Many parents are unaware of the meaning of quality education – 11/27/2023 – Vera Iaconelli

Teachers from so-called elite schools have faced a dilemma exemplary of the Brazilian situation. They are the ones who, faced with the herculean task of teaching, receive kids whose parents don’t let them forget that they are paying for the service and want to see results. In the school seen as a company, it is the final product that is up for grabs.

Not that in other schools, teachers and parents do not face disagreements, far from it. We have the beautiful work of psychoanalyst Rinaldo Voltolini to show us what the author calls “divorce between family and school” (in “Laço”, Autêntica, 2020).

But in the so-called elite school, for many families the central issue is getting the child to network, introducing them to the world of high-borns. In these cases, it is more important that the institution functions as a passport for contact with other members of the elite than as education itself. For the latter, the expectation remains that the child speaks other languages ​​as if they were native and knows the tricks to do well in the entrance exam — or whatever it takes to be accepted into foreign universities. Teaching itself, that which is based on the exercise of reflection and criticism, can become a hindrance in the face of this project.

In a world in which parental interference in the school space becomes a constant and in which the client is always right, the child ends up serving as a tug of war between what deserves to be called education and cynical aspirations that see it as a mere social stepping stone. .

The teacher, in turn, far from suffering the hardships of public school teachers, such as ridiculous salaries, insane workload, unhealthy conditions and social discredit, has to deal with the passion for ignorance, as Lacan said. The more he becomes qualified to prepare the child for a world that loses his reflective and critical capacity, the more he finds himself boycotted by that same child’s family. How can we bring the world to the student, its reality and contradictions when the parents who support the school demand that they know nothing about it?

Sexuality, politics, racism, misogyny, poverty have been taboo topics in all schools of all social classes, which supposedly zealous parents swear they intend to discuss at home, dismissing the opinions of outsiders. In this way, they undermine the public character of the school, which is its reason for existing. It is because different people meet to assimilate content in the same space, in a democratic, reflective and respectful way that the school will always be public par excellence, whether paid or not.

But the fear among parents at schools of those who have access to everything is that their children will have contact with those who have nothing. These are parents who aspire for the school to function like the car that drives around the city and only see poverty and social injustice through the armored glass. So that when faced with the question of why a child is at the lighthouse asking, they can spew their meritocratic delusions, without the child having access to the contradictory. Some even go as far as rioting via WhatsApp group, pretending to be unaware that they committed to the program content at the time of enrollment.

Demanding that teachers remain silent when discussing issues that humanize us is to turn the school into the same armored car driven by paranoia. But it is in the place where “the owners of the world” come from that these questions need to be constantly replaced. The most up-to-date, qualified and jealous teachers in their work are hell in the lives of families who just want the next generation to reproduce the worst.

They are also our hope and consolation.

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