By Patricia Londono Guzman *
Teaching is a profession that goes beyond physical space, conceptual and methodological elements framed in various disciplines of knowledge; silent, intangible and invisible, it goes beyond the frontiers of the classroom and passes to the dimensions of spirituality, to the collective unconscious that manifests itself in art, when it presents content; in ethics through coexistence; in democracy with the participation of the various actors of the educational community and in faith in tomorrow, behind the most varied ways of writing the history of humanity.
The teacher as the protagonist of this reality in compliance with the norm, during the daily and sometimes exhausting work days, due to working conditions, is torn between:
1. The legal framework as the General Education Law (or Law 115/93), with which the concepts of the PEI (Institutional Educational Project) are implemented, the curriculum framed in the curricular components, the standards, the DBA (Basic Rights of Learning), daily planning, participation in the various institutional projects sometimes associated with the chair (democracy, sexual education, inclusion, knowledge tests, coexistence manual, Afro-Colombianity, coffee cultural landscape, School Environmental Project or PRAE, school plan risk management or PEGERD, parent school, research project, use of free time and protocol and school feeding program or PAE), projects that under the concept of school autonomy sometimes significantly exceed the effective number of people who must comply with them, reasons that make it necessary for the teacher to participate in more than one project.
2. The currents of modern pedagogy, where the discourse of dogmatic, constructivist and critical thoughts, which recent research supports and favors with the development of multiple and successful intelligences, pose the challenges of preparing students to think, listen, see reality from alterity, from the other, to understand the meaning of freedom in the co-responsibility of actions, which swing back and forth between right and duty, because one’s freedom limits and recognizes it the freedom of the other.
3. Fear and subtle mechanisms of defense or offense, such as exclusion and marginality with which colleagues, directors, the educational community or the competent authorities in education respond to pedagogical initiatives, most of the time unable to accept to the other and reconcile in the difference.
4. The ethical dilemma of recognizing and respecting the veracity of empirical and academic knowledge, which most of the time separates the subtle line of language or the way of perceiving the world. As can be seen in the cultural, academic, scientific and religious concepts of the earth and of God that appear in the following 2 examples: the land that for the ancestors and descendants of the Incas, is the “pacha mama” represents “together the soil, the geological land and nature where springs, springs or apachetas are concentrated, with great fertility to provide subsistence for man and other species; You dialogue with her in a respectful way, you ask her for sustenance or apologize for any fault committed against her and you thank her for everything she provides” (vision of sustainability and harmony with nature) and for academics, it is a planet that has special physical and chemical conditions being a source of raw materials for industrial processes; matter and energy for scientists “are not created or destroyed but are transformed”, the “alpha and omega” of Christian religions “is the beginning and end of all things and will be until the end of time ”. Faced with this difference in form in the concept, the moral duty to reconcile knowledge arises, to make it more universal for the benefit of more harmonious interpersonal relationships.
So, how can the teacher balance the internal and personal debate with the group to which daily work challenges him? and a new dilemma arises, to accept the conditions that determine authority, sometimes with hints of totalitarianism, or the practice of freedom to dedicate oneself to the task of imagining, building, searching and rescuing from anonymity, the various pedagogical alternatives; the result of individual initiatives or small groups, to implement and/or disseminate them. Attitudes that are true acts of patriotism, implicit in the rescue of identity and in the defense of an idea that unwittingly, is related to natural wealth (mining, agriculture and water) and the long history of violence of a multi-ethnic nation and multicultural, symbolically represented in the colors of the emblematic tricolor flag.
It is important to recognize that the pedagogical alternatives are found in rural educational institutions in distant places of the Colombian geography, in urban educational institutions of small municipal capitals or in the capitals of the 32 departments of the national territory, places where teachers like “Quijotes” , in the principles of school autonomy, dream, believe and build their own models to stop the loss of identity posed by foreign models, respectable but inspired by other geographical, religious, cultural and social conditions, for example: the models from Finland, Singapore and Japan, do not have the same realities as those who are born or raised in Bota Caucana or in Bojayá, Choco, where the different modalities of the conflict deny its inhabitants any possibility to savor the honeys of recognition and inclusion. .
When looking for significant and close examples of the region, the following experiences come to mind:
1. “From school to the neighborhood, history to build and tell”. Hotbed of research cultivating history to rescue the identity of the Salvador Allende neighborhood.
2. The rescue of indigenous languages and the value of oral tradition.
3. The scientific method as a pedagogical strategy for the development of multiple and successful intelligences, which meets the standards provided by the Ministry of National Education for grades from 0 to eleven, has a manual with 50 chapters for its implementation where they are articulated the concepts of biology, chemistry, experimentation is done with environmental resources, conditions that reduce the risks of students and the production of polluting waste, uses playfulness and the analysis of laws and principles to demystify scientific knowledge and prevents the painful loss of the investigative spirit that occurs during the first years of school life.
Experiences with which from History and Geography, English and Natural Sciences and Environmental Education with deepening in research, a Social Worker and 2 Graduates (one in modern languages and the other in Biology and Chemistry), make the transversality of knowledge a reality and they share the essential, “the formation of a man with a high sense of humanity, due to his great capacity to feel affection, understanding or solidarity towards other people”, “humanizing for its commitment to justice to raise human dignity, awakening concerns and desires for a more humane, humanized and humanizing world because it acts with all and for all human beings in communication with the environment”.
Patricia Londoño Guzman.
Degree in Biology and Chemistry.
Biology major area, Chemistry minor area.
Armenia quindio.
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