A great debate is generating the letter of a mother a The echo of Bergamoin which he says he was in conversation with the teacher of his daughter’s kindergarten. The message addressed to the mother is that “His daughter exceeds in concern and kindness towards others and this risks making it fragile in a world that goes at another speed and that chooses other values”. So summarized the question, we can only empathize with this mother and invite the teacher to pay more attention in the talks with the parents. But perhaps the question is more complex.
Would the teacher really like a less kind and polite girl in the classroom? Did the school really be wrong in the interview with this mom? We will never know, because we were not there. The certain thing is that kindness is a value as well as good education. And the school knows it well, given that he dedicates programs, days, experiences to these themes. It is also true that there are children who, once a rule received, fear to find themselves in error if they do not apply it to perfection. And then, the good rule could become rigidity that does not provide anyone’s advantage. The mother who wrote to the newspaper rightly claims the right/duty of parent to educate her daughter at positive values and good behaviors, pro-active in support of the common good. And it does very well. It reiterates that these are times when the good values in the educational project of a child/child could reveal themselves almost like an own goal that does not provide the right competence to survive at the same time peasant and not very sensitive.
Certainly, kindness and good education must be the norm that inspires our way of accompanying those who grow towards the future. The only doubt I perceive in the words of this mother is to have interpreted the words of the teacher as words “against” her. Perhaps the intention of that educator was the exact opposite. Perhaps in his approach to the theme there was the sincere desire to use all the “good” that is in his daughter without making him a problem for her and for others. There are children who know everything and always have their hands raised in class. Children who are so attentive to the rules of good education that they are even “too polite and sliced”. There are children asking for the intervention of the adult also for a minimum conflict between peer (the marker stole me, teacher think about it). In this acting, they are sometimes perceived as little tuned with the environment that welcomes them. Because instead of functional to the common good they seem tiring instead. I know that what I write, to most it could be unclear, but educators often have to do with children who are “too”- “too much” in one sense and “too” in the other. And then they make educational interventions that seem paradoxical and which instead are very useful, even if – in fact – difficult to understand and interpret in the right meaning.
Here, perhaps the truth about this story lies in the middle. We heard a version of the facts. It would be useful to hear the other too. What is certain is that in this time Cafone, of kindness we have a desperate need. And on this the words of this mom do not make a grin.
