Guillermo Jaim Etcheverry's lecture

Dr. Guillermo Jaim Etcheverry is a doctor who has written a book called "La tragedia Educativa", and who has devoted his life to teaching and to neurobiology investigation.

We went to one of his talks about the Argentinean educational situation yesterday, and he started it with a very funny parable, which says something like this:
"In those times, Jesus came to the mountain, sat on a stone, and let his disciples and followers approach him; 'Happy those who are hungry and thirsty of justice, the merciful, the chased because of justice...'That was when Pedro interrupted him to say: 'Do we have to learn it by heart?'; and Andrés said: 'Do we have to write it down?'; and Santiago said: 'Are you going to test us with that?'; and Tomás said: Do we have to write a monograph?'; and Marcos said: 'And what is this useful for?'. So one of the followers present there, inquired Jesus about his lesson plan, and in front of the master's amazement, he queried in these terms: 'What's the name of your classroom project?; Which are the strategies?; Which are the conceptual, attitudinal, and proceeding contents?; Have you given encounter spaces to coordinate transverse actions?.' Jesus eyes were full of tears; he looked towards the sky, and said: 'Father, why is it that you have abandoned me?'

After the laughing of all the audience, Dr. Jaim Etcheverry referred to the need of reflection on the broken bounds between the school and the family, he said that we are experiencing an increasing carelessness towards the teaching process. It seems that there's a fear to teach.
Sadly, he explained, society is influencing the teaching practise, and our society nowadays is embracing the idea of youth as a goal, not a phase, which everyone wants to achieve.

Youth applies to the ones who are chronologically young, nevertheless, the rest is constantly seeking for it. It is said that young people already know everything, which in a way leaves an obsolete mark on education, but we have to reflect on this because we can all agree on the fact that in the technological field they have a greater knowledge. However, we can also agree on the fact that nowadays, a biggest intellectual capacity is required to write something than to handle technology.

We are urged to understand which our responsibility on education is. We have to think that we are putting in the young ones' hands a huge inheritance, which is the whole creativity corpus that we have been leaving to them.

The education is a way to dimension our own possibilities, with a correct education we can answer questions like: What can we do?, What are we good at?. Its acquisition is worldwide admitted to be mainly fruit of our own personal effort, which gives in other words a maths operation as the following:
Personal effort + Teachers = Long term satisfaction.
The problem in this society is that satisfaction is required immediately, which generates a big obstacle to the ones who want to teach.

Nowadays the main goal is to make the learning process something fun. We are losing the real aim of going to school. Students should go to school to be interested, to allow teachers build interest on them, not to have fun.
The problem is that there are no students neither willing nor with a positive attitude to learn, and parents have become allies of their children against school. What's more, secondary school has become a long preparation for their final trip to Bariloche.

This crisis lives within our houses' walls. The school is nowadays only an accreditation agency, in which the conquest of a certificate is the main goal. Both, parents and students only want to have a passing mark in every subject, they don't care about learning. That is why the level of knowledge is decreasing faster than ever before.

There's a decapitalization of knowledge, well backed up by psychological theories which state that knowledge grows faster than the learning process, which is why when students finish studying something, that something is already old.

Even to be a rebel, you have to know. This is not taken into account anymore. If you don't know about the problem, how would you know why or against what are we rebelling to.

Today the teaching practise is rejected because of the asymmetric relationship that this requires. This crisis in knowledge transmission is the basis of the problem. Teacher's authority is biggest than what is thought. The teacher has to be responsible for the world that is being transmitted to the students. So, the teacher should transmit knowledge, but in our modern schools a teacher is only a group entertainer.
The worst part is that not even the ones who are in a position to value their education, are willing to do it. Students, whose parents can aspire to a better education, also hold the already mentioned tendency to find relief by passing the subjects without knowing anything. In fact, those in need are the ones who consider education as a possibility of improvement.

Our Argentinean society is a reluctant society towards rules, and education is essentially a teaching of rules, which is why, our youth is having less knowledge every day.
People who have learnt in the 'old-fashioned way', can easily adapt to the new technologies because of the background knowledge that they have.
Egalitarian democracy is not suitable for all types of institutions. In the family, and at school, you cannot have a democracy, because equality will kill them.

Unfortunately, teachers are baby-sitters. Nowadays, schools are seen as a nursery where parents leave their children to have someone taking care of them. Teachers, of course, are those entitled for such job. The most important goal of going to school has been lost.

Every child has the same possibility to be taught. One of the big problems in our society is related to the exclusion of poor people. This exclusion is not applied to poor people who are still hopeful of finding a way out. This exclusion refers to those who have lost all their possibilities to improve. Sarmiento said: "If you don't want to educate them for charity, at least do it for fear." Some years from now, we will have a society which will be impossible to hold, because we would have created a group of people who have no values. Our life depends on the quality of the ones we have in front of us. If we don't take care of those, we won't be able to live our lives, because we would have created people who have nothing to lose.

We have to give people the elements to think, and to have an approach to reality from different perspectives. No one knows what is going to be used and when, because the education tries to build up every person as complete as possible, plus give them tools to find a way to get a place in society.

If we keep on thinking that today is good, and what was before is useless, we will end up having an empty life, because today we are the past of our future. That is why we have to effort ourselves to construct in the best possible way the future children. We have to save them, and save ourselves from the black future that presupposes having ignorant people around us.