GUILLERMO JAIM ETCHEVERRY

Yesterday my friends and I had the opportunity to go to a lecture about Educating in the Modern World. The speaker was Jaim Etcheverry; a doctor who has been dean in an important university of Buenos Aires. He was really great because he explained very clearly and accuratelly the problems that education in general has to face nowadays. In my opinion, he based his talk in three important items: Youth as a long lasting stage; educating by rules and the idea of equality among relationships in the classroom.

The modern trends leads us to beleive that the younger you are the better. Consequently, Etcheverry says that we want to be friends of the younger generations, and more especifically of our students. But this is not so. In the equation teacher student there is a major power in the hands of the first. They cannot be equals. I have to say that as a teacher I really like to talk to my students and try to help them with some problems they are going through. But I try not to get involve; mainly, because our job is to educate them. Anyway, it is inevitable not to do so because we are in front of people not plants. The passing of time is unstoppable. And adults should take advantage of this and try to help the youngest what they have learnt through their experience.

On the other hand, he talked about rules. We have to be governed by rules. Otherwise, everything would be a caos. At school, these set of norms are extremely necessary to keep the system going. I know that in this respect parents do not participate. Moreover, they see the teacher as the bad person who is trying to harm their innocent sons or daughters. My God!
How mistaken parents are! School and family should work together, I guess. Mutual colaboration is the key to solve many problems we have such as lack of students efforts to study to pass the subjects, and try to learn something. Teenagers do not want to use their brains at all. They do not have an opinion on anything. It's terrible and depressing at the same time because you wish them to think by themselves and they cannot do it.

In addition, Etcheverry also talked about the inequality of the relationship between students and teachers. And this is absolutely true. We as teachers have the responsibility to educate our students, not make more friends. In my experience, I have met one teacher who was friend of his students and it was terrible. During adolescense, this cannot be done I beleive.

All in all, I really liked this man. I hope he comes again. He has been really enlightening.