to the thinking corner

It doesn’t take much effort to guess what the teacher’s expectations are. He hoped that in those minutes he had achieved the desired results: he was very sorry for the violence he had used, he wanted to hug the victim and even apologize. And, of course, that he would never hit anyone again, but instead speak quietly in defense of his rights and property. Magical qualities are attributed to the thinking corner; this means that those who stay there for a short time will eventually come to the conclusion that they regret the bad action and are willing not to repeat the undesirable behavior. When this is announced to the public, it will be an important lesson for those who listen to the miraculous result of the reflection.

• Belén, tell us what you think, the teacher says, waiting for the lesson she learned and for everyone to share.

To the bewilderment of the teacher and the bewilderment of his classmates, he says:

– I thought you’d give me the pencil case and backpack back because I won’t be back tomorrow.

Bethlehem had its own logic. The next day, he preferred to be in a place where there were no quarrelsome friends or thought corners, where no one would take away his beloved pencil case and essential backpack.

What to do now? Because the situation is very sensitive. The teacher will not tell him: Well, take your bag and backpack, sit down and you do not have to come tomorrow. Another possibility is to tell Belén:

• Now you’ll go back to the corner, see if you think differently, and you’ll come to the conclusion that I love you more. Because by not thinking carefully, you come to the wrong conclusion.

Suppose Belén is now back in the thinking corner for a longer period of time, because the longer the teacher stays, the more he will think that what he is doing is very negative. Let’s see if he’s reasoning in the desired way now, thereby breaking the bad repercussions of his words on the group. Because if everyone who goes to the corner of thought reasoned in this way, a great rebellion could be unleashed.

I imagine Belén is now a little more angry in his reflection corner and is looking for a new argument to support his conclusion. When the teacher asked him again what he had discovered, it would not be strange to hear him say:

• I want my pencil case and backpack back right away because now I want to go. (She tells herself that she doesn’t want to spend the whole day in the thinking corner and doesn’t want to come to any other conclusions.)

When I heard Javier tell this story about his daughter Belén, I remembered Professor Miguel Ángel Quintanilla, the famous professor of philosophy who was the Director General of Universities a few years ago. One day, first of all, it gnawed at him. wrong teacher: put your bag or backpack, if you decide… What to say a penalty here:

• With these theories that pedagogues have about reasoning with children about what is right and wrong, and not imposing it, I told my five-year-old son that we had to reason about what was going on when he was doing something wrong. . One day, when the boy did a good job, I energetically called him:

• Come here immediately.

And the boy, crossing his arms in front of his head to protect himself, pleaded several times over:

• Dad, reason, no! The reason is, no!

What the boy wanted to say was: Give me a quick punishment and don’t make me feel inconsistent, unscrupulous, and bad. Don’t take away my precious time that I could spend on the game instead of getting overwhelmed by a long, boring, insulting conversation.

And we accept many things as they come with regard to these penalties or counterclaims. And if it’s A in education, then B hardly ever happens. What really happens is if it’s A, then it’s B, maybe.

Parents and educators, we must act with grace and balance. And of course with love. We run the risk of moving with the pendulum law. Now on one end and then on the other. Gain from an authoritarian and unreasonable attitude like that of a father who tells his brother to “go see what the boy is doing and forbid him” to an absolute permissiveness that allows boys and girls to do whatever they want at all times.

Boys and girls should have normative consistency, know what to expect, know that there is good and bad behavior, that not just their own rights but everyone’s rights should be respected. They need to know that there are rules for the common good and that they must be respected and that they have obligations as well as rights.

How many times do we think: If we give a severe punishment to a student for a mistake he has made, the others will be punished as well. And this, how do you know? Because in some cases, instead of hating the bad behavior of the punished partner, they admire him as a hero. They don’t want to imitate bad behavior, but they want to gain the courage to imitate it. Well, to fake it and not be discovered.

On the other hand, not all boys and girls are the same. A reproach that encourages one student and discourages another. A punishment that corrects one breeds in the other an indestructible hatred of the person who punishes him.

What do I mean by these two anecdotes? First of all, every case is unique and unrepeatable, every person reacts differently and not always in the expected way. You should know the boys and girls well, because not all of them respond to the same stimuli in the same way.

Second, we must question our actions. Because they do not always produce the desired effects. And sometimes they create undesirable harmful effects.

Third, we must continue to observe and analyze the consequences of our decisions over time. What is it aimed to achieve? How and when is desired success expected? If not, why did the failure occur? Only then can we learn, only then can we improve.

I mentioned time and deadlines because sometimes we think that after our intervention, the culprit’s promise of a fix fixes the problem forever. And no. And sometimes we despair:

Impatience is not a good counselor. Didn’t you promise to never lie to me again yesterday?, we say angrily in a new deception. Of course he did. And he probably meant it sincerely, completely convinced. But he lied again. And will he do it the next morning with a small basket to pick the apples? They have their rhythm in the gardens. What to confess a few more times. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t sincere every time he promised to fix himself. Won’t some adult believers confess every week? What’s happening? Didn’t they repent? Of course. But they sinned again. One week after another. And they are adults.

Impatience pushes us, but processes take their time, they have rhythms. What do we think of someone who sows an apple seed in the garden and goes to pick the apples with a basket the next day and destroys the seed without seeing the fruit, as it is useless? What a mistake, we would say. We’ll have to water, protect, tend and prune… and hopefully one day we’ll have apples.

The word authority comes from the Latin verb augere, which means to grow. He who oppresses, silences, punishes, cancels and humiliates will have power, but not power. And how do you gain that authority? For example, responsibility, consistency, patience, perseverance and love.

We adults insist that freedom cannot be confused with debauchery. We remember less often to say that authority cannot be confused with authoritarianism. To learn more about these issues, see José Antonio Marina’s “Regaining authority. Persistent education and the critique of authoritarian education”. Take advantage.