International

GBR

Support Instead of Education

From Equal to Equal

Adults have their identity, children have their identity. And whatever their identities are and however they develop, they exist, and – despite their differences – are equal. Relationships are formed on the basis of the real identity of each adult and the real identity of each child. From person to person, from identity to identity, from I to I.

Adults can seek to connect with children from the perspective of themselves, bringing the facets of their personality into the relationship with the child, as they wish and are able to do. They have no mission, no agenda, no methodology, no guile. They are authentic, situational, flexible: they are simply as they are, with their edges and snags, suggestions and encouragements, boundaries and hopes.

Adults who no longer carry the pedagogical image of children, who do not see themselves and their personalities concealed by an educational duty, who take responsibility first and foremost for the child that is themselves – who keep their centre within themselves and not shifted over another – are different adults from those who consider precisely these things to be vital.

In postmodernism, there are existential questions which enable a constructive orientation in a world of equivalences: “Who am I – who do I want to be?” “Which are my personal values in this plurality of values?” And this may lead to the next question: “Who are you?”

By asking the question “Who am I when I am with children?” an adult may realise that they no longer carry within themselves an image of children as people to be raised, and that they are no longer a raising adult. For them, it is no longer a case of educator and pupil in a pedagogical relationship, but rather of two equal human beings meeting beyond the realm of pedagogy.

An adult who is not an educator does not automatically turn away from children. Why should they? Love for a child is not lost when the pedagogical gaze is cast off. They face the child in the same way that adults who are educators do. Only now without an upbringing mindset, without the mission of turning the young person into a fully-fledged human being. No, they treat the child as an equal, recognising all differences. Just like in Africa, among men and women, in politics and elsewhere.

Children perceive this psychological change. This father, this mother, this nursery school teacher, this teacher, this adult has a new aura, a different psychological message, and the child can feel this change: "They no longer tell me that I must first become a real, fully-fledged person. There are many ways to go about this:authoritarian, anti-authoritarian, laissez-faire, democratically, and there are many teachers of the craft: Comenius, Pestalozzi, Rousseau, to name just a few.

“But no, they give me the impression that, from their point of view, I am a real, fullyfledged human being, right from the start. And from this position, they build a relationship with me, a relationship without upbringing. Everything they do is imbued with this upbringing-free, non-missionary, respectful attitude. I am witnessing a person – and I myself can be a person in their presence. We have similarities and differences, conflicts, boundaries, we enrich each other and we restrict each other, as these things arise, but we have not placed between us something called ‘upbringing.’”