Turning Children Into Zombies.

Macarena-Paz CELUME. December 18, 2015

Our Education Policies are encouraging us to turn

children into zombies.

All over the world, children and young students are being educated
for passing standardized tests to fit the gaps that the State labels as
success or failure.

As an example, if a student knows how to work in team, is

extremely creative, and does not pass the test, then he is a failure
for this society and so must be humiliated, punished and kicked
out of this lite system.

Sounds crazy, but that is the reality of almost all students around the globe.

Fortunately, there are always people who believe in a new kind of education that respects the
different capacities of everyone. People who work to fight this paradigms of insane competition
and mechanization by creating new roles, methods, projects and developing ideas.
Nevertheless, and even though the peoples movement in education is quite noisy and active,
there are still many countries, like Chile, that have established educational politics based on
scholar performance leaving apart the whole human being behind the student.

Then, why emotional education is still not a national topic? Isnt it shameful that are kids
themselves the ones who demand for quality of education when this should be a right
guaranteed by the State long time ago? Are we realizing we are disrespecting children and
violating their rights when we subject them to this deceitful, mediocre and scholar-
performance-is-what-counts education? How deep is the damage for a child when ministers and
politicians dont discuss his socio-emotional wellbeing at school but how to raise his scores in
annual standardized tests, and so to let the country enter and presume in international rankings?
And presume in front of whom? Other poor countries in Latin America because we cant even
reach the lowest European country?

Nowadays in our country, and also in other parts of the world, more and more children are being
diagnosed with anxiety, and that is not only a question of over diagnose, but a matter of how
school is oppressing the children into what they think is success, elevating the normal quota of
stress among children and killing their intrinsic instinct to learn. We confirm an increase in
anxious and preoccupied children who arent motivated for studies (Cohen 2003, in Milicic
2009) In this sense, a child who is not motivated for his studies, who is not interested in joining
classes, who has bad marks, is far away from being just a numerical issue related to academic
education. There is a deep issue behind that child, and is embarrassing to keep on talking about
dumb kids and clever kids, when there is a whole emotional issue behind.

If we are going to discuss education performance and how terrible is this educational gap
between private and public schools[1] we should do something to motivate them, but instead,
public education politics keep on being the ancient ones, importing performance strategies from
very competitive countries as Japan, where the most important thing is how efficient the student
is and not at all how effective is in his human relationships. Is not a coincidence that lot of
Japanese children commit suicide when starting school after holidays, as Elizabeth Whitman
points out in International Bussiness Times Journal (http://goo.gl/G6JwbQ) A significant
number of Japanese children commit suicide as they return to school from summer and
spring vacations, a government study has found. The largest number of children, defined as
those under the age of 18, killed themselves on Sept. 1, the day that many schools reopen. So
I wonder Is this the kind of education we want for our children? Not me, thats for sure.

A child needs contention, a child needs love, support and comprehension while growing, while
entering the scholar system. School is such a different environment from all he had experienced
before at home, school is a place where he is obliged to adapt and follow a series of restraining
rules that dont collaborate to his free and authentic self. Every child comes programmed to
harmony and happiness (Cspedes 2008) and this happiness is killed when creativity and other
social skills are pushed into the background to give more space to really important stuff, like
maths, science and a second language. And Im not saying that learning this is not important,
but the ability of critical thinking, of frustration tolerance, of creativity development are as
important as them.

If we could really stand in the place of a child and see the kind of education weve being
subjecting him to when obliging him to attend school, then we might understand why marks
shouldnt be the centre of attention. The child is still learning to relate with others, and some of
them, depending of their home teachings, have more or less abilities to express necessities. If
in this context we add the pressure of scholar performance, we will end up with unmotivated
students, with socio-emotional abilities deficiency and with a very poor scholar performance.

Chile has the best education in Latin America. Has the first place according to the last ranking
revealed by the OCDE, but what this wants to mean? Lots of our students are successful abroad
and quite a part achieve international positions, but the majority of this students that had high
scores in standardized tests (SIMCE, PSU) were from the most expensive private payed schools
of the capital of the country, come from the wealthier families of the country, or live in the most
expensive neighbourhoods of the country. And this is not a discrimination or that I have hard
feelings against them, I come from a private school too, and Im happy to know that some
children had had high quality education and get to know the world and achieve their goals. But
I do ask myself what happen with this other childrens education? Those who couldnt pay a
quality education, who couldnt have access to a private school, who didnt have a personalized
class, who couldnt stay to extra-programmatic cultural activities because it was too dangerous
to come back home afterwards, who didnt have enough attention nor contention at home, who
werent dropped or picked up by mom or dad at school, those who with only 7 years old had to
take a one hour bus to go back home, who cooked for their younger brothers and sisters, who
waited until late for their mother to come from work or from nowhere, and who had no more
time to do other different stuff but to go from home to the school and from school to home.

Because is very nice to talk about having a very good education, to have this successful private-
school-students and talk about soft skills in education and all that nice things that the ministry
writes on its books, there are really nice things written on that books and if we are ignorant or
just foreigners, we read it and we believe that all of this that is written on the curriculum
programmes and plans are achieved in the real classroom, that teachers do have all that time to
practice this activities, that children are so well protected inside a school that they all have
covered their basic needs so they can allow themselves to enter school with clearly minds ready
to learn LIES (for not saying BULLSHIT that is a word not supposed to be written in a
paperwork) LIES, everything that is written on that books is a lie. Nothing of that happens
inside our classrooms.

In the classroom that entered this 7 years old boy that takes care of his brothers and sisters after
school is taught whatever it can be passed, whatever the teacher arrives to teach, whatever the
director says it has to be taught, whatever the children can and want to listen. And after all this
years, the State keeps on giving economical support to the schools that achieve better scores
promoting zombie children and without taking care of the whole process of education.

More score, more money to the school BRAVO!!!!! This is the way to improve our childrens
education! This is the way to create great students and people to our world A shame.

And here comes the teacher, looking for poorly sensitive strategies to make the child learn by
heart everything he has to answer in the test and so the State gives the school a recognition and
a little bit of money to the teacher

Who really cares about the emotional world/education of the child? Who motivates him, who
listens to him, what problems has at home, why he is not interested in listening the class, why
he is not interested in the learning process, why is he lost? A child that is not effective in his
emotions, who cant manage what he is feeling, will hardly take the initiative to learn something
in this classrooms, not even take attention to what the teacher is trying to teach.

My country, is economically stable. At least accommodated classes say so and in general, we

can see that other Latin-American countries suffer a lot more. But this economic health is not
perceived by education. Even when our country is not in crisis the State reduce all education
budgets and new ideas are still being discussed in Congress since the 70s NEW IDEAS.

But a country that do not cut down budgets, but invests money and other resources in education
is Spain. A few months ago I was pleased to read that in Barcelona they are implementing a
new type of education that seeks quality of life from the beginning of scholar life education.
Emotional education. They concluded that a good way of developing national education is
through the development of psico-social space of children so through their own tools they can
actively move forward in presented situations. That means, instead of blaming the teacher,
parents, others, they become principal actors of their own lives and look up for solutions for
everyday problems.

When a child is taught in his emotions, he can develop and get emotionally involved with
society, being able to build healthy relationships with himself and others.

In a previous research made in Chile in 2012, my colleague and I made a deep practical work
developing socio-emotional skills through drama games to a group of children hosted in a
special protection house. This children were put there because they were in danger inside their
families and their parents were in judicial process. After this work we saw how this children
showed up more self-confidence and thus, ready to learning process. One of our children, was
a very violent child, he was ready to fight and argue for any reason, even though there was no
reason to argue for. When an argument was going on among children, he approached with the
only purpose of kicking or knocking someone, probably as a way to release his own anger,
being unable to find another pacific solution. Sometimes, he showed up reserved and silent,
with low frustration tolerance. By the end of the workshop he was transformed in a new child.
Several of his socio-emotional skills were being developed, so he was becoming a respectful,
lovely child. He showed up leadership qualities and started mediating in face of conflicts, being
able to properly express his wishes and needs to adults.

Because of this, is that I wonder if Chile is really going to the country that wants to be, if the
world is going to the world it wants to be, if there is a real interest in improving education or if
it is just a way to gain more votes.

Quality of education shouldnt be measured by answering does the breach between public and
private schools decreased? but for answering lots of different important and basic questions
like:

Does the child want to learn when he enters the classroom?

Is the child interested while classes are going on?
Does the child feel confident and comfortable in his school?
Does the child have healthy and grateful relationships in his school environment?
Does the child know how to solve his problems in an effective, autonomous and pacific
way?
So the discussion should stop being about numbers and scores and should be starting in
discussing whether the child is happy or not, as basic and important as that. Personally, I build
my work in making children happy, because I want kind, just and responsible adults for our
society and not zombies that reach maximum scores in an ordinary, standardized, awful,
discriminatory test. Im sure tha is what really matters.

[1] Chiles public education performance is always under private payed education performance. For example, this past year,
from all the students that took the PSU 2014 (special standardized exam that allows you enter the university) a 69% of higher
scores were from private payed schools against a 9% from public schools. http://goo.gl/DS6XfQ

(Note: Only one MONTH of private payed education cost around 577 (US$634) and the minimum wage in Chile is around
309 (US$340)) http://goo.gl/ZqwyuA - http://goo.gl/H3UBmR

* Cohen, J. (2003). La inteligencia emocional en el aula: Proyectos, estrategias e ideas. Buenos Aires: Troquel.

* Milicic, N. (2009). Bienestar socio-emocional en contextos escolares: la percepcin de estudiantes chilenos. Estudios sobre
Educacin, 17, 21-43, Universidad de Navara.

* Cspedes, A. (2008). Educar las emociones, educar para la vida. Santiago de Chile: Vergara.