LET US KNOW

"In a cavern were a group of men, prisoners of birth, chained in such a way that they could
only look at the back of the cave, a bonfire and figures projected by other men reflected on
that wall all kinds of shadows, for the prisoners the shadows were their reality; one of the
prisoners was freed and allowed to see the world as it was outside the cave and understood
the great deception of the cave, and there is or was no doubt of the need for that free man to
return to the cave and share with the world what he had seen. "

The education system is like that great cave, but which in turn is in another larger one,
called society, which sees education as the means to its end, so that the culture remains
always the same and never stops repeating itself, they see education as a factory of
obedient, consumerist and efficient citizens, as a space where little by little the person is
dehumanised and turned into a number.

School should be a space for personal growth, but society turns it into a prison, with walls
that isolate and separate students from each other, where they are educated for competition,
this feeling is what has promoted throughout history great conflicts, Napoleon, Hitler,
Mussolini... all of them generators of conflicts that ended innocent lives, but who were once
children who went to school, where they were taught that they had to win at all costs, they
dehumanized them. And this makes us ask ourselves, to what extent does school help us to
develop individually, collectively, and humanly?

The current society and the education directed by it do not care about the human being as a
person, they only care about curriculum development, whether or not they understand this
subject. Not whether they are good, bad people or lack basic feelings to live together in a
community, such as empathy and dialogue; one can survive in the world without knowing
algorithms and quadratic formulas, but not without knowing how to relate to others.

This gigantic damage that is done from a purely human perspective is an enormous good
for society; they direct the students' opinions and dehumanize them, all because they are
afraid that we will come out of the cave. Schools should teach teamwork, to listen to others,
to learn to accept different ideas, to solve problems, to teach children and adults to express
their emotions, to live together in a society, to instill independence in people and to help
them develop individually, socially and humanly.

The first academies arose in Athens, they were spaces for reflection, conversation, and free
experimentation. Today the main function of schools is to get as many children as possible
to pass the standards for their age and thus overcome the barriers imposed on them by
others. There should be a return to the basic model of the academies in Athens, where
schools are a space for personal, social and cultural discovery, a place where, instead of
learning the great truths, there is the possibility to discover and question, to challenge the
unknown, to investigate and experiment on topics of interest that enhance the ability or
skills that each person possesses and where mistakes are welcome.

Studying is not an act of consuming ideas as society has taught us, but of creating and
recreating them, which promotes creativity and ingenuity, it is not necessary to repeat and
repeat to learn, deep learning has three characteristics, interest, curiosity and will. If a child
does not have these three, he or she will not really learn, if he or she is not interested in
mathematics, the solution is not to force him or her to understand it because he or she will
not do it consciously, we take away the will from learning and with it also goes curiosity.
Each person has very different learning rhythms, interests and ways of relating to others, so
what is the need to teach us the same subjects and measure our intelligence in the same
way?

A community is made up of different people, who have different abilities and ways of
expressing themselves. If we want different results that compensate each other, let's not
always do the same thing, the total balance is not that we are all the same, the perfect
balance, it is a society composed of divergent thoughts that enrich the people involved.

This is not meant to imply that knowledge is useless; on the contrary, knowledge is power.
For a girl to speak several languages opens doors for her to expand national businesses
abroad, which would improve the country's economy. Possessing an imagination and
knowledge of letters could help a boy to express his emotions and write beautiful texts. A
teenager's knowledge of algorithms can turn him into a technology pioneer. For a little boy
to possess passion and knowledge about history, it can make him reflect on past mistakes,
so that in the not too distant future he will become a thoughtful, fair and analytical leader,
in whose hands power would be secure. A young girl's curiosity about human or animal
biology can help her save lives. Like these there are hundreds of examples of different
people who do not have the same knowledge, but who are great at their craft and love it, all
of whom together would form a perfect society.

Big changes take time and even more if we are in a big cave, the school, and the school is
in an even bigger cave called society, from the point of view of the writer of this text and
the ninth graders, solving the problem is based on allowing different divergent behaviors in
small spaces, then bigger and bigger until the whole society comes out of the cave and
realizes that differences do not have to be repressed. You and I have already liberated
ourselves, although we were raised in this cave we must be open to change and willing to
build the future of the next generations, let's free others and teach the world that being
different is ok, let's show society the great harm it is doing to human beings, by measuring
us, by teaching us the same way, by setting us against each other and making us lose our
humanity, diversity is the greatest wealth of society, let's make it known.