STREET KIDS

SALESIAN PROJECT

The school is another center of socialization for boys and girls and is indispensable for their social development.

But a very high proportion of the educational establishments in Latin America offer an education is, to say the least, poor.� The number of hours which rural boys and girls spend in school is very low in our countries.� Rural� school teachers are� more focused on how to accumulate enough academic credits to leave the countryside, where they see themselves as prisoners, than on creating innovative pedagogical appropriate to rural reality.� Authoritarianism and psychological maltreatment are a constant in thousands of our rural and urban schools.� Given all these factors, it is not surprising that the school is losing importance as a major force in the� socialization and continues to do so as the crisis deepens.

The following statements from Latin American youth, help to define the crisis in our schools:

����������� �Schools have a place in time, and it is from the past.� Schools are from another era, they�re in another planet and in another century.� Schools still live in the past because the school in 1950 is the same as it was in 1850 or 1750.� Our young people live in a new world, but their teachers keep teaching as if their students haven�t seen anything or don�t know anything.� We keep teaching with the presumption of ignorance, of virginity, of honesty, of innocence�and the only innocents are ourselves.�����

����������� �The school is an institution which doesn�t take into account the knowledge gained by students in other social situations or other areas of socialization.� Never in school do they ask what we know.� A typical habit of the teacher is to erase the blackboard upon entering a classroom.� It�s as if they want to erase what�s in our minds.� They�re always telling us that we don�t know anything, that the only knowledge that�s important is what they teach and the result of this is that students become bored immediately.� They don�t offer incentives, support or anything.� Schools don�t reach us to process relevant information nor do they create new knowledge because they are so stuck in their traditions.� For the professors, the only thing that�s important is to complete the curriculum.� That means that there is a guide, a notebook in which we already know exactly what the questions and answers are, but there�s no time to think about it.��������������

����������� �The third problem with schools which adolescents perceive as serious, is that the social knowledge they disseminate is irrelevant to their� reality and, therefore, of little use to them as they try to make sense of their lives.

����������� �If we aren�t allowed to dream, we can�t imagine plans for our lives.� The schools don�t help us with our dreams or plans, because they believe they already have all the answers to the problems posed by our relationships, our friendships, our desire for knowledge,� and our world.� If all the answers are already given, all our desires for discovery are killed.� This happens even though we know, in the real world, the answers are never a given and the solutions are more and more in doubt.�

Another problem posed by adolescents from various high schools is that the authoritarian structure of the schools makes it almost impossible for them to promote cultural values like tolerance and democracy as part of the process of socialization. { �This system, dominated by an authoritarian system and based on an arbitrary disciplinary model, continues.� What�s really important is that discipline is understood as uniformity, as everyone doing the same thing at the same time, preferably in silence.� They don�t want anyone to stand out.

These questions about the role and responsibilities of the schools in socializing new generations are important.� A few comments spring naturally from these questions:

If the schools fail at their essential mission, society as a whole will face serious difficulties in maintaining or improving social conditions or imparting the social values which all men and women need to get along together.

Looked at from the point of view of the rights of children. It�s clear that these problems interfere with certain fundamental rights, like that to receive a decent education which contributes to his or her overall development, the right to free expression of� their opinions and ideas� in any way which concerns their lives; and, above all, that these ideas, whether correct or not, be taken seriously.� Children also have the right to be treated with dignity, justly and without discrimination in a way which will help them to become responsible and well-adjusted adults.

Given these negative factors cited by adolescents,� it shouldn�t surprise us that many decide to drop out of school before finishing.� Their experiences in school combine with other factors, most importantly poverty,� which push them away from school..� Other worlds of socialization,� like the street and the labor market,� are there to receive children and adolescents� who leave school, some even before completing elementary school.� In these worlds, they expect to find, and perhaps to some degree do find, some of what they like about school, but they will also have to confront situations as or more difficult, boring and frustrating than those they left behind.

The school is another center of socialization for boys and girls and is indispensable for their social development.

But a very high proportion of the educational establishments in Latin America offer an education is, to say the least, poor.� The number of hours which rural boys and girls spend in school is very low in our countries.� Rural� school teachers are� more focused on how to accumulate enough academic credits to leave the countryside, where they see themselves as prisoners, than on creating innovative pedagogical appropriate to rural reality.� Authoritarianism and psychological maltreatment are a constant in thousands of our rural and urban schools.� Given all these factors, it is not surprising that the school is losing importance as a major force in the� socialization and continues to do so as the crisis deepens.

The following statements from Latin American youth, help to define the crisis in our schools:

����������� �Schools have a place in time, and it is from the past.� Schools are from another era, they�re in another planet and in another century.� Schools still live in the past because the school in 1950 is the same as it was in 1850 or 1750.� Our young people live in a new world, but their teachers keep teaching as if their students haven�t seen anything or don�t know anything.� We keep teaching with the presumption of ignorance, of virginity, of honesty, of innocence�and the only innocents are ourselves.�����

����������� �The school is an institution which doesn�t take into account the knowledge gained by students in other social situations or other areas of socialization.� Never in school do they ask what we know.� A typical habit of the teacher is to erase the blackboard upon entering a classroom.� It�s as if they want to erase what�s in our minds.� They�re always telling us that we don�t know anything, that the only knowledge that�s important is what they teach and the result of this is that students become bored immediately.� They don�t offer incentives, support or anything.� Schools don�t reach us to process relevant information nor do they create new knowledge because they are so stuck in their traditions.� For the professors, the only thing that�s important is to complete the curriculum.� That means that there is a guide, a notebook in which we already know exactly what the questions and answers are, but there�s no time to think about it.��������������

����������� �The third problem with schools which adolescents perceive as serious, is that the social knowledge they disseminate is irrelevant to their� reality and, therefore, of little use to them as they try to make sense of their lives.

����������� �If we aren�t allowed to dream, we can�t imagine plans for our lives.� The schools don�t help us with our dreams or plans, because they believe they already have all the answers to the problems posed by our relationships, our friendships, our desire for knowledge,� and our world.� If all the answers are already given, all our desires for discovery are killed.� This happens even though we know, in the real world, the answers are never a given and the solutions are more and more in doubt.�

Another problem posed by adolescents from various high schools is that the authoritarian structure of the schools makes it almost impossible for them to promote cultural values like tolerance and democracy as part of the process of socialization. { �This system, dominated by an authoritarian system and based on an arbitrary disciplinary model, continues.� What�s really important is that discipline is understood as uniformity, as everyone doing the same thing at the same time, preferably in silence.� They don�t want anyone to stand out.

These questions about the role and responsibilities of the schools in socializing new generations are important.� A few comments spring naturally from these questions:

If the schools fail at their essential mission, society as a whole will face serious difficulties in maintaining or improving social conditions or imparting the social values which all men and women need to get along together.

Looked at from the point of view of the rights of children. It�s clear that these problems interfere with certain fundamental rights, like that to receive a decent education which contributes to his or her overall development, the right to free expression of� their opinions and ideas� in any way which concerns their lives; and, above all, that these ideas, whether correct or not, be taken seriously.� Children also have the right to be treated with dignity, justly and without discrimination in a way which will help them to become responsible and well-adjusted adults.

Given these negative factors cited by adolescents,� it shouldn�t surprise us that many decide to drop out of school before finishing.� Their experiences in school combine with other factors, most importantly poverty,� which push them away from school..� Other worlds of socialization,� like the street and the labor market,� are there to receive children and adolescents� who leave school, some even before completing elementary school.� In these worlds, they expect to find, and perhaps to some degree do find, some of what they like about school, but they will also have to confront situations as or more difficult, boring and frustrating than those they left behind. 

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