Rethinking education

There is an undeniable disorientation in education. I am not only talking about the formal education system, but also about the undeniable educational task that we all have, especially parents.

No doubt we are at a time of great technical means, with cutting-edge technology at our disposal, with Artificial Intelligence facilitating our work, with more and better studies on the human brain itself and its internal mechanisms... but we are more lost than ever. Because, as the adage goes, no wind is good if the sailor doesn't know where he's going.

We do not know where we are going because, deep down, we have questioned our own civilization and have given up on transmitting the system of values bequeathed to us by our elders. As denounced by François-Xavier Bellamy in his work The disinherited our generation feels a refusal to transmit our own cultural tradition to the young. And with this we have disinherited our own children of that vital heritage so necessary to walk in life. We have left them disinherited and disoriented.

No clear direction

When you don't know where to go, when you don't have a whythe only thing that remains is the how. We don't know where we are going, but we keep walking. We stay in the means. That is why we have an education without a soul, without an objective, purely for subsistence. Full, yes, of bureaucracy, of that kind of paperwork that we are required to show that the system works, but that in the end is a simple pretext to comply with so that they cannot tell us that we have not complied. The usual, compliance. I comply and I lie. 

The rest of the ills of the education system are inevitable consequences: unmotivated and burned out teachers, lack of authority, emotionally fragile students, hidden school failure, lack of motivation...

But always, when there is darkness, there are stars shining on the horizon. People who, far from complaining about how bad things are going, use their abilities to open hopeful horizons. Watchmen in the night who announce the dawn.

Fabrice Hadjadj's proposal

These days we have learned about the initiative that Fabrice Hadjadj is launching in Spain: Incarnatus. As he himself defines in his presentation "something new is being born... A discreet fire. A seed that germinates. It is not a course, it is not a campus, it is not a product. It is a movement. It is a voice that returns from above and from the deep". 

This is also the direction of the educator Catherine L'Ecuyer, who is launching various initiatives aimed at making all educational agents reflect and mobilize on the type of education that our young people need. Her works Educating in awe, Educating in reality y Conversations with my teacherThe new model of education is both tremendously current and authentically revolutionary.

And one more star has arrived to my hands in these days illuminating in this same direction. It is the latest book by Andrés Jiménez Abad, Rethinking education (Eunsa). The subtitle is illuminating of the content of the book and the direction in which it points. Keys to a person-centered education. Continuing the school of Abilio de Gregorio and Santiago Arellano, this philosopher and pedagogue offers us concrete proposals for educating with a view to the centrality of the person. He advocates a personalizing education that brings to fulfillment the life project of each of the learners. An intuition that has guided Andrés Jiménez Abad to set up various educational initiatives, among which the following meetings stand out Foruniver and the pedagogical forum Agora. 

Yes, I believe as you point out Fabrice Hadjadj that something new is being born. We are in a complex time, but we also sense a change of cycle. And there are some stars that show us the way to follow in the night.

Let's adjust the sails and look for the wind that will take us to safe harbor.