Rhizome freirean 12. The initial training of the educators : teachers , teachers ...

Consol Aguilar, Universitat Jaume I

Rizoma Freireano magazine dedicates this monographic to the topic of initial training of the educators. This magazine includes different articles from Spain, Chile, Brazil and Cabo Verde –in order of apparition- with the intention of enriching from the diversity of voices and contexts the meditation.

The right to the education turns out to be gathered in the article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that, in turn, inspires the article 27.2 of the Spanish Constitution including as his purpose the full development of the personality it humanizes in the respect to the democratic beginning of conviviality and to the fundamental rights. The democratic understanding of training, it should always be tied to the commitment by a more just and solidary company. Pedro López (2008:95-101) remembers us that the education –responsible for formation and training- for the citizenship is also necessary in the College, something that the educators do not have in mind. And he indicates the need of not to reduce the formation to an exclusively technical training detached from the social commitment, detached that affects to the ignorance of the social inequalities, far from the needing’s of a complete and professional profile in his or her formation and training. In the same line, César Cascante (2009:154) underlines that the practical meditation must be informed socially and politically in an explicit way and he determine: “It is not enough the training and formation in the action and on the action, this reflection must wonder on the injustices of the company in which we live, it must report on them and to incorporate tentative answers into these questions in the plans of professional action”.

We must not forget how responsible in formation and training build our ideological positions, since our understanding of professional culture and the design of our practices, as Freire said (2003:67) we have to be very clearly for what and whom we work, and consequently, for what and whom we did not.

Eduardo Fernandez hits in an important aspect when he remembers us that, on having thought about the learning along the life, we have not to forget the type of professional project / job / life that this learning stimulate the persons. And he exposes (2009:155): “The first of the questions that arises when it is prophesied that learning throughout life is a proper integration policy both to the demands of the growing competitive economy as the new forms work organization in the post-Fordism capitalism. (...) Actually, lifelong learning is synonymous of employability, and employability (we must not confuse the term with job) is one of the concepts that characterize the neoliberal social order, which does not usually associate the notion of a allocation of rights and permanent stable but the contrary, it is associated with instability, lack of institutional guarantees (social), vulnerability, and so on”.

He also accuses the commodification of the systems of Professional Training and how they are specified in the business education and therefore the effects of quasi-market policies in education that emphasize inequalities in education and in precarious work position of professional trainers, the naturalization of the business logic and, consequently, the introduction of competition, throughout the vocational training system.

As Martha Nussbaum emphasized (2010:20 and 29): “Drastic changes are taking place in that one that the democratic societies teach to his young people, but it is a question of changes that still they did not surrender to a deep analysis. Thirsty for money, the nation states and their education systems are rejecting without it be warning certain aptitudes that are necessary for supporting the democracy (…) the young persons of the whole world, of any country that is lucky to live in democracy, must be educated to be participants in a form of government that needs that the persons find out in the essential questions that they will have to treat, already be like voters or like elect or designated civil servants – official elected –. Also, all modern democracies are societies whose members differ greatly in many aspects, as the religion, the ethnicity, the physical ability, the social class, the wealth, the gender and the sexuality, but at the same time as voters make decisions on issues will have an important impact on their lives of those other people. When it comes to assessing an education system, one wonders how it prepares young people for life in a form of social and political organization of such characteristics. No democracy can be stable if it has the support of educated citizens for that purpose”.

Opposite to the educational conception that serves to interests different from those that the full development of the persons implies from what Bruner (1997) was defending as reinforcement of the sense of the possibility, demonstrating that the viability of a culture is tied to the equipment of the persons by the skills to understand, feel and to act in the cultural world, the critical theory defends the radicalization of the democracy understood as the defense of the rights and freedoms for the whole citizenship and the defense of the transformation of the social inequalities., from the coherence between the theory and the practice. As Beane and Appel (1997) stand out in the educational system, in any level, the democracy does not take place accidentally or unintentionally, but it implies two lines of work: the creation of structures and democratic processes and the creation of a curriculum that contributes educational democratic experiences to students.

To defend this quality public education we must have in mind all the theories that already they have demonstrated in the practice can transform the social inequalities, a model who includes the voice and the role of all the implied persons, which includes the public debate, which helps us to be a critical and responsible citizenship, which helps to build the community life concerning a project of transformation and of possibility. As CREA recall ( Aubert et al, 2008:76-77): “From a dialogical conception of the reality, the educational institutions are not anything given, which exists independently of us. We agree to create an institution dedicated to the education and, for his maintenance, we also agree a certain practices of education, learning and training. Today, given the inadequacy of the educational model (theoretical and practical) of industrial society, we have the same ability to reflect about it and make the necessary changes to recreate the educative center and make it an effective institution for the mcm society. We create the educational institution and, we and we can change it now”.

We have to think and investigate also on our own educational task, in case of trainers of trainers sharing this task with our students, from the assumption that teacher research is a form of knowing one's knowledge, as Marilyn Cochran-Smith notes and Susan L.Lytle (2002: 17 and 82): “we have to see the investigation of the teachers as challenge and as critique, often emergent, but others generating conflict with the traditional schemes that for a long time have played a determinant paper in the generation of knowledge and in the decisions on what knowledge it must be interpreted and used (…). Essentially, the teachers and the students negotiate what costs as knowledge in the classroom, which has the above-mentioned knowledge, and how it can be generated, be organized and be evaluated. What we are defending here is that across the research, the teachers can manage to understand how this happens in his own classes and how there are formed his own interpretations of the didactic events “.

Luis Torrego gives us his reflection and, from his own practice in the University of Valladolid, he presents us, as professionals of the hope, the need of a model of professorship foreign of the indifference, coupled with personal and social commitment at this time of anxiety; Silvia Lopez of the University of La Serena Chile gives us a re-signification of teaching that does not leave aside the ethical and political choice linked to cooperative work from the review of the history; Ana Maria Saul from Brazil gives us a form of practice-based education and Lena Maria Pires Freire provides the initial training experience from the African university of Cape Verde and highlights the challenges of what he describes as educate in an old world to a new world. Four voices from four different angles that invite us to turn around and look from different perspectives the educational reality. For, as Paul reminds us in his poem Simmon “The teacher”, overcome the difficulty of unlearning and we catch our breath, when you need cry, tucking up ourselves in a blanket of stars.

Consol Aguilar
Universitat Jaume I

Translation: Marina Aparicio Barberán

Bibliography

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