The challenge of asking ourselves good questions about education

In order for us to advance, deepen our educational knowledge, it is necessary that we let’s ask good questions about education. These questions will allow us to think and, ultimately, to know more to educate better. ‘Conversations with my teacher. Doubts and certainties about education ‘is the latest book by Catherine L’Ecuyer, Doctor in Education and Psychology. In ‘Conversations with my teacher’ we have found food to question ourselves, learn from the hand of the best pedagogues in the history of education and try to solve some doubts that educational work should always raise.

The author of ‘Educar en el amador’ and ‘Educar en la reality’ proposes a journey through a dialogue between a teaching student – Matías- and a retired teacher – Casilda- in which the different currents are introduced to us educational, we are alerted to the possible errors in which we can fall if we pay attention to a deceptive marketing focused on labels and much less on the educational essence.

“Good education is one that sows the right seeds, at the right time”; “People do not train, they educate themselves” or “The true art consists in making the child realize his own resources and capacities to achieve the beauty of doing well” are some of the phrases that most impact during reading.

In ‘Conversations with my teacher’ we are going to find many well-reasoned ideas about the meaning of our educational role through proposals from the author herself or borrowing them from the most important educational thinkers such as the last sentence of the three with which we begin this paragraph, which was written by Jacques Maritain, a 20th century French educational philosopher (1872 – 1973).

Asking ourselves good questions means not accepting at once what is fashionable and rethinking the true meaning of some concepts that we know are necessary when it comes to educating our children. “Emotions inform us about who we are and how we relate to the environment, to reality,” the teacher informs her student.

Catherine L’Ecuyer alerts us with daily examples about the true scope of emotional education, of the influence of technology: “Technology cannot teach a child to use technology. Just like a child cannot learn to drive by driving ”. Or it also shows us the true meaning of our role as educators: “The masterpiece of education is the student himself”, “The aim of education is not to change the world, it is to transform the learner”.

Proposing ourselves the challenge of asking ourselves good questions about education will be a wise decision: “The wiser one is, the more humble it is also because one is more aware of the questions to which there is no answer. As Socrates said: “I only know that I know nothing.” What’s more, being open to continuing to ask ourselves questions will lead us to the path of discovery that we will enjoy so much: “After a long coexistence with the problem and after having become intimate with it, suddenly, like the light that leaps from the spark, the truth emerges in the soul of each one of them”, says the author of Canadian origin using a thought of Plato.

At the beginning of this new year, we intend to continue asking ourselves questions about education. Hopefully they are good questions. Probably, the quality of our concerns transformed into questions will depend on the quality of the answers we find in order to continue learning the exciting art of educating.