ESCUTE AS CRIANÇAS

ESCUTE AS CRIANÇAS

Veronica Pinheiro

15 de novembro de 2024

On 15 November 2024, the event is not 420 children from a public school talking to a teacher about their dreams for a living school. The event is: memories of a living school are awakened in 420 children and one teacher.

In February, one of the things that most caught my attention was the aggressive way in which the children reacted to their classmates' teasing, or how they simply used force to tell other children to stay away. I had never witnessed such young children leading such violent scenes.

I asked a girl where she learnt to beat people up like that. The answer was: ‘I was beaten up every day by other people, so I learnt how to beat them. By doing what everyone else does."

‘Everybody who?’. This was a question my mum always asked me when I used 'everybody' as the subject of a sentence. And then my mum would say that everyone is a lot of people. And that we should only observe the people we trust.

Like this girl, I was introduced to the many forms of violence at a young age, while my community was preparing me to be free and happy. Our elders were our masters and teachers. The ancestors were our lap and foundation. Love and kindness were cultivated on a daily basis, to the point where the violence that subjugated the bodies was unable to imprison them.

After listening to the girl who beat up the other children, I asked everyone else throughout the year why they reacted so impetuously. There were two answers: ‘I don't know’ or ‘I need to defend myself’. In the first week of school, I replied to a boy who wanted to know if I was the "keep order" type of person. I told him that I was learning to tread softly on the ground and that I had chosen to be a gentle person. By treading softly on the earth, we look for other ways to walk through the world. And one of them is to walk asking for permission to enter and leave places.

Listening to children is a form of asking for permission. Before telling children what we think about the violence they reproduce, we should try to listen to them. Listening to children was the best thing we could do in 2024. Throughout the year, we, the school's teachers, management and staff, tried to share an environment with the children where they wouldn't have to defend themselves. An environment where they could just be children.

Teacher Janaína was given one of the biggest challenges: she was in charge of a class of 32 students who were unable to say what they felt or wanted. It took many months of listening, breathing exercises and sharing other possible ways of inhabiting the school. We ended the year with appeased children. Janaína's work is admirable. The class is now able to play without fights. I spent two hours with the children in Janaína's class on 14 November, and I was thrilled to see them telling the stories they had created. I then played with them the games they had invented in the Reading Circle.

When I talk about the awakening of a living school, I talk because I have seen children living and smiling in a territory that normalises violence. They are living and can be happy as their memories of life are awakened. For the first time today, 14 November, not a single story written in the narrative-creation class mentioned violence. All, absolutely all of the stories written and told by the children today spoke of kindness, celebration and dreams.

For the first time, I left school on a Thursday, tired from playing and smiling so much. And this is only possible because the life contained in the memories of the territory and the territory-bodies has been calling us to dance and live in times of gentleness. I hope that the awakened memory continues to speak and be heard by my little companions.

ENCONTROS PROFUNDOS – por Cristine Takuá

Over the last few days I've been hiking around Huaraz in Peru, the highest tropical mountain range in the world. I was invited to take part in a conference on Climate and Epistemic Justice, organised by WikiAcción Peru. This meeting brought together several youngsters and some indigenous leaders from various peoples and countries.

During the conference, there was a round of dialogues with two teachers, Carlos Papá and Grimaldo Rengifo, who is a Peruvian educator, writer, thinker and researcher in intercultural education. These were moments of very profound exchanges and of sowing reflections for transformation in life.

The next morning I woke up thinking about the complexity of indigenous philosophies, whose epistemologies are hidden by universities. Throughout history, humanity has violently distanced itself from nature and used nature for its own benefit, aiming only for profit, which is very clear in the ‘Order and Progress’ message written on our flag. Although Western society has very well structured pillars based on Eurocentric reason, today everyone is facing an unprecedented crisis in which the survival of thinking beings is in jeopardy. Agribusiness, mining and, to a certain extent, mental monoculture – which is present in universities and doesn't allow people to get to know other philosophies – are possibly responsible for this difficult reality in which we are all living.

During the conference, Carlos Papá spoke about the importance of feeling part of nature and reconnecting with our bodies and our breathing.

"The pure truth of life is that you have to live in a place, step on the ground, smell it, feel the sun, bird, wind, rain, cold, this body. That's the real life to which you're integrated. Our life has everything, it has water, it has iron, it has glass, it has smell, it has water. We say that nature is there and our body is here. Our body is nature itself. Why do I say that? When you speak, the water sings, screams, our saliva comes out wet. Our vocal cord is always in tune so that it can speak the messages. And it plays like a flute, so that you can touch the person and they can hear and understand. And this flute, when you speak, this breath comes out of the hot water... That's where this wisdom of understanding life comes from, this is life, life is beautiful, life is marvellous from the moment you have the support of life."

Within the reflections we made and shared with each other, I felt strongly the need to talk about my concerns and my insistence with children and young people, whom I invite to learn to dialogue with plants, because they are great teachers, mentors and guides. They not only heal, but they show us the direction, the way to where we need to go.

I feel that our humanity has failed a lot with regard to the principle of what respect is. There is a very deep contradiction within humans, within all of us, and I believe that this is the great challenge that we need to learn to overcome, first by learning to walk more slowly, to listen and speak less so that we can understand and listen to what the spirits are saying. The spirits of everything: the mountains, the rocks, the wind, the rivers, which sometimes pass under our feet in cities that have been robbed. And many people don't stop to listen.

During the profound exchanges we had, Professor Grimaldo's talk also left a mark on my heart and memory. He raised very serious questions about the many ways of thinking about the use of technology among children and young people and how this reflects on educational processes.

“It's rare to hear concepts like decolonisation and epistemic justice applied to creativity within education systems.’ 

Through his long experience, Professor Grimaldo weaved his speech very much based on everything he had experienced, including his experience with master plants. Listening to Papá and Grimaldo, I realised that there is an urgent need to listen more and understand the relationship with all forms of life.