of life, when he saw a sign that said: school. He entered and there, finally. He could reunite with his time. Practically everything was equal: the same content, the same pedagogy, the same organization of the Hall with stage and the Professor, the Blackboard, desk and desks in row to prevent communication between the students and promote individual and rote learning.
Today we are beginning to accept that we live in .a change of time, rather than in a time of change, we need to consider a new way of seeing things and take education radically. More than fifty years ago, at the end of the second world war, Albert Camus wrote: "changes the world and men and up to the environment." Only the teaching has not changed. "Which means that teaches children to live and think for a world that it no longer exists". Next to the words of this French thinker, still sounding vigorous criticism of Carl Rogers: "in general, our schools constitute the institution more traditional, conservative, rigid and bureaucratic of our time, as well as the most resistant to change".
Certainly, it is undeniable that we are forming our children and young people - which are completely different to us and that we do not approach sympathetic and affectionate eye to know them really are and not as we think they are, - for a vanished world. They pass the paths of the future, go with vigorous steps into the 21st century, and we anchored in the 19th century. Still not fundamentally favoring our pedagogical practices memorization and repetition, and not emphasize the organizational practices authority and submission, which shows a school system oriented to repeat yesterday rather than create tomorrow?
Thus, it is urgent that the educators introyectemos and assume the need for a deep change and us aboquemos to develop an education that emphasizes personal and permanent, autonomous learning curiosity, creativity, innovation, reflection, critical ability, work in equipment, the formation of the person and human co-existence in solidarity and service. An education rooted in the today of students and life, trained to build a better tomorrow for all.