If the telenovela Entrega left something good, in addition to necessary life lessons, it was the powerful message that from the title suggested being passionate about what one does. Even more so, when what one does is try to teach History.
However, no matter how much we insist on various scenarios or try to encourage young people’s interest in the subject, reality shows that the vision of many students is just a matter of memorizing dates, reciting the biography of a hero or evaluating facts. transcendental.
Access to new technologies has even facilitated “copy and paste”, instead of constituting an effective tool for research, and although libraries today remain empty, the textual reproduction of what the books capture continues to be the most expedited to meet the delivery schedule of a practical assignment or an exam.
And it’s not that there aren’t teachers like Manuel, the protagonist of Entrega, who made a real revolution in class so that his students adhered to the concept of the word, or looked for that underground fighter to share with them what he really lived.
I am convinced that there are many Manuels in our schools and museums. Maybe they also need incentives to do their best. Maybe we have to get rid of technicalities in the educational system and stop being so orthodox when it comes to showing the youngest people where they come from.
We have many people who are passionate about History, and not only in schools; They are in small towns, in local museums, in homes.
It is gratifying to visit the Hermanos Saíz Montes de Oca house museum and listen to its young specialist talk about two courageous adolescents, Martians, noble, but adolescents nonetheless, with their occurrences, pranks, defects.
Then you realize that in this exhibition there is not a mere narrative learned just to inform, but that behind a constant and deep investigation there is the love for what it does, and the story is definitely transmitted real, human.
And this is just one example of many that we surely have plenty of, but that sometimes remain static, without tools. Sometimes the intention, the ideal method, the desire are missing. Sometimes it is better not to jump over limits and strictly follow each protocol.
Teaching History is not about putting two and two together and having an absolute result; it requires nuances, “hooks,” and inspiration.
It is not enough then to repeat endlessly that it is important to know history and that we must live in it. The point is to bring it closer to who we are without idealizing those who have built it like extraordinary demigods.
Knowing where we come from is part of the present; It makes up our identity, our culture. It is history that brought us here and deserves to give it the value it really carries, not to box it into archaic methods and the classic antagonistic discourses of good and bad.
History must be learned and apprehended from a comprehensive prism, because it is built every day. History is much richer than what is stated in textbooks, since its true value endures in the collective memory.
Let the replenishment of Delivery serve, then, to take note of.
