On Responsibility In The Education Of Children: Family And School
Many times we hear, as professionals or as citizens, complaints from parents, teachers, and talk show talkers about the importance of children’s education.
We can start from different paradigms about intelligence, personal development and individual variables to create our own conception of the construct. educationbut many times we forget something as basic as the declaration of the children’s rights which are included in the convention on the rights of the child.
Education: responsibility of families, schools and society
This declaration does not refer only to the obligation to cover the basic needs for their subsistence, but also to their right to freedom and happiness that 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 world of adults.
Help and accompany children as people and not as beings without decision-making capacity and creating their own cognitive schemes about reality should be the main mission of any “developed” society, and this process first involves not projecting our adult minds onto children. .
Activities such as playground management or bringing together more advantaged children in certain subjects with other children with more difficulties in assimilating concepts, family situations or life moments, are key points in educational innovation projects. But, carried out without the necessary rigor, they can become more of a problem than a solution.
An example of this could be not managing the process that occurs in the relationship between two children when there is a significant learning through interaction and teaching from one student to another. As professionals we have the duty to provide resources and accompany the process instead of leaving the educational process between two people to chance. It is the closest to the dilemma between the child as a scientist versus the child as an anthropologist.
It is sufficiently proven that children learn in a context bathed in culture, and they learn from their peers accepted patterns of action within the society in which they live. They do not seek the scientific laws of the processes or elements that are in their vital stage. Therefore, as authentic miniature anthropologists that they are, they must be brought closer to culture, with us being mere intermediaries between social learning and the child, without projecting our vision onto them and becoming an adult.
Institutions and education
Is it possible to respect a teacher as an authority figure if he is not capable of managing the conflicts between children? The teacher, like intermediary, must have the skills to help manage the processes that occur in the conflict, since children experience 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 that can develop in adulthood in the form of pathologies or personality disorders that affect your life. daily and interpersonal relationships. Each stage has its vital goals although they are not an immovable rule, and children experience 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 obligation of the State to protect and, if necessary, restore the identity of the child, if he or she has been deprived in part or in whole of it (name, nationality and family ties).” The State would be included according to Bronferbrenner’s ecological theory in the macrocontext along with social norms, legislation, etc. Thus, education and the preservation of the rights of children and their education beyond the solely academic: is the responsibility of all the factors that make up the conglomerate of society. In addition, we can also observe the direct relationship of the environment towards the child and the transformative potential of the child towards her environment.
Conclusions
As conclusions or as a reflection, it can be said that the management of conflicts and relationships between children are a fundamental part of the next generations who will become active members of society, even more than they already are. to improve the deficiencies and errors committed cyclically in society. Educational responsibility does not only lie with the school or with the parents since as an educational environment we understand all the contexts in which the child moves, not just academic ones (since they are constantly being educated to be part of the culture in which they are immersed in any everyday social context).
Watch over the children’s rights It should not be trivialized just by having the basic needs to survive covered, but the deficit as well as the excess of information without management adapted to individual and general needs, are equally unenriching.
“That pedagogy has to 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.”
