Kindness, evil, and teaching.

We want them strong like oaks; efficient, effective, safe, responsible. That's good. We should ask ourselves if we also want them to be human. Human in the sense of goodness.

Goodness has a bad reputation in our pragmatic world, even so it is the core of our species. As far as we move away from goodness, we lose humanity.

We want them to be empathic. I want them to experience empathy, feelings, emotions, understanding, respect. I want them to be flexible, dialogues. I want them to exercise an enough degree of reasonable tolerance.

I wish it for them and for the society they will build.

And I wonder if I have to punish them with harshness and without exceptions when they do not give the teacher all that they were asked. If I do not punish them, I run the risk of not preparing enough for a society that does not forgive the mistakes about time and time required. Even so, this last idea is the trap of the system.

The harsh and inhuman hardness of the system feeds on pedagogy that teaches us to live in a rugged and inhumane system. When I teach a boy or girl that when she does not deliver her or his homework, she or he will be punished, then I’m not only teaching her or him to be strong in this system, I’m also teaching him or her to become a controlling agent of this inflexibility. And this infelxibility is perpetuated. If I act like this, I teach him to be strict, not to understand, not to listen, and to turn (for someone else) into the difficulty against which I am preparing him or her.

On the other hand, If I decide that when he or she arrives and tells me that he or she has some family problems, trouble-makings, may be hard for him to be explained, and that have caused him or her to forget to take the order … so, if in these circumstances I listen to him or to her, and I encourage him or her to open up and tell me the problem, and if then, once I’ve listened to her or to him, I understand him or her, and so grant himor her one more day to deliver the work... Will not I be teaching him to be more human? Will not I be building a system that will work in a more harmonious way with the respect that individuals deserve as persons they are? Will not I be gaining his or her heart and making it more receptive to later teachings? Will not I make him or her stronger to resist a system that wants him or her to turn into an insect of the swarm?

I have the answer. Let each one answer for him.

The dark time

Image of Mario Modesto Mata from the wikipedia
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During the dictatorship of Franco, Spain was a land of legal murders and children's torture. The ideological heirs of Franco have still the power and refuse seeing into the criminal responsibility of that time. They even make fun of the people who was killed.

I’m going to write about the teachers of my parents. All that I’m going to explain is concerned with the teachers of my parents and generally the teachers of that time.

They used to use fear to convince the children. By terrorizing them, they got their obedience. During their childhood, those adults had been scared by authoritarian teachers, and they had grown up learning that their world was a wild forest of miserable people, and that only discipline and catholic education could save them from human hell. When Franco took power they discovered themselves as teachers, and they applied what they had learnt according to the ideology of the time. As children they learnt that if they wanted to be fair people, they should obey and accept their grey and boring fate.

Besides, they were slaves of the image as the whole society was. They should take care of the image they showed to people, the image that sorted everybody, and that decided who was honorable and who was a shameful citizen. Teachers taught their pupils to live according the dictatorship of image and prestige.

The main tool of the teachers of my parents was violence. They believed in violence; the violence of the punishments, the violence of their religious ideas about the hell and the devil, the power of the blood. «The words are taught through blood» they used to say.

They screened these cruel ideas upon the minds of the children, and this screening worked not only through what teachers talked to them but what they didn’t tell them either. Silences were as loud as shouts were. Screams were the usual poetry of the imperfect children. Those educators were ill; their minds were as ill as the society where they had grown up were.

Today we can talk about their deep mistakes: their obsessive separation between girls and boys, their insane fear of sexuality and nakedness, their neurotic fight to reach the perfection in the goal of achieving the order in life and things, in the timetibles, in the way that they wanted everyone to dress, in the way they wanted everybody to speak, walk, play, dream, live...

Their pedagogic lines consisted in memorizing more than understanding. It happened that many times not even the educators understood the core of what they taught.

Since 1939, and during decades, most teachers were settled by the government of Franco. They were young adults, eighteen years old sometimes, and they were sent to thousands of towns and villages down the poor and devastated Spain after the civil war. By that time, thousands of old teachers had been killed due to their republican ideas.so that either the teachers that remained working or the new and young teachers were all keen on the dictatorship, or they tried to seem so at least. There were terrible injustices, like the teacher that was condemned to death for having taught about the reproduction of donkies, or many other teachers who were killed for having been talked to the children about freedom and resistence against the fascism. So teachers who survived were like scared sheep obeying an evil wolf, or maybe evil sheep worshipping an even more evil wolf. Since that time, two or three generations of people have been educated wallowing in the darkness of an evil society, learning to close their mouths, to obey without claiming, to value their survival more than the quality of their life, to distrust freedom or anything related to freedom.

It was a sad time. Nowadays education is much better.

Children know that the only good attitude in learning process is not fearing of making oneself ridiculous.

Some people think that all in life is a competition. For instance, when they are drawing or painting, they always compare themselves with the great masters of painting, and many times they feel themselves as losers. And when other people are drawing, (and mostly the other people don't draw as good as them) they compare these other people with the great masters of painting too, and most times they criticize them and tell them to drop this hobby because they say they make themselves ridiculous.

People that despise those who are not genius can't assume the painting or any other hobby just as a pleasure, or just as a way of enjoying... or expressing oneself... or being in life. They think that all the people have the same sense of ridiculous they have, because they consider that all the things we decide to do in life must be tools to win, to beat, to look, to captivate, to dazzle... They live as if life was a showcase where the genius should be contemplated and admired, and they think that people who are not genious should hide their works in a drawer to not make themselves ridiculous.

This attitude shows a deep and strong self-worship, because they dream about hovering over people, and therefore they criticize those ones who dare to show they works. They feel the works of the other people as threats. They feel that the people who enjoy practising the same hobby than them are competitors or opponents, and first of all, they despise and compel them to drop their hobby to feel safer.

But life is a learning process, and children know that the only good attitude in learning process is not fearing ridiculous, and daring to show and to enjoy our works and our progress. No child feels bad when he or she makes a mistake in his or her first words. And he or she hasn't even learnt to read or write yet. Life is too short to be shy or to be slave of our fears, or even worse... to be slave of the fear to make oneself ridiculous. If we fear, we are not free. If a little child feared to start to speak, he would never start to speak. Life is too short to listen to those who think than life is a competition and a fight to dominate or being dominated.

Anyone is capable of anything, if he or she dares to chase his or her dreams, and if he or she spares no effort to fight against his or her own despondency, and if he or she specially does their hobby to enjoy and not to be conceited.However, it's not always that easy to ignore the harsh words of those who despise our work and our happiness; but, if we want to be free, we must forget them and their poor words. They usually are envious and jealous, and they know it. They know their own weakness and they feel sad for it. The attack is the way they try to compensate their painfull feeling. Their mainly envy our freedom and our happiness.

On the other hand, there always will be harsh people, moron, unsensitive, intolerant... Bring it on! But our life is ours, and we must be free. At long last, some sweet and foolish things make our life worth, the simple and foolish daily things that bring back magic to us. No matter if we are not the best painters, the best writters, the best singers or actors... We must paint, write, sing, play, have a bath in a lost corner of the nature (like you can see above in the photo)... The life is made of all the foolish things that make us happy.

So... go ahead!   

The invisible realities that stand around us

The core is not in the tools, nor in the material means, nor in the technological level... The core is in the way we teach, the way we do whatever we do. The children learn what we do more than what we explain. This idea is also useful for parents and for any educator. We have been suffering the empire of the discipline for centuries. Men and women have always thought that the only way of teaching has much to do with the fear of punishment, as if the young human beings were little animals about to be domesticated as horses in a horseback-riding school. 

Only the thoughts can change the thoughts. The power of the habits is very strong, I accept it, but... what kind of transformation is made in human heart, in human mind, if we do the things well only because we are used to do that things in this way? 

Things happened, our life changes, perhaps a war comes, the society breaks down, the appearances and the social forces that hold our behaviour fade away as the light when the night arrives... In this situations, if we are only domesticated as animals, we lose all what we thought we had. On the other hand, domesticated beings are not utterly free; they do what their internal forces compels to do... The deeds we do when we are not free doesn't give us happiness, our life stays in rut, we are not really we, and we can't evolve. 

The discipline borns from the hidden need of revenge. The angry teacher who applies discipline is really trying to relieve the rage, even though he thinks he is educating. What changes the human mind is not the punishment but the fact of being aware of what he or she has done bad and what she or he should have done in a different way, Most times, discipline is clearly an obstacle, because the violence of the punishment produces a reactive violence in the heart of the young one. The reactive violence darks the mind and the educational process stops. The knowledges we receive through the rage and the fear are not assumed in the best conditions, and sometimes, we hate those knowledges only because we acquired them through violence and stress. 

 So... How can we educate in a right way? How must our educative process be if we want to do the things well, and to do any good? First of all, we have to say that educating in a good way is not an easy task. Punishing is easier, and it often gets fast efects. People often applaud the consequences of the discipline; the clear and the immediate consequences of the discipline. But they don't see the inmost in the human mind, they don't see the future, they don't see the social consequences of the society that works with the tool of the law and the punishment. They will likely criticize the harsh pace of the society, their cold heart, their deep and terrible mistakes... but they don't realise that they are building this society through the education they are giving to their children. 

(While I'm writing this, I peer through the bus window and I see the green grass, the wet landscape of Girona, the grey and cloudy sky. Meanwhile, I listen to an irish song «The broad majestic Shannon», and this song gives me goosebumps, because I'm thrilling.) 

A new time is coming, a time where the teachers will not be punishers. The good education is a slow education. We have to let the children fail, fall, get wrong... We have to teach them how to forgive. We have to teach them that they must start again, again and again, because the path of the life is nice but it cheats us many times, and we have to know this reality. We have to learn, as teachers, that we have to learn every day, that we can learn from our pupils, that we must learn from our pupils, at least new ways of teaching, new ways of loving them, new ways of watching the life and the world. 

Teachers are always between two worlds, the world that is going, and the world that is coming. We see the sweet and beautiful color of the last sunlight, and we see the thrilling light of the sunrise that is borning. We are privileged due to these both views. We are building the future society, and we have to be aware of this responsability. Life is not worth if we don't use it to reach high goals; but the high goals are not the fame or the money but the sacred errands of loving the men and the women of the future world. Human kind needs to be loved, and our duty is loving the little part of human kind we have beside us. 

However this love is not a sweet but a torch. It is a love moving in one direction. We have to give and not to receive. We have to teach and to be forgotten. We have to love reaching nothing more than the fact of loving. Our reward is our task, nothing more than this. 

To achieve this high attitude we have to discover the invisible realities that stand around us. The scenario of our life is full of invisible beings, like magnets that attract our souls and guide our deeds. We have this invisible realities as if they were headlights in the middle of a dark storm. And despite the fact they are invisible, they usually shine with a pure light that empowers us. Sometimes they shine when we discover an unique smile that borns from the deepness of the heart. Other times, they shine with a silence, or with some tears, or with a magical moment of wonder, or even in the silence of an empty classroom when we feel the intense lack of the people we were with some minutes before. This invisible powers are not in the shops. We can't buy them as if they were computers or books. They appear beside our attittudes, our way of watching people and life, our way of valuing our work and our pupils. We need them, and they love us.

Falling in love with the inmost of the human beings

If we deeply understood the fact that we are going to die (that, in fact, we are dying), our life would be happier. I think everybody knows what experiences makes him or her happy, but the fears compells us to chase unsuitable goals: obsessive safety, glory, prestige, fame, fortune, the gleaming of a life that looks golden. These goals have a price; and this price is often too expensive. First of all we usually unconsciously despise the feelings of others. Of course, we are likely going to say that the feelings of the people are worth, and that we have to take them into account; but in the inmost of our minds, we live only for us, everyone lives only for everyone. The «others» are often a path towards our own happiness; and we don't know this harsh reality, because lies in a hidden area of our heart, but we are this way.

The greatest miracle starts when we deeply enjoy the happiness of the others as this happiness was ours. When this happens, we don't need to loose our life to reach the glory because we have already the glory everywhere. We are not going to need to beat anyone because we are going to wish only his or her friendship, only his or her companionship.

I sometimes think of those strange men who wander some naturist beaches of my dear land seeking naked female bodies. They wander and wander seeking those views that some bad educators banned them in their first years of life. Those strange men seek just images, and they disregard a reality infinitely worther and more delicious than the naked images. This worther reality is the human inside, the personality, the mind, the heart, the kindness... They incommode the most of the women they stare at. They show themselves as odd human beings, and they make a fool of themselves by showing their obsessive desire. They are victims of the repression. If they fell in love with the inmost of the human beings, whether men or women, whether smart or more common, they could overcome this bad attittude, and they would discover the most delightful beauty. They could enjoy the body's beauty without separating it from the mind's beauty, because in fact, human beings are just one reality.

Fortunately, in the naturist beaches, year after year, there are fewer and fewer men like those. However, in the whole society many people have still inside the stamp of the embarrassment on their minds. This retrograde attittude specially controls the souls of the people who dwell in islamic countries. This hiding of the human reality, of our own reality, is a cold sort of violence, a silent tyranny. The more the people's knowledges grow, the more this bad habit dissappears. The human future will be free. The future human kind will be wiser and kinder. I'm sure.

A different educational activity to stimulate the creativity

I'm going to talk about a pedagogic experience I enjoyed at the end of the last term.

Here, in Catalonia, every year, during a week, we do what the system calls «Credit de síntesi» that in english would be translated as «Synthesis work» roughly speaking. This project is developed by the young ones working in little groups  of five or six members.

In the second grade of ESO, and specifically in my school, the theme of the "Crèdit de Síntesi" is Africa; Africa studied and analysed from all points of view.

Over the past two years, we have dedicated one of the days to attend a play, in the theater, about the world's inequalities and about the famine of some African regions; but this time (I'm talking about last June) the company who usually worked in this project stopped performing this play. And I had to seek another option to fill that day.

I have always thought that we must stimulate the creativity of the students, and that we must suggest funny and singular activities to motivate them, so I suggested to the teaching staff of second grade to set up a shortfilm's contest about Africa.

All the students, during the 14-15, learnt to use Movie-Maker along the study of technology, and so they knew how to link different pieces of recordings, how to add music to a video, how to writte titles and credits on a video... So, I thought they could face this challenge and come out with a good work for the Cinema Festival. 

The teaching staff agreed and we incorporated the First Festival of Cinema about Africa in my School.

Of course, they worked in little groups of five persons, and all of them were thirteen years old. Every group had to make a movie. Every movie had to have a maximum duration of five minutes, and the festival jury would evaluate the screenplay, the interpretation of every actor or actress, the work of the director, the originality, and of course the creativity.

Well, the results were great.

People who watched the movies in the theater of the school spent more than one hour laughing, crying, thinking, and enjoying the twenty four short films, all very different stories, different points of view, different feelings, all great.

They were great not merely because of the quality of the movies, but especially the enthusiasm, passion, fervour, of the children. Most of them discovered a different way to enjoy themselves; a way that probably they would have never discovered if they hadn't had the necessity of doing an assignment like this. After the festival, I heard some girls saying: «we have to repeat this experience». We have to gather again in Can Boada. To make their movie, these same girls had gathered in the hills near Terrassa, had dressed up with pareos, had their faces painted in red, yellow and blue... and had danced a tribal coreography trying to put across the idea that says that Africa is not merely a country of war and hate, but also a place of happiness and joy. They won the oscar for the best photography, and the Oscar for the best movie.

The jury awarded a prize (an Oscar) to the best actor or actress, to the best screen play, to the best movie, to the best photography, and some special prizes like the prize to the most newsworthy movie, that was won by a group that had made an interview with a Senegalese immigrant.

It was a thrilling and fun experience.

Children enjoyed and discovered a new way of creating.

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Educating means loving.

Educating means loving. In the hardest times of  winter, the grass grows under the drifting snow. Tenderness must also grow under a cape of discretion and good sense. But tenderness must exists, because tenderness means the highest plenitude of human being. As a teachers, we must offer tenderness besides austerity of feelings. 

Educating means stopping, amazed, in front some deities who don't know they are deities, who ignore their greatness. Every day. Every hour. Educating means watching those that seem little, and realizing that those are great, big, immense. The job of educating is such a great privilege that it moves spontaneously towards the responsibility and respect.

What's going on when I work as a teacher? What's going on here? In fact, a teacher is only a guide. What really exists is the learning process. Pupil is the only one who really do something. He, or she, learns; takes a truth, an habit, an attittude... He or she takes out of his or her inner his or her real identity. Teacher only points out some possibilities, some directions... and spreads enthusiasm. The teacher must be a master of enthusiasm.

When childhood is the search of the creativity.

The naturist beach of El Torn, in Hospitalet de l'Infant. 

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In the darkest instants of my life, when the whole day was sunk in a strange night, I tried to get what I could get while there was something to enjoy. The wings of  Earth were cut by a black wind of fear and punishment. All around was the door of the hell and those who were dressed in black and red used to smoke and to repeat boring psalms that had been written by men many centuries before.

The world is full of bad shepherds that don't live and don't let live. They kill the movement to survive, thinking about the worst possibilities of the risk. Their speech explains that the inmobility doesn't die. But It is true because the inmobility is already dead.

I wish a better world for those to come, without any sword hanging over the heads of my sons and my daughters. I want them to be free. I want them to be full of serenity. I want them to absorbe all the deep beauty of the life without fears or threatens. I wish a yellow beach with emerald water, and a sun burning over the clean and deep blue, and the breeze kissing the skin of the people I love. I wish the dream of love comes true. 

I'm sad for so many people that remain encaged into narrow minds. Knowledge makes people free. Nature hides a book inside, and this book reveals the secret of the hapiness to us.

I've been forty five years in this planet. The first ten years were a perfect mixture of hapiness and sadness, of nature and frustration, of wisdom and bad education. I had inside me an enormous yearn of creativity. I needed to create. The school foiled my creative necessities, because teachers worked with the pace of the slowest boys. It was a time of darkness. Books were expensive and bad. Internet didn't exist. I wanted to know the answer of a lot of questions that burned into my heart. The adults thought I was a mad, an strange child, too serious, too sensible, too shy. 

Another day, this story will go on.

A new and better education...

We must work for a new and better education...