Interview with the professor, thinker and communicator: “We are stopping doing issues that make us human”Writing by hand improves consideration, reminiscence, comprehension, studying, and forces us to cease: “It takes time, a pause… .and that’s one thing that’s being forgotten””When (college students) should concentrate on understanding a textual content, they don’t perceive it, as a result of they can not keep their consideration”
“I all the time inform my college students what Zarathustra mentioned, in Nietzsche’s work: “When you permit right here, overlook me”. But it will not be simple for Carlos Javier González Serrano’s college students to overlook him, judging by the eagerness he transmits on this interview and the one we think about he’ll transmit in every class. “The function of the instructor is to accompany, to show, however in order that they will dwell an autonomous and full life. We are like shuttles, to assist them take flight”.
He began doing it two years in the past. “The alternative arose in my lifelong faculty,” he recollects, the San Gabriel faculty within the Madrid neighborhood of Carabanchel. And he did not give it some thought. He had been working within the publishing world for a few years, and he was drained. “I wished out of it.” So he determined to vary authors to youngsters. Since then, he has turn out to be a benchmark for his college students, junior excessive and highschool youngsters to whom he teaches Philosophy and Psychology.
At 37, González Serrano is a instructor, but in addition a communicator (he collaborates on radio and tv packages) and a author (he has simply launched a philosophy e book for youngsters: “The world based on Lea”, by Penguin Random House). “Kids see you on the radio, on TV, within the press, they usually have a look at you with some admiration. You turn out to be a little bit of a reference, somebody who, leaving Carabanchel, can get the place he desires ”.
And his is a crucial function. Because, along with being a instructor, he’s a counselor within the Baccalaureate stage, with college students of 17 and 18 years of age. Something that’s not simple at these ages. “You should launch them to their autonomy and independence, however figuring out on the similar time that they will all the time come to you, if they’ve an issue.”
In addition to all this, his reflections on social networks on philosophical, psychological or academic points are more and more echoing. And some remind us of the significance of one thing so easy, and so forgotten, like writing by hand. Do you keep in mind the final time you probably did it? We discuss it on this interview.
Question: How did it happen to you to start out drawing consideration to this subject, to vindicate it?
Answer: If I go searching me proper now, whereas I’m speaking to you, I see two computer systems, the iphone, the ipad, the tv… I’m surrounded by units that may be typed on. But it’s nonetheless a very aseptic writing, with which you don’t stain, which you can erase, there isn’t a human hint. What is sought within the act of writing by hand, with pen and paper, is to humanize an act as completely each day as writing.
We have forgotten one thing that we used to do in our each day. Technology has turn out to be nearly an ideology, as a result of we take it with no consideration that it exists and that now we have to make use of it, as an crucial. And we overlook to do different issues the way in which now we have completed all of them our lives. And this is not about stale conservatism or a tacky backtracking, it is not about youngsters being misplaced and subjugated by cell telephones. No. I believe that this can be a paternalism that now we have to get out of. It has to do with the truth that we’re stopping doing issues that humanize us.
We try to speak completely with one another, by all doable units. This everlasting reference to the ephemeral disconnects us from the true world
The pen is an object that we manipulate at will. In an digital gadget now we have to adapt to the situations through which it really works: flip it on, unlock it… Not the pen. If you may have a bit of paper in entrance of you, or perhaps a wall, with a pen you’ll be able to write no matter you need. It is to get well contact with the world, which we’re shedding by the virtualization of relationships and objects.
Q: Recover contact with the true world, the tangible, the palpable…
A: That is, feeling the world once more, not forgetting that we will contact it. We try to speak completely with the opposite, by all doable units, and but all the things is being dehumanized. This everlasting reference to the ephemeral disconnects us from the true world.
Q: When you discuss the advantages of writing by hand, you discuss enhancing reminiscence, for instance…
A: Sure. The very first thing they are saying to an opponent, or what we academics say after we need to clarify one thing and for the children to make use of reminiscence successfully and functionally, is that you need to know methods to pull the thread. That is to say, pulling from an idea in order that many others emerge from that idea. I inform them: you need to write key phrases, which you’ll pull, to be able to get well the content material that your reminiscence has collected conceptually.
Q: And not solely that, writing by hand helps to focus consideration…
A: This has to do with the hyper-accelerated world we dwell in, and what in psychology is named ‘delayed gratification’. There is an rising dropout fee in Baccalaureate, as a result of ready two years to graduate looks as if an exorbitant time. The youngsters get overwhelmed, get drained and depart it.
If we’re giving fixed, prompt gratification on a regular basis, they’re used to it. You should do all the things in order that they’re completely entertained. And writing by hand makes them cease at what is occurring, at what is occurring. I examine it daily.
For instance, now within the fourth 12 months of ESO, I’ve some giving displays on the epicureans, and I inform the remaining to write down down by hand, in the meantime, what catches their consideration. And on the finish of sophistication they do a mirrored image. And a piece local weather is created, of one another, of questioning one another… We get well our consideration, being conscious of what the opposite has written. And this additionally has to do with recognizing oneself in a single’s personal writing.
Q: Does a 15-year-old boy know methods to write by hand these days?
A: Yes, however worse and worse, with more and more deplorable handwriting. But why do not we write? And not solely them, it occurs to adults too…
Q: But do college students write by hand solely in your courses or in all your courses, in some unspecified time in the future?
A: The drawback is that this subject will depend on the administration workforce of every heart. Many instances it’s determined that not more than 50% of the time might be completed with digital units, different instances it’s 70% -30%… Although, later, every instructor can select to present the category kind of as he desires.
If handwriting is taught, the query is how a lot is written and whether it is significant writing. Because it isn’t the identical to repeat, or a dictation, than a mirrored image on freedom, for instance. The basic factor is that the cognitive mechanism of considering turns into efficient by the hand: activating motor abilities due to aware and autonomous considering.
We are creating generations with useful illiteracy. As a lot as they know methods to learn, assume and write, they won’t need to do any of the three issues
Q: You additionally clarify that it improves studying and studying comprehension…
A: The drawback is that what’s being learn is much less and fewer understood, whether or not it’s a textual content by Kant or an bill or an article. Many instances, college students have no idea what the textual content says as a result of their head is mediated as a result of all the things must be quick: right here and now. I can not cease for lengthy, for concern of life escaping me… This has a reputation: FOMO syndrome (abbreviations in English of ‘concern of lacking out’: concern of lacking one thing). And it has quite a bit to do with what they do: depart their cell telephones face up on the bedside desk, at evening, to have the ability to see if the display screen lights up, in case one thing enters them…
When they should concentrate on understanding a textual content, they do not perceive it, as a result of they cannot maintain their consideration. And if they do not perceive it, they cannot perform on this planet. We are creating generations with useful illiteracy. That is to say, regardless of how a lot they know methods to learn, and who know methods to assume, and who know methods to write, they won’t need to do any of the three issues. Because all the things is already completed. They rise up and have already got a collection of notifications, scheduled reminders… It’s all automated.
Handwriting takes you out of that have of the automated, of getting all the things completed for you, right here and now. It takes time, a pause, to see if you’re writing it accurately… And that’s one thing that’s being forgotten.
Q: Some of these issues can be completed should you write on a pc…
A: But the pc atomizes you, makes you sit in entrance of a display screen. The letters are blows, they don’t seem to be related to a stroke, it’s pure automatism… No, it has nothing to do with it.
Q: You suggest that youngsters and adults, everybody, write by hand daily in some unspecified time in the future: cease and write for some time.
A: Yes, this has to do with the therapeutic aspect of writing, which makes us conscious of ourselves and what’s occurring round us. And it may be completed in a thousand methods, from maintaining a small journal to creating lists of what you need to do. Or you’ll be able to copy quotes from what you might be studying, for instance. I’ve diaries stuffed with quotes.
A instructor with out ardour ensures a very lifeless instructing. Emotion must be current within the classroom
A: They do learn, however they search for fast, nearly innocuous studying experiences, nothing with a brainy mental residue, as a result of it requires paying consideration.
Q: But do you learn for the sheer pleasure of studying?
A: Many do, one other factor is what they learn. I’m taken with them studying, as a result of simply by beginning a e book, having 100 pages and figuring out that you’ve one other 100 left, you might be already stopping these dynamics that counsel that all the things must be right here and now. In truth, I give books to my college students…
A: Yes, sure, after all they learn them! Also as a result of it isn’t the identical as a major determine, corresponding to a instructor, providing you with a e book or recommending a studying in an unstructured surroundings (a hall, recess, a category change…). They take it as one thing that you’re not doing in your function as a instructor, however merely need one of the best for them.
P: They take it extra into consideration than should you suggest it in school, proper?
A: Totally. The instructor’s job is to encourage the children to realize autonomy and self-thinking. For instance, the opposite day, after a terrific presentation by a pupil, I informed her that it was fantastic. And she was moved, look… You should play quite a bit with that, with that keenness {that a} instructor should transmit to the scholars. A instructor with out ardour ensures a very lifeless instructing. Without ardour it is rather troublesome to transmit data. Emotion must be current within the classroom.
It’s all very effectively instructing teenagers to write down, however additionally they must know you are there. Writing just isn’t an aseptic exercise
Q: Do you may have any expertise of scholars who’ve began to do what you plan: a diary, letters, an appointment e book…?
A: More than in school, it has occurred to me in orientation. When somebody is available in with an incipient emotional or behavioral dysfunction, the very first thing I ask them is: Have you written something about your self? Have you requested your self this query: “who am I”? Have you tried writing about your self, even should you later throw it away? The reply is normally no. But then they do. And it seems that there have been facets of themselves that they did not know, or they discover issues from their previous, or they start to seek out expectations for the long run, their desires… And they thank me.
This has quite a bit to do with self-knowledge, and the Socratic dictate to “know thyself” (nosce te ipsum). When one sits in entrance of a web page with a pen, there may be the abyss of what’s about to write down. The handwriting is a metaphor for all times itself.
Every morning, you need to write -or rewrite- what apparently appears to occur. When you begin writing in entrance of a bit of paper, issues come out that you simply did not anticipate, you end up earlier than an “I” that misses itself, and that is when the questions come up: why… why… why… Writing it has quite a bit to do with an nearly philosophical train in reflection.
And one other vital factor: it is rather good to show adolescents to write down, however additionally they should know that you’re there. I inform them: should you write and discover one thing that bothers you or makes you uncomfortable in there, I’m right here. It is vital that they’ve the accompaniment of the grownup. Writing just isn’t an aseptic exercise.