Almost all of us have witnessed the changes that the educational system has had in recent decades, whether we have experienced it as students, parents or family members. Not only have the names of the subjects taught in schools been changing, but also the priority they have within the curriculum, increasingly thought of in those areas that are sought to be measured in standardized tests in order to “compete ” with the world.
This is how we no longer see philosophy (essential for learning to think and question things), or we find fewer and fewer hours of physical education (key to health, motor skills and motor development) or we have put aside the plastic arts or musicals, which are a real gym for our cognitive, sensory and brain development.
It seems that everything we need to know is based on mathematics and language, as if learning were not connected to other areas in our brain and these two elements of content were enough to form people.
There are many other variables that have been affecting, such as the important gaps that a large number of teachers have to carry out a good teaching-learning job, or the disengagement and neglect of families towards the development and formation of values and habits of their own children.
With all that we can see is that education, which is a fundamental pillar in the development of people and society, has been subjected to a game of more political and aesthetic whims, than to management from the importance that it has. , with the most diverse disciplines and the understanding of the diversity of people and talents, instead of the standardization of poorly qualified labor.
While the changes in the world ask us for greater creativity, innovation and the ability to navigate in a complex and uncertain environment, we are taught rules that must be memorized and repeated, limiting the expression of the arts, the body and experimentation, so necessary to achieve what we really need to use in our day to day. Meanwhile we talk about innovation, we continue to teach to have “the right answer” and “not to be wrong” through a system that evaluates blind obedience and not conscious reflection and constructive questioning to achieve new answers through natural trial and error.
At the time of criticism, there are many voices that we can point out elements that must be corrected, however, at the time of the changes it seems that neither the authorities, nor the unions, nor the affected themselves (students and families, to mention a par, since this affects the whole society) seem to realize the tremendous error and risk that this means for our minds, our integral development, the future we are building and for the daily destiny that we run with so much evolutionary lameness.
Thus, education must be what it has always been. An instance of game, trial and error for discovery that excites, creates and helps us go further, from what seems simple and minor to us, to what transforms the reality of millions. We need to understand again that we should start each day with physical education, learn to live together, eat and nourish ourselves, learn to respect each other, before thinking about how many points we had in math or science. We must understand that the arts stimulate our brains and our hearts in such a way that they help us channel experiences and emotions, creating new things that help innovate and change what is given.
It is time for us to put everything in its place. The slogans in the manuals of marketing and study of mass psychology, and education at the center of our deep development and not competition in a useless stick for blind competition.