Sometimes readers are interested in something that we journalistically take for granted, as a matter of course. Those matters of recurring debate that we only return to when there is news.
On Tuesday, for example, this was the case of the mass strike of teachers in South Korea. The country with one of the toughest school disciplines on the planet and which is super top in PISA has teachers on the verge of a nervous breakdown - not to mention suicide - because the Government has reduced their authority to the classroom As in that ad for the loose cotton test, correcting and scolding children is over. And this is how the parents - yes, the parents - have stood up to the teachers because now you will see who is in charge here.
Hannah Arendt considered it a social, political and ethical catastrophe to lose or distort authority, understood as that which is exercised through the respect it arouses. Let's not confuse it with authoritarianism, which is precisely its negation. We look towards South Korea, which is more than 10,000 kilometers away, when the loss of authority is at home, right in front of our noses.
We bring this topic to this corner of the newspaper at the invitation of a reader whom I do not have the pleasure of meeting, but I do have the pleasure of thanking him for his loyalty. His name is Josep Varela. “Who speaks of authority today?” he asks me via email as he describes “child tyrants”, desperate teachers and “young babbling parents who educate their children with stupid indulgences”.
Precise features, those of this reader.
Indeed. The culture of permissiveness is invisible. Like a sunken mountain range, of which we have only seen the ridges. Fathers or mothers who go as colleagues, in fact, are leaving their child an orphan. He wants things here and now, and we run with the net under us. We give them everything they ask for. The defeat of no is no because no is yes. There are no orders, no directions, no scolding. We do everything for them. We have fire engravings that cannot be frustrated.
Dear Josep Varela, you are more right than a saint. We are not doing well. In an article, another day, we will discuss the political discourse.
