YOU and Your Schoolchild (Költze & De Donato, 2023) - Review by Dr. Luisa Damato

 YOU and Your Schoolchild

THE WHOLE TRUTH ABOUT SCHOOL

by Horst Költze and Maria Teresa De Donato

Review by Dr. Luisa Damato, School Principal

The analysis of the international educational system of today is at the center of the studies undertaken for years by the Polish Horst Költze, theologian, philosopher, pedagogist, psychologist, and teacher since the middle of the last century, who published in 2023 with Maria Teresa De Donato, teacher, journalist, author of novels, Italian but transplanted to the USA, the book titled "You and your student - The whole truth about school."

The 1st part, "Getting the school back on its feet," is confirmed in the 2nd, entitled, "Education and Freedom," where we are fascinated by the answers given by Költze in an interview conducted by De Donato herself.

Daniel Pennac, in his quote, said: "I would say that the key to understanding is the word, LOVE."

And it is no coincidence that I took the license to write the term "love" in capital letters because the whole book is permeated by the aura of a profound love for school, understood not as an apparatus but as an educating community in which all the protagonists are called to interact with each other.

The dedication already offers us food for thought on the authors' pre-eminent intent: "Dedicated to all students on this beautiful Earth and their parents." The superlative adjective suggests a vision of positivity that we must never lose sight of while reading, which instead gives us, right from the initial greeting, the image of an "inhuman educational system and the cause of diseases." The authors are animated by a spirit of protest, by the hope of overturning the school, proposing, however, a peaceful educational revolution that will only be implemented when the economic spirit that governs the education system today is reversed.

The authors denounce the OECD and the education ministers of the countries that are part of it, defined as its vicars, because they work by considering education as a machine, the intellectual capital represented by students as real capital, a raw material to be forged in the light of two educational principles, competition and efficiency. Students deliver results whose quality is measured against benchmarks arbitrarily established by the OECD. No longer a "safe haven," as history teaches us, the school is the place where a perennial competition takes place in which not only students but also teachers must provide standardized learning products. They are slaves; they are robots.

But what about human formation and human freedom? The OECD intends to destroy them. It intends to ignore the image of man as a free being deliberately. The concept of freedom, however, must be the starting point for the peaceful educational revolution. Freedom allows man to choose how to act and to answer for his actions because, in that moment, self-regulation takes place, that is, that ability that should be supported in the younger generations. Free and self-regulating students would make the most of their potential, driven by their innate interest in learning and by an educational system aimed at promoting that same potential. This process would guarantee the perennial development of humanity, or rather, the survival of humanity.

Young generations would learn to BE. The much-vaunted concept of "competence," which has been debated for years in the circles responsible for deciding on schools, should be the starting point, but also the arrival point, of humanity's education. Competence is knowing how to be, which is achieved through acquiring knowledge (wisdom) and skills (know-how), but this process must always take place with complete freedom. Forced learning and imposed knowledge prevent awareness of one's "self." The school becomes a prison where even teachers must propose specific contents in pre-established times and then proceed to evaluate the student's learning products.

And here, the authors insist on an anthropological orientation in teacher training. Taking up the philosopher Kierkegaard, they praise the figure of the teacher who must have full awareness of his own self, of his own emotions, of the effects of his own teaching on students, of what makes sense, of his own freedom. According to the authors, only such professionalism can guarantee a true transformation of the school, whose motto could be "for free students in a free society."

The Socratic method of teaching is re-evaluated, which sees the figure of the student as one who exploits all his highest potential, who is not conditioned by rewards or punishments, who is not just a school worker who must produce products to be used in the world of work and the economic process.

Today's economic education system, according to Költze, causes burnout in teachers, a sense of desperation in parents, and pathological consequences in students, such as stress and school dropouts.

The solution to these uncertainties lies in creating an educational system that overcomes total standardization and re-evaluates the feminine principles of cooperation, empathy, imagination, and creativity, which would integrate with the male potential. An educating community in which "educational revolutionaries" are called to respond to a team spirit; the ultimate goal is promoting a human education, inclusive and respectful of the freedom to express oneself: a school that does not instruct but educates at 360 degrees.

The authors suggest not to lose faith and that the school will get back on its feet. Even if not frequently, the first movements of a recovery are already being recorded: teachers who resign in protest because they do not want to feel responsible for the failure of the educational system are counterbalanced by teachers who have undertaken motivational teaching based on emotions. It is no longer the evaluation of notions but a careful and constructive approach that generates confidence in students' abilities.

I thank the authors for offering me the opportunity to pause and reflect on the founding foundations of the school world to which I have dedicated my entire working life.

The reading method that I found most suited to understanding the text and which I adopted completely unconsciously was to reread some passages over and over, even though they were written in syntactically understandable language, because I found them full of multiple meanings, still communicating.

It is a publication that opens up a thousand scenarios and lends itself to a thousand interpretations: it leaves strong impressions if you read it as a teacher; it conveys well-founded concerns if you read it as a parent; it spreads awareness if you read it as a student; calls for action if you read it as a manager. The authors write in the greeting: "Once you start reading, you won't stop."

Returning to the point from which we started our analysis, we are even more convinced that the key to understanding always remains the word "LOVE": if a world loves itself, it wants to know the truth about itself.