is a renowned Argentine psychoanalyst and on this occasion we share her opinion about what we tell our children when they don’t want to go to school:
“…We can’t tell kids that they have to go to school because that’s how they will earn a living. Telling a human being that he has to study because he is working to have a job is contradictory to giving meaning to life. Because what we are telling you is that your life is only worth preserving in itself, and not to produce something different. If we tell a human being that the only thing that matters about everything he is doing now is preparing to continue living, we are speaking to a slave and not to a human being. Human beings have to feel that what they do has some meaning that exceeds self-preservation. You cannot propose to a human being that the meaning of his life is in earning a living, because that is not the meaning of any life. We have to put an end to this idea that we present to the kids that the only meaning of preserving their lives is so that they can work and survive: the meaning of preserving their lives is to produce a different country where they can recover their dreams. And school is a place of dream recovery, not just self-preservation.”
Silvia Bleichmar. Social violence – School violence. From setting limits to the construction of legalities. “Subjectivity at risk: Tools for its rescue” P. 132. Noveduc, 2012
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