What values should be taught?

I got a link to the video below through twitter. A few hours laters (perhaps minutes) a protest started taking place through the same channel and also through teachers’ blogs and websites. At first I thought the video was absurd. I even felt embarrassed, but then I didn’t think more about it. Later, though, when seeing my colleagues reaction, I decided to reflect a bit more on it. Immediately a memory came back to me. I though of this time when a reform was suppose to take place in the Venezuelan Law of Education. Through that reform, the government would gain power over kids from the age of 3, having the right to take them away from their families for some Circles, trainings. For me that was simply brainwashing. In the end, it all ended the same way it started: some articles here and there, some rumors, and then forgotten. The reform was not approved (or so we know). Of course I was against it. I found it was an atrocity.

Later, I connected the issue on the video with an article that an acquaintance had written. It was about Female Genital Mutilation. In the article, the girl explained that before taking a position against or in favor of this practice, one first had two consider: one, the cultural relativism and two, human rights which, according to a quote, should stop being define the same for all. The most important part of the article was a section in which the girl analyzed the issue as being a matter of choice. This choice, however, had to exist under certain conditions: in order to make a decision for yourself, you should be an adult and there shouldn’t be any kind of external pressure, neither from family or friends, nor from the society you belong to.

What I mean is, though in general I consider myself an open-minded person and I try to understand other people’s reality even if it’s too different from my own, I also think that no matter how culturally particular something is, you just can’t justify everything. I use the term cultural here in its widest meaning, so to avoid putting all the Spanish fellows in one basket, just because of one video. Yet, I do not support this sort of actions, for the simple reason of not liking what it means to label people and because I fear and condemn those green uniforms.

I got a link to the video below through twitter. A few hours laters (perhaps minutes) a protest started taking place through the same channel and also through teachers’ blogs and websites. At first I thought the video was absurd. I even felt embarrassed, but then I didn’t think more about it. Later, though, when seeing my colleagues reaction, I decided to reflect a bit more on it. Immediately a memory came back to me. I though of this time when a reform was suppose to take place in the Venezuelan Law of Education. Through that reform, the government would gain power over kids from the age of 3, having the right to take them away from their families for some Circles, trainings. For me that was simply brainwashing. In the end, it all ended the same way it started: some articles here and there, some rumors, and then forgotten. The reform was not approved (or so we know). Of course I was against it. I found it was an atrocity.

Later, I connected the issue on the video with an article that an acquaintance had written. It was about Female Genital Mutilation. In the article, the girl explained that before taking a position against or in favor of this practice, one first had two consider: one, the cultural relativism and two, human rights which, according to a quote, should stop being define the same for all. The most important part of the article was a section in which the girl analyzed the issue as being a matter of choice. This choice, however, had to exist under certain conditions: in order to make a decision for yourself, you should be an adult and there shouldn’t be any kind of external pressure, neither from family or friends, nor from the society you belong to.

What I mean is, though in general I consider myself an open-minded person and I try to understand other people’s reality even if it’s too different from my own, I also think that no matter how culturally particular something is, you just can’t justify everything. I use the term cultural here in its widest meaning, so to avoid putting all the Spanish fellows in one basket, just because of one video. Yet, I do not support this sort of actions, for the simple reason of not liking what it means to label people and because I fear and condemn those green uniforms.