Hoy es el último día de actividades escolares según el cronograma oficial. Comienzan para mi, ahora si oficialmente , mis vacaciones.
Precisamente hoy culminé la lectura del libro biográfico "Rafael Vegas", del autor Eduardo Casanova y publicado en coedición por El Nacional y la Fundación Bancaribe para la colección " Biblioteca Biográfica Venezolana ".
Tuve el gusto de trabajar today in what was the largest educational project of this great man and still exists today in Caracas. It was a full teaching experience in every way and full of great satisfaction, despite the natural very bitter and unpleasant moments, which in spite of them, believe in me more than a positive balance in my time at that institution.
psychiatrist by profession, he became a teacher Rafael Vegas also for their love and concern for children, which found him in Venezuela institutes for the care and support of the most neglected and even drew up a plan of action for the promotion and protection the infant from the street. Member of the political generation of 1928, always held in high the deep sense of social responsibility that gave the inheritance, that membership in favor of change, modernization and freedom.
So always sought to innovate in the fields that act, dealing with it to promote the progress of this country, and not least, their boys, who were in their hands, whether as a psychiatrist, Minister of Education, Professor and Director School classroom.
For those who love their example is education and serves as a reference, coupled to the work of so many Venezuelans who wanted to promote the full development of youth as a real future and positive, as a real relief generation of this country.
I particularly liked the readings found between pages 83 to 89, in a masterly chapter called "The discipline as Rafael Vegas", which seems to me important consultation for any teacher of this century, because waters of the past can give us much encouragement and fresh for future steps.
From that episode I saw several ideas and thoughts, and at the end of the book, I finally decided to express in these lines ...
The world's most demanding profession .
Education is one of the most demanding tasks that can be humans, and many will qualify, not unreasonably, as a profession of "high impact." Rafael Vegas just called to the profession of teacher "the most demanding in the world."
sometimes I agree with that approach
(... Although he and I are living a reality very different situations and between the twentieth and twenty-first)
Because even when you do not expose your life to terrible dangers, or must perform exhausting days of great physical or psychological expertise and consultation to merit only, to give only the experience, the teacher is one of the most complex occupations may have.
then a job is tough.
Not only because this is not about giving only "the matter "but because you have under your care the formation of a few minds and spirits in growth, they are looking far beyond the" objectives of program are many answers to the questions that life is giving them as children no longer . Girls and boys are hungry for examples, experiences and points of reference to guide their lives close to maturity, girls and boys can even say that seeking some affection and a lot of understanding. They are souls that are still growing and always looking for growth not only adventure and madness, but quite simply LEARN, learn about life and its big secret for them as well take them, understand them, enjoy them if necessary and take advantage of them for the future that both want and do not reach them yet because it must patiently build themselves.
So the teacher not only becomes a facilitator of knowledge and skills, but becomes in fact, a mentor, someone who should be there to be within the extent possible, to be a hand friends, support them encouragement and guidance, not just the "pat on the shoulder" much less "the wipe of tears", but someone who will accompany the traffic school is the boy with his experience and knowledge, to be valid for a moral and positive that can shore up fully to the young, always so clueless in these very complex and turbulent.
Sometimes it is successful with some young, others less so. Although the teacher has a universal origin ("serve everyone equally"), inevitably the same circumstances of their profession and their own personality, always be relied on a select group who receive the message and take the witness, (and surely will narrow minds as a group of "preferred"), that going beyond the sympathy and the "I like" is becoming a group stimulated to grow and learn healthy: know that you have found more than a teacher , a teacher and someone who within the limits of respect and trust, a friend can become useful not only in the field of knowledge but also within the human condition. And the latter is not free from doubt, suspicion and misunderstanding from many people with vision in the past see education only a matter of exchange of knowledge, or those who think that the figure of the teacher has to be that of a distant and powerful "emperor" in the classroom and nothing more, or believe that all young people only a matter of discipline (or psychologists) or any attempt malpiensan always innovation in education and the treatment of boys, or even those who still loaded with the best intentions end up confusing to learners that humor is "immature" because at the bottom of their hearts and minds disguise their bitterness (and temper) with "seriousness." is therefore a strong work.
But nobody said it was easy, being a teacher and teaching, and being young and growing.
And even with this, struggle does not end. Can not finish. Follow sign the teacher's duty to teach the young and so assist in any way possible to grow, especially to grow well.
If it was difficult to Rafael Vegas at a time when the country had every type of material and cultural gaps, and slowly took a face to a large extent has today (passed in farming and oil rural and urban, and especially lived a turbulent political transition from despotism to democracy caudillista formal) ceases to be not now, because with all the technological and pedagogical advantages we have today, the challenges are just as difficult and even more complex, because although the teacher living in an era where almost all are literate is no longer respected and valued as socially before the age of Vegas (which abounded illiterate), we can say that there is almost no family, (not like before where there was a strong sense of home, even without the presence of the father) so today feels a strong impact on the youth of a crisis of values, where there are no implicit respect for the norms, rules, institutions or larger, which also results in an exponential increase in psychological violence, verbal and physical inside and outside the classroom and a great disdain if not contempt to work and study as guiding principles for the formation of a honest citizen, capable and active. looks like a quasi-apocalyptic challenge, but nobody said it was easy. And so no one will stop doing the work, and even with the tough challenges that we do not jump, but explode into view, all these elements are part of the profession of teacher, because the demands have changed and will remain so : requirements, which will be severe depending on the time and context, but the teacher is named permanently to overcome, to overcome . And only the teacher should begin work to fix the wrongs that make the same demands that their work is so difficult ... and equally necessary.
And with new requirements, we must address the role of teacher with new visions, with novel optical, progressive and unorthodox, because social realities have changed and asked to react accordingly.
is not utopia, but a necessity and a challenge to achieve.
Thanks for reading!
Dantesol
To learn more about Rafael Vegas:
http://www.analitica.com/va/arte/oya/9229276.asp
http://literanova.eduardocasanova .com/index.php/2008/09/20/rafael-vegas-psiquiatra-y-civilizador-co
http://literanova.eduardocasanova.com/index.php/2008/09/27/rafael-vegas-psiquiatra-y-civilizador-co-1
http://literanova.eduardocasanova.com/index.php/ 2008/10/08/rafael-vegas-psiquiatra-y-civilizador-co-2