(Porfirio J. Neves)
In one of these nights, the sleep seemed to me more like a procession of images of my childhood, which were running in my mind, showing moments of my life in a junior senior high school where I used to go to in the 60’s.
The 1960's, thinking of ways to best describe it for the youngsters, was a decade in which social changes were boiling up. For this reason, I would like to take the opportunity to illustrate what I felt at that time and make an analogy to this great shift we see in Nature today.
Nonetheless, it is very likely that, after reading it, they will hardly believe in the things we, as children, could do in those times. It might even sound very irresponsible of me to narrate it here.
I, for one, studied in a primary course at a public school, however I managed to pass an examination to study in a private school where I completed my junior and senior high grades.
My family was composed of Portuguese immigrants, and we went through hardships trying to make ends meet in our financial situation and adapt to the new society.
How come, then, I managed to study in a private school and, later on, go to a Public University? It all happened through the help of teachers and friends who saw my potential to study in that college, for I was what today is known as “nerd”.
Nonetheless, in order to keep studying in a private school, I depended on the scholarship which, at a certain time, stopped being sponsored. The Principal, then, decided to get me a job in the school, so that I would be able to pay for my own studies. I studied in the morning and worked in the afternoon after the school time.
In this context of my education, I find it worth highlighting a passage that I went through, when I laid down that night and thought of the past.
Imagine, studying and working in the same place! Actually, I had full access to all the departments in that school. I was even called to run up the tests from other grades, because of my proactivity and motivation. The laboratory of chemistry, which became my biggest inspiration to follow my present professional carrier, was a place where I did and spoiled a lot of experiments.
To do the outside jobs I had a bike to take the correspondences from the school to the students’s houses and, mainly, to do the conveyance of cash and documents to banks and offices. And the values were high!
I am saying all that because things have changed a lot since then. Despite normal changes we witness in society, those involving the school and students probably remain the same, that is, students still gotta work hard to pay for their education.
Forty years ago, there was a social context which, if compared to today’s, will denounce great levels of changes. Nonetheless there is a psychological aspect to that which prompts me to use this subject as way to talk about Rational Culture in this new phase of Nature.
I remember now, during seven years I spent there, the image of a French old lady who was in charge of the student’s cards, in which she manually launched their grades, in one by one. She was fond of me and always mentioned that I was an example to be followed there.
I had always kept a good rapport with the secretary staff, who knew about our marks and, sometimes, functioned as a bridge of information to help parents with the pedagogical orientation of their children.
They were always attentious and endeavor in their treatment with the students, contributing fully with our educational formation.
Everyone was part of a big family there, from the Principal down to the janitors without exception. Nonetheless this is a reality that no longer exists amidst us. The students's cards, which were checked by people, now are bytes kept in the data basis of a computer, and students beat up their teachers.
The computer does not nourish the psychological sensibility in any child to feel tenderness or love. For they don’t feel the presence of a human being who is, there, checking their records and their development. The need for agility and information overwhelmed the human rapports.
(Continued on next post)
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