On Thursday, February 15 we had the honor of opening the doors of our community to Hernán Melana, who shared a time and space full of wisdom , of authenticity, of humility and of love for education.
Hernán, philosopher, pedagogue and writer, started from the following diagnosis: in the current social context where social networks have been replacing the spaces in which human encounters traditionally took place, the most pressing problem of this world, turned into a screen, is the enormous amount of relationship conflicts that occur on a small and large scale. This issue is the great pending task that the school should address.
Even more so if the so-called social networks are not providing optimal conditions for the development of healthy socialization. For example, within these a community is not built where individual privacy is respected, since there is a constant showing of oneself to others so that others value that image that is shown. In some way, what should be private is in continuous exposure waiting for external approval and, furthermore, the formation of identity is depending like never before on the judgment of the other, instead of coming from our interiority, from the internal truth. that constitutes us.
Faced with this new panorama that adopts the reality of the 21st century, the school has to rethink how it is going to carry out its educational work, especially throughout the third septenium (between the ages of 14 and 21). ), which is the most important phase for the formation of personality, where the deployment of social relationships is fundamental for said formation and, therefore, the incidence of social networks affects the most.
So, how can school help these young people build their intimacy in a time when it seems that what is essential is no longer invisible to the eyes?
To answer this question, Hernán Melana proposes constituting alternative socialization spaces for young people. A place where the meeting of humanity takes place and where authentic social relationships can be manifested, created between equals, from person to person, with attentive listening and empathy. A self-managed place where each young person can explore their own truth, develop autonomy, confidence in their own possibilities, responsible freedom and the ability to make decisions. A place without screens, without smoke and without alcohol, where young people can bring to light the infinite forces that inhabit their being.
This is the message that Hernán Melana came to deliver to us and that our learning community has received with deep gratitude, sharing his same inexhaustible search, within this world in incessant transformation, to find more ways to continue nourishing comprehensively all aspects of the human being in each girl, boy and teenager that we accompany on their path daily.
