The educator must have an authentic salmon-colored soul. Because, more than ever, education today is a constant swimming against the current, upstream, as salmon do. I believe that this feeling is shared by all educators. Teachers, fathers, mothers... we often feel that we are going against the current when educating young people. And not infrequently we are tempted to give in, to let ourselves go with the current, which is certainly easier.
We educate against the current of the society in which we live. Its parameters have nothing to do with those of the Gospel. We live in a self-sufficient, consumerist, hedonistic world, with an anthropology that rejects that there is a human nature, living totally apart from God. There are still some remnants of what used to be a Christian society, but they are becoming weaker and weaker, barely sustaining a civilization that is collapsing by the minute. A new culture, outside the fertile roots of Christianity, permeates our entire environment.
Against the tide of current pedagogy. Its principles are also far from those we propose. The child is the author of his own being, the one who builds his life, with no other reference than his own freedom. The educator becomes a secondary plane, almost a mere observer of this process. The child's nature is good and should not be interfered with. There is no hint of anything resembling original sin. Everything is playful. Effort, work, one's own responsibility, failure, are sidelined. And a suffocating egalitarianism wants to drown everything.
And we also swim against the tide of the young person's own being. Because his passions will incline him to what is easy. And the dispersion in which he lives, fruit of this society of the image, of the immediate, will make it more difficult for him to face serious work, sometimes hard work, which does not bear immediate fruit. Simply put, growing is joyful, but not necessarily pleasant. Sometimes it hurts.
And yet, if we do not want to betray our young people, we know that we have to ask them to give the best of themselves, not to settle for mediocrity, to swim against the tide. Let them be young people with a salmon-colored soul.
There is a beautiful poem by Pedro Salinas, 'Tu mejor tú', which reminds us of what it is to truly love. That love in which the educator participates.
Forgive me for searching for you so clumsily, inside you. Forgive me the pain, sometime. It's just that I want to bring out out of you your best you. The one that you didn't see and that I see, swimming through your bottom, very precious. And take it and hold it high as the tree has the tree has the last light that has found the sun. And then you would come in search of him, high up. To reach him climbing over you, as I love you, touching only your past with the pink tips of your feet, tension of your whole body, already ascending from you to yourself. And may my love then answer you to the new creature you were.
It is true, we educators have a powerful ally, no matter how bad the world may be, no matter how disastrous the current pedagogy may be, no matter how much passions assail the young. That ally is your own heart and their longing for truth, beauty and goodness. It is necessary to dive into a deep dialogue with each young person and help them discover that their desire for love is not fulfilled by all that the world offers them. That he aspires for more, much more. More, more and more.
Y the other great ally is God himself. We educate against the current, but God is the father of every young person, and he loves him with an intimate love. He is the one who is most interested in saving his son, in his reaching the fullness for which he dreamed him. And that is why he is going to do his best. Neither his provident care nor his grace will be lacking.
We educate against the current, yes. There will be work, there will be a fight. But we have already won this battle.
