Tania González
Claudia Trajtemberg
Culture and Civilization
04 December 2009
“What is essential is invisible to the eye”
Antoine de St. Exupéry -The little Prince-
Teachers have a tremendous responsibility. Be a teacher is not an easy job. Educators have not just to teach knowledge, abilities, but also values in each learning they give their students. For that reason, and after seeing a pretty interesting film entitled: Modern Times, I have decided to write about the problems that chilean schools are having now to provide their students what is essential to life. I could see in the film how human beings became machines and how they were alienated by the society. Poverty and umployment were part of the atmosphere in Modernity, and it seemed that anybody cared about it. For that reason, and in order to support my ideas, first of all, I will write about how individualism has started becoming part of the educational culture. Then, I will analyze the indifference, apathy and inertia that are facing up schools because of the loss direction, and the desacralization that teachers are suffering continuously. Finally, I will conclude giving my hoping about what I consider a teacher should bear in mind if they really want to bring up human beings who be delicated with the social problems that their country have. I hope you really enjoy my essay because is plenty of my most deepest thoughts about the main aim of education.
As I wrote it above, individualism is one of the problems schools are having these days. For example, in my life I have seen how teachers do not teach their students to share and accept others. For instances, Bullying, as a educational problem, is one of the consequences of this lack of consideration for others. It seems the others do not exist as once Aksenchuckonce said. Unfortunately, even teachers are suffering this issue. Schools are becoming a place where instead of learning in comunity, students and teachers have to learn in isolation not allowing the affective and educational interchange between students and teachers. In Freire (1970) words, teachers are just those who have to fill the students’s minds and students just have to accept passively this transacction. Schools, then, are just focus on creating “students-machines” that do not show their fellings, do not think or reflect about social or political problems. In simple words, schools are creating students who just reproduce what others say, and who are, most of the time, interested in competing with others to be best individuals.
A second problems that needs to be said is the indifference that is suffering the education system. According to Lipovetsky(1986) “The indifference is growing”. Here, he is concerned about this because in his opinion, the prestige and authority of the teaching field has practically disappeared. This makes sense with the fact that teachers and teaching have become in neutralized machines, and students, as well. For that, Lipovetsky (1986) does not hesitate when he say that schools are pretty similar to a desert where learners vegetate without huge interest or motivations. For our bad luck, this is not just a educational problem, but also a social and political one because the apathy is generalized and citizens are also being catch by this inertia.
In order to sum up what it has been analyzed in this essay I could state that it is totally necessary that teachers be aware of the problems I refered above. It is pretty relevant that teachers do their best to allow such as individualistic situations. It is also important that educators could understand the real meaning of being a teacher and they could follow what Alberto Hurtado said:
“We have to create the cult of responsiblility. It is necessary to make each young and child conscious of the fact that first of all, they are human beings. They have in their hands the power to make good or bad things[...] responsibility, social responsibility is a word that educators have to predicate in all the tones, and in each moment to their students[...] instead of preparing to a encyclopaedial learning, teachers should be form their pupils to life”
Having read this, I think teachers and future teachers should see the film Modern Times because they could show their students the social problems people had to face up in modern times which persist in our times. Of that way, educators could show their pupils that they need to compromise with life and be responsible men. At the same time, to teach them the values which are necessary to break the social distances in our country and around the world. Teachers could develop the critical thinking of their students and teach them that, first of all, they are human beings that suffer, feel and who were born to live in society with the idea, of some day, to become true Martin Luther Kind’s dream.
