If we accept the idea that school coexistence is defined as: “the construction of a way of relationship between the people of a school community” we will understand then that the quality of the coexistence that is built will depend on the action of each of the people who interact there and will reflect the effort that each one puts into its construction. If we take into consideration that the current living conditions with their individualism, spirit of competition and exitism favor the appearance of conflicts and problems and to this we add a pandemic still in progress we will understand that there will not exist within our schools a coexistence free of conflicts or problems and that the existence of differences or disagreements will increase under the current conditions of life. Our schools must therefore not only understand the above but also promote actions that aim to ensure that children and adolescents can achieve positive learning from each of the experiences they face in their school life under these conditions; this is especially important in the face of actions in which the rules for a good coexistence are transgressed.
Given the conditions described, it is of paramount importance to understand that we are all those who are part of this special community, students, teachers, managers, parents and guardians together with other professionals who work in the school, co-responsible for that community construction called school coexistence and that as in any community where there are children and adolescents are the adults responsible for “managing said coexistence” that is, install in the establishment the necessary capacities to generate a climate of good treatment, understood as “the idea that the ability to treat the offspring well is a capacity inherent in the biological possibilities of human beings”, (Barudy, 2011)* good treatment understood in this way is not something that is framed in regulations, documents or decalogues, which is what we usually see on the walls of our rooms and that responds to the urgency of the current moment, nor is it just a way of trying to solve conflicts peacefully or mediated by adults, much less is it about repeating formulas such as “clean slate” and offering or apologizing for aggressions in an obligatory way, it is about organizing spaces that promote “well-treated” relationships, spaces that deal with “taking care of children by offering them contexts of good treatment” which according to Barudy “is a possible phenomenon and within the reach of any human community”.
For too long we have been hearing the discourse that the family is the “human community” responsible for the performance of children and adolescents in the “school community”, as if it were enough to have a family to avoid making mistakes or transgressing rules. If there is a human community that has suffered with the production model and modern lifestyles, it is the family, in the most affluent sectors of our society, especially in large cities, the presence of responsible adults at home has been disappearing at the same rate that new technologies and computer equipment appear that replace them as a company but not in terms of affections; on the other hand, the immense complexities and challenges of this century have left the lowest-income families helpless; children from popular sectors spend much of their time alone at home while parents must travel for hours and cross the immense city to reach their places of work, schools precarious in infrastructure, with lack of planning adequate to reality and professionals with poor training in addressing the complexities of child and youth life in the twenty-first century, plus a pandemic that ended up disrupting everything come to build a perfect storm to which today we add from the “school community” the weight of guilt.
If we assume that as well as the “family community” all human communities, including our schools, have the potential for good treatment and it is the adults who are responsible for managing these spaces, it is of first importance to define the role that corresponds to the schools in the fulfillment of this potentiality; one possibility is to install the concept of “social parenthood” as a central force idea that defines the role of schools and to accommodate the management and operationalization of this central idea both in the management teams and in the professionals in charge of school coexistence, the function of social parenting of schools would then be complementary to that which parents or caregivers fulfill by “caring, protecting and educating their children, ensuring a sufficiently healthy development”; in view of the school coexistence through this prism will mean that the school must be transformed into the virtuous space that enhances and reaffirms the behaviors of affection and affective coherence that many children and adolescents receive in their homes and at the same time helps, heals and welcomes those other children and adolescents who, as a result of different circumstances, suffer parental abandonment, affective deprivation, harassment of the media through the toxicity of advertising messages that call to consume fashion products or messages spread by influencers that induce to consume drugs as a way to face a world far from all authority. This reality cuts across our society and all our schools whatever their dependence.
Not understanding the above will lead us to fall into improvisation, indolence, permissiveness or authoritarianism, models of interaction that will not generate a good school coexistence since this will not be based on mutual respect or reciprocal solidarity, it will not tend to establish a harmonious relationship without violence between the different actors, nor will it provide the spaces to disagree or reach agreements when community members are faced with problems or conflicts.
* Jorge Barudy, Chilean neuropsychiatrist, psychiatrist and psychotherapist author and co-author of numerous articles on child abuse and protection.
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