Too often we want to produce or transmit knowledge without having a clear idea - do not tell the nature of knowledge - but even its limits. Every time we look at the world reinforced the illusion that it really is as we perceive it. Yet neither do we perceive ourselves as we are: the stomach may start to burn only to comply with the image I have of my body, distorted by a sense of guilt or for failing to vent the tensions hidden in the most archaic of the psyche. Imagine then how little the world has to look like the representations we have of it. One of the few certainties is that no observation can ever be made outside of a conscious mind, unifying center of many experiences, which brings together for your convenience in reporting related entities. But the Sun does not know that Sun is we that we see a variety of energy transfers in connection with a variety of other experiences, which is why we find it convenient to say "sun-burn," the sun moves, etc.. Who knows how the universe without a conscious mind to observe, without the unifying concepts of "body", "space" and "time" ... maybe a harmonious blend of capabilities and relationships in which each will entail many more.
Therefore, if the pursuit of knowledge should be so humble in the face of Nature and aware of the limitations of the subject, the more similar feelings will be required to transmit knowledge. What is "teaching"? Here's a question that I pose for a long time, I still ask myself, and who knows how long I will continue to ask me again. Too easy to dismiss the question with an answer like "provide information": the teacher is not a weather report. "Transmitting knowledge" sounds better (although it always contains the unpleasant word radio), but expression is not well defined as the knowledge itself is something very difficult to leave in framing a definition. Undoubtedly, the information is an important part of knowledge, but not the cover (a computer does not know the data written on her disk). In the knowledge information stored in a conscious attitude, a vision of man and the world within which they dress in meaning, this is a case of conscience, something very personal. It's absurd (and monstrous) think I can somehow pass on to my students something so intimately as my ineffable power of consciousness that turns information into knowledge. Today in our schools tend to affirm the notion that "teach" means "teaching to do something (to solve algebra exercises, translating literary passages from Latin or French, to support scholarly conversations about the history, philosophy or literature ...); this approach is justified by saying that the school is so modern, that is the true interest of the students who, acquiring specific skills, will be facilitated by adults in search of a job. Often the boys, and families, to support this argument, one thing that gives me deep sadness and a little 'anger. I can think of pigs that look with confidence and gratitude, the farmer who brings them food, that same farmer will kill it before Christmas. There is indeed something very sneaky in the (vague) promise of social stability for those who can be efficient producers and skilled problem solver . The price is very high indeed: the renunciation of training courses that leave room for the free growth of the spirit in unpredictable directions, to discover the sublime uselessness of the nicest things, about irreverence disenchanted crystallized structures of knowledge. And so I can see tomorrow's citizens who will be fully functional in a system of values, economic relations, social relations, which has as its sole purpose self-preservation: efficient producers and consumers diligent. Sorry, but my children will never be the problem solver (or will become in spite of me).
If I look at the daily work that goes on in the classes I can not detect a profound feeling of fatigue and futility that accompanies those lessons featuring concepts and processes that must be acquired by pupils, in a completely passive. On the contrary, the lessons that leave him a sense of authenticity and enthusiasm are those in which the class is free to move, fell in love with a problem, try new ways, we face a bewildering world more complex and problematic than convey the experiences of everyday life, and sometimes glimpse a profile of truth in the fog. And the teacher, what is its role in all this? He is subversive and destabilizing. It is not there to create certainty, but to destroy them. No case is too rough or grotesque that it can not be thrown on the table for discussion and provoke criticism, and criticism of the critics. I'm finally convinced of something that sounds almost paradoxical that the deep sense of teaching is not something related to "fill" (the minds of students with concepts, procedures, cultural biases), but rather the "empty". It is the "pedagogy of the vacuum", as opposed to more traditional pedagogy of the full ". Empty, make room, free ... remove the prejudices that prevent them from taking into account all possibilities, demolish the certainties that make life better, but maybe in a fake world, remove the unjustified sense of inadequacy to stand on its own legs combined with an equally unjustified sense of dependence on the parental figure of the teacher (he alone) can drive the mysterious ways of learning. Here the teacher that I have in mind (and I would like to be): a teacher who raises issues never considered by the class, a teacher who discovers prejudices, depreciation, superficiality and makes manifest, creating a healthy discomfort in the class, which shocked his students reversing perspectives taken for granted once and for all, a teacher at should also know when to step aside to let his students the right to a growth which can only be provided to prove the effort to invent, criticize, organize, make mistakes.
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