Translator: Jenny McFarlane Reviewer: Natasha Greenhouse
When I first arrived in high school,
I had those first day nerves.
Nerves about meeting those teachers
I’d heard so much about in middle school.
I was afraid of that terrifying, strict, disciplinarian teacher,
who’d mark up pages and pages of my work.
I mentally prepared myself when I arrived.
I was ready from then on to sleep for only four hours
and to be the most productive person ever.
But then something unimaginable happened.
I met one of those teachers you see in the movies.
One of those teacher who’s inspired, whose eyes light up when they see their class
and share everything they know with such passion.
I met Teacher Francisco,
my history teacher.
And I know, talking about history..
For me, it was the most boring subject.
I had already studied it for 12 years,
and starting high school, I thought, “What could he possibly teach me?”
Teacher Panchito, for me, was an example of a teacher
who put passion and vocation into everything he did.
From the very first day of class, he told us:
“In your notebooks where you take notes,
you can write whatever you want.
It has to be on blank pages, it has to be in a sketchbook,
because there you can shape your ideas.
You will make your own notes.”
For the first time in my life, I was able to go outside the margins.
And so, I felt interested in the subject.
And admist all this talk,
and from someone who told us about history so passionately,
I understood for the first time the purpose of the subject.
At the end of the semester, as our final project, he asked us
to tell our own story.
And in telling our story, he asked us to reflect
on what made us equal to the heroes we studied about so much in books.
What made us different from the villains we learned about?
And I understood that the people who I had read about so much
were people just like me,
who had risen to the occasion.
My teacher taught me that history was useful in my life.
When I arrived here, to prepare for this talk, I thought:
“When talking about human development in education,
what more is there to say?”
On one hand, human development suggests that everyone, as a person,
has the capacity and potential to develop.
On the other hand,
education aims to develop us as individuals,
to make us more intelligent and, at the same time, allow us to be happy.
And so, these two components are very closely linked
because, at the end of the day, the aim is to develop us.
However, after reading a comment written on a wall that said:
“I hate studying, I want to live,”
I asked myself how are we experiencing this education system.
I thought that my high school history teacher
had been an example, amongst many, that I could use.
Human development was taking place,
but it was not happening system-wide.
I did a lot of research into what this development was about,
and what was being done.
I learned that human development, when it comes to education,
proposed new subjects.
Subjects like self-awareness, emotional intelligence,
development of psychosocial skills.
Because it is proposed that, as people, we should develop this inner world.
But at the time, people were not experiencing this.
These new proposed subjects for human development
had become subjects to pass.
Students, if faced with a psychosocial character dilema
where they had to develop strategies like a dialogue, they didnt know how.
But they knew the concept to the letter.
So, I realised that we were not experiencing
the human development that was being proposed.
I decided to research what was happening in education,
what was going on in the system we blame so much.
And I understood that the school works under a triangular system.
On one side, we have the pupil, who is the centre of the system.
The main reason for having school.
Then, content has to be developed, for the pupil’s development,
for that little person to find their tools
and also manage to find a place for this knowledge
while connecting to the world.
On the other side, we have the teacher.
Another one of the elements.
And I understood that the teacher is another person in the room.
They are not merely an authority figure, rather they are in charge of planning
the strategies and looking for spaces for the pupil to develop.
And then from there, the pupil should take these tools that the teacher offers,
and the teacher should be passionate about what they teach.
The third element of this triangle is the family.
And learning about this surprised me
because I hadn’t realised that the family was so important
in motivating a pupil.
All that a child discovers and is curious about is on the outside,
this family is by their side to motivate them and want to discover.
And those elements together are affected by the environment,
by reality, by the world in which we live.
And so, we cannot blame the education system because it is a whole.
We are all part of this system, and we have formed a part of it.
So I asked myself what we could do, since we were already experiencing the subjects
proposed for human development, only to pass.
I understood that passing is not learning.
Because when my history teacher tried to get me to abandon that idea, he succeeded.
He made me understand history.
He didn’t have to break the system,
he didn’t have to rewrite the books.
He just clicked with one pupil.
He managed to bring all that content to each of our individual realities.
That is why, when reflecting on the education system,
I can’t say that it is all the fault of..
Because it is not.
We are elements that share the space in the education system.
We have all formed a part of it.
And the moment we change the chip that says we are a passing grade,
the moment we transcend that mental C that we have tattooed on ourselves,
we will be able to truly acquire the knowledge
that they offer us in school.
Because it must be clear everyday that passing does not mean learning.
(Applause)