Good morning.
I come to congratulate you.
We must be happy, because we are very lucky.
Never before have changes been so necessary and urgent,
Never before has the cultural context been so open to innovation,
never before have the instruments of social transformation
they’re so close at hand.
Today, here and now,
all of us
we have great opportunities to bring about positive change
and transform our future.
We need new forms of education
to produce a profound change in our attitude
and, consequently,
on our impact on the ecosystems that support our species.
I will present you six values that our team has identified
as essential, over the past 18 years,
to develop an educational system
capable of contributing to the sustenance of life on the planet,
of the life of our species.
Permaculture is an emerging discipline,
whose purpose is to design human settlements
that have the ability to meet our material needs
and our non-material needs,
without interfering with the ability of ecosystems to create life in the area.
An example, or more examples, of permaculture application
in learning contexts, in schools,
it can be the creation of a food forest,
the introduction of animals into schools,
recovery and reuse of rainwater,
or the production of clean energy.
It’s not about building schools in the forests,
it’s about turning schools into forests,
design learning contexts
that are self-sustainable
and that have many links with the ecosystem.
And schools are the ideal places for this avant-garde research.
In the field of learning, democracy means listening
to decide together,
listen to what children and young people want to learn,
what are their real interests
and develop the program according to these interests,
to form groups according to the interests and abilities of each person,
doing all this together with adults who have the sensitivity
and the ability to learn together with children and young people.
Through assemblies in which all the people belonging to the community
have the right to speak and vote, regardless of age,
the rules of cohabitation can be formulated.
When we take part in decisions, we make compromises.
So there are many more chances to come down to these compromises
and that conflicts are reduced.
Education is a shared responsibility,
for this, in the model we propose,
fathers and mothers are encouraged to share their knowledge,
their skills, their abilities.
We are all brilliant in something, whether intellectual or not.
True learning is produced when passion is shared
and the heart.
The purpose of this shared responsibility must be, in our opinion,
the development of the interests, talents and talents of children and young people.
The family is the most important ecosystem for healthy moon development of children
in the physical and emotional fields,
in the intellectual, social and spiritual,
so, if we want to optimize the positive impact we can have
on the life of a child or a young person,
we must necessarily rely on the family.
Emotions are essential for learning,
for this reason, in the model we propose, they are priorities,
neurosciences have already confirmed this.
The mantra is not: “Punishment facilitates learning”.
Dopamine is a pleasure hormone,
we must rebalance learning environments
excessively focused on intellectual functions,
and give more space to socio-emotional aspects
and to other non-intellectual intelligences.
Looking after people’s emotions,
we can achieve a more balanced intellectual development
and a healthier social intelligence.
The model we propose focuses on doing,
because when we act we integrate cognitive aspects,
intellectual, emotional and physical.
What we know is not so important
but what we can do with what we know.
Businesses no longer ask what has been studied,
they want to know what problems we can solve.
When they learn by doing, children and young people
they develop the skills necessary to solve real problems.
In a society like ours, which, in my opinion,
absolutely needs active citizens,
we can no longer afford an education that encourages inactivity.
The model we propose is based
on the principles of self-organization of biology,
on systems theory and complexity theory,
and this presupposes, in fact, placing children and young people
in front of a permanent exercise to look within oneself
what their talents, talents and interests are,
facilitating the conditions for them to try to develop them.
Like a seed,
a child has within it all that is needed to develop,
but we must not predetermine this development.
The oak can produce acorns, but can not produce oranges.
Artists are not a special kind of people,
but every person is a special kind of artist,
and our mission as adults, accompanying in schools,
in families and wherever necessary, children and young people,
we help them to discover in which aspect of life they are artists.
In the model we propose, 100% of the activities
it is an initiative of children and young people.
An instruction mantra says:
“Children do not learn unless they are forced”.
We argue that the initiative to learn about children and young people is endless.
These are our conclusions, maybe it may seem impossible
or a utopia,
but this is real, it exists.
An hour and a half from here,
in a country called Orba.
Because those I have just told
they are the basic principles of how an experiment works
which has lasted for 18 years,
it is called “Ojo de Agua (Eye of Water) Educational Environment”.
There is a law invented by a guy
which is called Revans, a sociologist.
The law of Revans states
that an organization, in order to survive, needs the rate of learning
is equal to or greater than the rate of change in its environment.
Let’s think for a moment:
how fast our societies change
and the challenges we encounter?
I mean, those we face.
How quickly does our educational system change?
Perhaps in education we should copy the peak sectors,
the most innovative as the technological one, and produce prototypes
minimally feasible of structurally innovative educational systems,
to offer them to the community,
so that the collective intelligence of civil society can decide
if these are valid, if it is worth improving them,
or if they are to be discarded.
But for this to happen, we need a more flexible legislative framework,
that you trust in civil society and especially in families,
who are the last responsible for having brought children and young people into the world.
Finally, I’ll give you an example of everything I’ve said.
Look, this is a project that has developed a group of kids
between 8 and 13 years, over the course of three years.
It is permaculture, because it satisfies human needs
and respects the ecosystem.
It is democratic, because all the decisions of this project
they were taken with the participation of all the people involved.
Mothers and fathers participated and we all learned together.
We had to learn how to handle emotions arising from conflicts,
that occurred during this teamwork.
It is active learning, obviously.
And it is self-directed learning, because this project is born
from the dream, from the idea of some children who wanted to build a hut.
But the most important thing we’ve learned is that, yes,
we can realize our dreams.
We think or imagine if our children and boys
they had access to an education that would allow them
to discover their true interests, to develop their initiatives,
to reach the perception of being able in life,
and equipped with security and experience
that their goals in life can be achieved.
What impact would this education have on the whole of our society?
Here, this impact is our dream
and we are working to make it happen.
What is yours?
Thanks so much.
(Applause)
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