Title: Elogi de l’educació lenta (In praise of slow education)
Author: Joan Domènech Francesch
Year: 2009
Editorial: Graó (IRIF, S.L.)
Number of pages: 166
Joan Domènech and the Federation of Educational Renewal Movement of Catalonia propose a revolution, and this book would serve as a manual of instructions. It is not a fanciful claim. It is, in fact, an international movement proposed by Maurice Holt, professor emeritus of education at the University of Colorado at Denver (United States), who currently lives in retirement in Oxford (England).
The rush dehumanizes us, brutalizes us ... It may actually mean that speed and bacon have much to do with it. Domènech rejects a school agenda programmed against time and calls to humanize education without pause, but without haste.
It is the slow school model, where time allows living the learning experiences with the intensity they require. The author denies that the haste to learn is a virtue. The school does not educate jugglers or swindlers, but people. The social and family pressure, the obsession with getting results, the lack of time for teamwork bedevils many aspects of educational policy.
"In a culture where we always lack time and with a school continuously subjected to external pressure of the contents and the issues that have to be worked, that shortage of time often results in anxiety and leads to a hopeless situation", criticizes Domènech.
The author insists that the debate over time cannot be reduced merely to a technical or philosophical discussion, it is time to act. They are the political and administrative decisions which affect life today and the future of education in schools, hence action is called for at that level. "The slowness, as seen from the perspective of the slowdown, with the idea of finding just the right time and not to condition the educational fact to the constant gaze of the clock, becomes now a necessary exercise to survive and turn education around and also life".
Domènech proposes a scheme that involves reflection on the general approaches proposed by the so called "Slow Education," an analysis of actual operational aspects of the school in its various domains (learning, team work of teachers, level of relationship with families and community) and develop an implementation plan (with appropriate monitoring). "When prioritizing, one must take into account the degree of importance attached to the proposals and the degree of viability in each case”.
The book offers practical examples for improving the situation of education and relationships of students, teachers and families in relation to time. To summarize, Domènech argues that education must be a slow activity that every activity must define the time it needs to carry it out, not vice versa; that, in education, less is more, this is a qualitative process in which each student requires a different time to learn. "Education requires a time without time", he writes, adding that the use of time should also be a matter of education.
The author criticizes the fact that educational administrations walk excessively focused on incorporating new technologies into the classroom and on increasing the number of hours with curriculum projection.
"Finland, a country taken as an educational model, provides an average of 200 class hours less than Spain throughout the year”.
The proposal of the book invites to retrieve an individual learning pace for each activity, claiming back creativity, enthusiasm, self-discipline, motivation, humour, empathy, promptness not subject to fixed deadlines.
