From Brasilia-DF, the capital of Brazil.
Many of us repeat that life is made up of decisions. We are generous in giving advice, in wanting to educate and teach others, but most people fail when it comes to planning and directing their lives. Why did this happen?
I don’t have the gift of foreseeing the future. However, there are some signs that life sends that if you learn to understand them, it will certainly make your journey less laborious and you will understand both the reasons for success and failure.
For example, all those who learn to read and write in their childhood, feel that they have gone through a real revolution! So why do people quickly hate these two activities? If for more than 300 years the world and the Labor Market are structured to give better opportunities to those who study the most, know and have more degrees, then, even knowing this, there is so much contempt for education?
Why students who know more are subjected to so much “bullying” and come to be despised by the so-called “popular.” Is the word “popular” in this specific case, a synonym for “stupid? And, why are the ignorant worshiped and admired?
Why do families destroy their children and send them to schools like old auto body shops? And why is the State, because of its mayors, governors, and presidents, so foolish, to neglect the raw material of development and progress?
The ONBOARD DIARY series, through each of the stories of the five protagonists, clearly shows that the process of Education and Teaching puts us to the test every day. When I say that such a process puts us to the test, I purposely use the pronoun “we”, because when I read every word, phrase, page of these life stories, I feel that families, society, and the State, with rare exceptions, have failed in the role of active agents of education and teaching.
And what about the students, passive-active agents of this process? The education and teaching process sank into the deep well of ignorance and ineffectiveness. Physical and remote structures must be included there, because the old problems of face-to-face teaching have already been transferred to distance learning, long ago.
The COVID-19 and the urgency of migration to remote platforms only underscored the mediocrity of the physical structures of schools, colleges, and universities without laboratories, with poorly paid and poorly trained teachers, and professors. Except for a few, most carry the mediocrity they acquired as a student. This is a never-ending cycle because it is impossible to get different results by doing the same thing over and over again. As long as families, society, and the State continue to despise education and teaching as they have for a long time, we will be like a mediocre dog chasing its mediocre tail!
The stories of the protagonists point to the failure of mediocre students and also to the hope that we can still have in some. There are innumerable hidden signs in this puzzle that the ONBOARD DIARY series allows us to put together and that must be sent to each mayor, governor, and president of the Republic, to be referred to their special advisers (ministers and secretaries of education), to reflect and to summon families and society to discuss our paths again, without the ideologization of the political left and right that blinds, puts everyone as fools and makes us deviate from the right path, whatever! Rational, critical, and logical knowledge.
Tomorrow and Tuesday, you can have the pleasure to follow the last two chapters of the ONBOARD DIARY series. Obviously, since life is determined by individual will, you can read it or not, but I’m pretty sure 1000 excuses not to read are 1000 reasons to fail.
In advance, I would like to thank teacher Gevani Silva, student Sophia Bittencourt, French teacher, and educational supervisor Katia Silva, counselor advisor, and psychoanalyst Kennya Fernandes, and public school Principal Andreia Bombom Ferreira. With this small sample of seeds that you throw into our hearts, it is possible to dream that some will fall on fertile soil and, if so, history will remind future generations that the effort of those who believe and work for the Good is valid.
I say thank you once more, and I make public my admiration and respect for the good teachers, counselor advisers, good students, educational supervisors, coordinators, principals, and others who are in charge of school management.
To you who cook in public schools, to give relief to young, and poor students, as I was, when I was studying at the old CLASS 03 SCHOOL of Nucleo Bandeirante-DF, where I finished my Elementary School, and at CEMNB, where I finished my High School, I say thank you. To the receptionists, to the guards, and to all those who today are nicknamed “the left behind”, I say THANK YOU!
Thank you, my dear Portuguese teacher, who gifted two books(by Jose de Alencar, and Mark Twain) to read, when my parents hadn’t enough money to buy the books I needed to study. That was the beginning of my journey.
All of You, are my heroes!
