There Is Always The Possibility Of Trying An Alternative Education

One of the great problems of today resides in education. This is a problem that affects not only parents and teachers, but states. Education is the foundation for the future. From a young age, children will assimilate concepts and create mental structures that will determine the wandering of their steps and decision-making. Some parents, faced with the failure of education, opt for an alternative education. Is this a bad option?

In the European context, the benchmark in education has been, for years, Finland. This country achieves the best education levels year after year but, even so, its government has completely changed the educational model, giving more freedom to both children and teachers when choosing what to study and when.

The rest of the countries, taking Finland as a reference, are making changes that try to copy their model. This practice, instead of being beneficial, gives worse results due to the lack of similarities between the existing context in Finland and that of the countries where you are trying to export your model.

The school of my childhood

I remember that, when I was in elementary school, in a classroom where we did not reach twenty children joining two classes, the teacher was on the stage telling us what we should memorize. Meanwhile, my colleagues and I, sitting in chairs arranged millimeter by rows, we passed papers in which written was the tremendous boredom we felt and a question, what form of pain would be more credible in order to go out five minutes earlier to the patio.

But this fun did not last long, when the teacher realized it, the punishment was immediate and we still ran out of the long-awaited recess. Going back to reflect on those times, what we really learned was that we are nobody. We are only individuals that we have to obey and that those who taught us have the truth. Everything they said was the right thing to do and there was little input we could make.

Few subjects were spared from this analysis, even with the passing of the years, although if I have to save any, philosophy and ethics take the prize. In these classes they always taught us to analyze our emotions, to read calmly understanding what we read, to be critical and not accept the truths given. Now, they want to end philosophy classes.

Emotional education

And it is that Foucault already said, the origins of current education are found in the Judeo-Christian tradition. This tradition proclaims values ​​such as obedience and sacrifice. If the old schools, at least in Spain, were dedicated to creating priests and the military, nowadays they do not vary much. Instead of priests and military men, bankers and engineers come out of schools.

It is said that Albert Einstein did not achieve great academic results in mathematics when he was a child. I do not know the veracity of this statement but, beyond the inventiveness of the fact, the truth is that education fails when it comes to shaping free and independent people. On the occasions when something goes wrong and I feel that the world is ending I always remember ethics classes, in them we had to write events of our life and interpret what emotions and feelings we felt, why and how they controlled and influenced how we behaved.

Now they call it emotional intelligence and people tighten their belts to be taught what education was not able to give them. But not all is pessimism. Although education worldwide is very similar, there are small pockets where it is not, like that village of those intrepid Gauls. There are places in the world where education is different and focuses on educating people before or while generating good professionals.

Alternative education

An example of alternative education is found in agrosophy. This way of life is in communion with the earth and the environment and children who are raised under these precepts do not go to school, at least, until they are ten years old. In this type of alternative education, these children do not learn to read or write until late. However, they learn to live and work in harmony with the land. It may seem like a ten-year-old who can’t read is a failure, but at fifteen, no one would know the difference.

These children, before going to school, already have values ​​such as solidarity, they know how to be self-sufficient and have a critical vision of life. In the end,  education is a scale of priorities, what matters more: that my son knows the capitals of all the countries of the world or that he can go to another country and respect different cultures knowing how to value what they offer? What is better, knowing how to regulate emotions or gorging on pills knowing all the components they contain?

Thinking of current examples, the recent dockers’ strike in Spain comes to mind. No other sector joined in their support, people criticized them because “they already charged too much” and, in the end, there is no end. When they got what they wanted, or at least part of it, they stopped making the news. It does not matter that it is known that if you defend the rights that have been stolen, you can recover them.

What would it have been like if we had had another education, if we had grown up under the umbrella of an alternative education? If solidarity were among our values, perhaps we would have joined them. If we had a critical and curious thought, perhaps we would have understood their protest, perhaps we would have found out how it all ended, perhaps they would have given us ideas on how to improve our situation, perhaps they would have helped us with their experience, perhaps … but no. They only taught us to listen, believe and obey without question.

Education in fiction

I found these reflections watching a movie, which although it did not have many followers at its premiere, I do not think it leaves anyone indifferent. I’m talking about “Captain fantastic”, the story of a married couple who leave civilization to raise their children in a forest, a form like any other of alternative education. The result, children any parent would want. Children critical of life, with their own opinions (which do not come from television) and with an impressive survival instinct.

Of course children are lacking. The main and most pronounced is the lack of interaction with peers. Lack of contact with other people outside of his utopia. While it is just a Hollywood movie looking to make the box office, perhaps the debate on the benefits of another alternative education model, focused on other priorities, should be the order of the day.