Education: the responsibility of families, schools and society

Many times we hear, as professionals or as citizens, the complaints of parents, teachers, social gatherings, about the importance of the education of children. We can start from different paradigms about intelligence, personal development and individual variables to create our own conception of the construct education , but we often forget something as basic as the declaration of the rights of the child , which are included in the convention of the rights of the child.

This declaration does not only refer to the obligation to cover the basic needs for their subsistence, but also to their right to the freedom and happiness they should enjoy in order to grow as mentally and emotionally healthy adults, without forgetting the enjoyment of their current life stage not only as a mere transition to the adult world.

Helping and accompanying children as persons and not as beings without the capacity to make decisions and to create their own cognitive schemes about reality should be the main mission of any “developed” society, and this process goes first by not projecting our adult mind on children.

Activities such as the management of playgrounds or bringing together children who are more advanced in certain subjects with other children who have more difficulty in assimilating concepts, family situations or life situations, are key points in educational innovation projects. However, if they are carried out without the necessary rigour, they can become more of a problem than a solution.

An example of this may be the failure to manage the process that occurs in the relationship between two children when there is significant learning through student to student interaction and teaching. As professionals we have a duty to provide resources and accompany the process rather than leave the educational process between two people to chance. It is the closest thing to the dilemma between the child as a scientist versus the child as an anthropologist.

It has been sufficiently demonstrated that children learn in a context bathed in culture , and learn from their peers accepted patterns of action within the society in which they live. They do not look for the scientific laws of processes or elements that are in their vital stage. For this reason, as authentic anthropologists in miniature, they must be brought closer to culture, and we must be mere intermediaries between social learning and children, without projecting our vision on them and making them adults.

Institutions and education

Is it possible to respect a teacher as an authority figure if he or she is not able to manage the conflicts between the children? The teacher, as intermediary , must have the competences to help manage the processes that occur in the conflict, since the children live it as such. The statement “when you are small you have small problems, when you are big you have big problems” serves to perpetuate a loop of conflicts accumulated since childhood and which may develop in the adult stage in the form of pathologies or personality disorders that affect their daily life and interpersonal relationships. Each stage has its own life goals even if they are not an immovable rule, and children live the conflicts as such and with respect to their vision as children, not thinking about how to stop worrying about their problems just because adults have more responsibilities.

As stated in article 8 of the Convention on the rights of the child , “It is the duty of the State to protect and, if necessary, restore the identity of the child, if he or she has been deprived of part or all of his or her identity (name, nationality and family ties)”. According to Bronferbrenner’s ecological theory, the State would be included in the macro context along with social norms, legislation, etc. Thus, education and the preservation of children’s rights and their education beyond the purely academic: it is the responsibility of all the factors that form the conglomerate of society. In addition, we can also observe the direct relationship of the environment to the child and of the child’s transformative potential to his or her environment.

Conclusions

As conclusions or by way of reflection, it can be said that the management of conflicts and relations between children are a fundamental part for the next generations that will become active members of society, even more than they already are, in order to improve the deficiencies and errors committed in a cyclical way in society. Educational responsibility does not only lie with the school or the parents , since as an educational environment we understand all the contexts in which children move, not only academic ones (since they are constantly being educated to be part of the culture in which they are immersed in any daily social context).

Watching over the rights of children should not be trivialized just because the basic needs for survival are covered, but the deficit as well as the excess of information without a management adapted to the individual and general needs, are not very enriching in the same way.

“That pedagogy must be based on the knowledge of the child in the same way that horticulture is based on the knowledge of plants, is an apparently elementary truth.

-Édouard Claparède