Reflections on the phenomenon of apathy in schools

Those who work together with teachers trying to accompany them by officiating as co-agents in the hard task of growing as educators and making contributions for the transformation of education, we often receive consultations regarding the behavior of children and adolescents called "apathy". It is for these consultations, that in Psychology online we have decided to offer some Reflections on the phenomenon of apathy in schools.

These educators point to this phenomenon that has increased in recent times and that affects countless students of all ages, such as "a lack of interest" in school, in activities, in the future, etc.

1. State of the matter
2. Psychological development of children and adolescents
3. The educator's responsibility

State of the matter

Of course apathy as a condition has been very competently studied by professionals from all human sciences and treated in therapeutic areas of mental health prevention. What leads me to develop this framework of reflections is the need to provide an answer that these teachers expect regarding the possibility of doing something in the daily task of this phenomenon that also seems to exceed the school environment to settle in the same society.

But, what does it mean "apathy"? No consideration should ignore the question since it leads us to the deep meaning of the term and will allow us to detach from it the considerations. The term "apathy" It comes from two etymological aspects: the verb p £ scw (pasjo) in Greek means first, "Be affected by a passion or feeling; experience some pleasant or painful impression"From there he derives p £ qoj (pathos) which means "passion (in all his senses); feeling, feeling, emotion.In the Latin slope, very related to the Greek, and which will then pass to Spanish, the verb is used "Patior": suffer, suffer, support, tolerate, consent, allow "and its derivatives: "Patiens": the patient and "patient": tolerance, submission.Note the subtle differences between the two aspects, the Greek and the Latin.

On the other hand, the word "apathy", It carries a prefix "A", one of whose meanings is that of "Deprivation, lack of impotence".Gathered all this data, ¿What gives us this linguistic analysis to the subject that concerns us?Precisely indicates that "Something has retired, suppressed, private" And that something is "Passion, feeling, experience".Apathy forms A state of subtraction, concealment, It is suppression of emotional states, appearing as a feeling of vacuum, of absence. And the funny thing is that a small particle, the letter "A" has given us the track to discover in content of this phenomenon.

And this is what teachers point out in their pedagogical practice: children and adolescents, ¿What do they withdraw, they stole from their school life? ¿What are deprived? ¿It is just a personal situation or is at stake intricate social networks of interaction?¿Why does this happen? ¿What are your causes?The following reflections will try to weave the plot and warp of response to this problem.

The first answer to these questions is to ask another question: ¿What is the situation of children and adolescents in the education system?

The passage through the educational system corresponds to the stages of childhood, puberty and adolescence, Moments of anxiety and uncertainty, where there is an opening to the social that transcends the reduced family world, many times without receiving help from adults. During these years, students in school not only learn curricular content, but another hidden, subtle and silent programming with which they learn rules of social interaction, power relations, values ​​that differ from those that are preached and that act further of verbal language.

The authoritarian link modalities They are transmitted in communication and learning styles and are evident in the obsession with uniformity and disciplinary regulations, in the absence of dialogue, in intolerant attitudes against dissent. For many students, the school has become a dehumanized Title and Certificate Expendator Office; In a place where there is no place for the new, the unforeseen, the different; where indiscipline is only lived as a personal attack on adults who hold authority. The student who travels the abrupt roads (curricula) of the educational system, also perceives the dichotomy between school and extra-school learning (abyss) lives learning as something whose justification and utility is locked in itself; develop activities organized by teachers whose purpose is often unaware.

You have in mind "What has to study", Sometimes he has no idea of ​​"how", "why" has to do it. Perceive frequent and natural objects of school life: books, papers, blackboard, chalk, etc. And also the dispossession of what is "own".

If you are asked what is the use of what you are studying, the answers would be around the society model: a model of "accumulation" and "marginalization" : "Few arrive, only those endowed" . The contents feel them as taxes and rigidly linked to the context in which they were learned and their application is possible in similar contexts: the classroom. Excessive priority to a small personality sector, which emphasizes some intellectual factors: "retaining" and "repeating": almost exclusive demands of the final exams that are called the finals for something: all education points and It ends in them.

It is not strange that many teachers are rightly asked what the student "retire", "suppress" In your school life. It is precisely what is left out of these exclusive factors mentioned above: feeling, experimenting, observing, investigating, intuiting, love, passion for discovering, etc.

Recently a survey was conducted at a technical education school among students in recent years ... one of the questions was to point out "¿What characteristics of the school are most important for you.?"Some responses reflected the thought of almost all the people, such as: "One of the characteristics that seems important to me is that every time I spend the year, you want to study." .This "Less desire for",¿He does not remember something?

School segregation and children's classifications at school, They are other of the brutal shapes of molding ("training", which is told) that the school frequently performs. There is little concern for the personality of each student and for the respect he deserves and the little that exists, he deviates towards categorization and the "labeje" the exercise of power frequently, is subtly manifested in judgments, impatience samples, gestures Disregard and devaluation comments, outbursts of anger and irritation and stenty screams (consultations to phonoaudiologos, witness it) and to all this we must add the self -value of the child and adolescent as a form of reaction to the devaluation environment. Remember that the famous defense mechanisms studied by psychoanalysis can also be systemically reinterpreted as "exchange mechanisms" with the environment.

Psychological development of children and adolescents

The child from his earliest age is forming what has been called the "self -concept": the knowledge of yourself. Subsequent behavior depends on that self -concept in that it will behave according to what it believes is capable and not so much for what it really is. Hence, many students anticipate because they "believe" the results of their attitude. The indicators are the reactions of the adults that surround it; What they expect from the child severely conditions what the child will do.

If you get anticipated A hypothetical failure, the efforts will be minimal and will expect bad results, giving adults the verification of the certainty of their judgments while reinforcing them in their devaluation attitudes, thus generating what is called a "feedback circuit". In reality there is no self -concept that has not gone through others. Student's aspiration levels are generally based on what their teachers expect. These expectations about students can become "prophecies" that are fulfilled by themselves.It should be remembered here the investigations in the area of ​​social psychology that were carried out and that continue to be carried out with the same results regarding the phenomenon called "Pygmalion effect" (which refers to the mythological character that falls in love with his own work in such a way that permeates life). The student looks in others as in a mirror and ends up accommodating what others expect from him. It is easy to check in school fields, the correlation between "bad notes" and a negative self -image: the school failure is identified with personal failure.

The sieve with which the student's person is measured is often exclusively school: "The student has eaten the person" Apathy is not a static phenomenon to be studied in a cabinet; It has a dynamic destination: it is born, develops, leads to disinterest, disinterest engenders to boredom and it shows many faces: passivity, inertia, sadness and even something very ours: the anger and from there begins to approach the other pole of Apathy: rebel aggression. It is not very strange to find especially in adolescents the alternation between apathy, inertia and exasperation In school and extra-school behaviors. Of passive rejection: apathy, inertia, inhibition, dream, escape, absence, to active rejection: aggressiveness, rebellion. Some specialists have referred to a situation like contagion: apathy and boredom are transmitted from one student to another, from students to teachers, from teachers to students and the institution infects everyone. Everything that has been pointed out about apathy in children and adolescents could be referred to teachers and educators.

Is that at some point teachers go to take the same place as the student in the educational system: The place of devaluation, non -participation, marginalization in decisions, exploitation as a education worker, coercion, etc. inexorably generating the affective mutilation that implies apathy and then transmitted (if you can say) to the student. The teacher and the educator may think that their intentions are good (and so at the conscious level) can pretend critical reflection, creative learning, active teaching, personality promotion, rescue of the subject, etc., etc. But define the pedagogical link as a bond of dependence and submission, and this is where one of the most severe contradictions that many teachers suffer than in very good faith and intentions rather than noble, they complain that their students are affected by this disinterest syndrome and apathy.

The merits of active learning are preached, but by virtue of the assumptions of a natural dependence, The more passive the student will be better with the objectives of a "training education". And if this happened, the apathy in the student is already installed: he knows that in order to meet these objectives and to be accepted, he must "mortgage" his own interests, his curiosity, his "passion"."My education ended when I entered school," Bernard Shaw once said.

It is not essential that apathy has a tragic or depressing face. It does not consist precisely in this, but the core of the matter is in the "retirement" and the "suppression" of the passion itself for strict compliance with the "performance principle". I would venture to affirm that behind very surrenders, the phenomenon of apathy by submission is hidden. Sometimes it is called education that is nothing more than training. Apathy and disinterest have many sources that generate them.

In order to understand them, you have to take into account: Personal history, the family environment, social motivations, the influences of mass media (¿How many hours a boy spends against TV's electronic pacifier?); The models proposed by society that parents and teachers reinforce, the socioeconomic and political situation, the cultural tradition, etc. (A famous S. XIX expressed it by saying: "The millions and millions of dead in our past history, the brain oppresses us preventing us") without a totalizing and integrative perception and a systemic thinking, it is almost impossible to have a moderately accurate panorama of this phenomenon.

We are deeply. In the same way, disinterest and apathy cannot be reduced only to an individual psychological factor. They are unfailingly linked to a reaction to a complex world of social influences and relationships. Brightly, like all his productions, the father of psychoanalysis, Don Segismundo, has given us the pattern and sufficient orientation to understand the phenomenon that we are interested in studying: "The opposition between individual psychology and social or collective psychology, which at first View we can seem very deep, it loses much of its significance as soon as we submit it to more arrested exam.

Individual psychology It is certainly specified to the isolated man and investigates the paths by which he tries to achieve the satisfaction of his drives, but only very rarely and under certain exceptional conditions he is given to dispense with the individual's relations with his fellow men. In individual mood life, it is always integrated, indeed, "the other", as a model, object, auxiliary or adversary, and thus, individual psychology is at the same time and from the beginning social psychology, in a broad sense, but fully justified.

The individual's relationships with his parents and brothers, with the person object of his love and with his doctor, that is, all those that have so far been the subject of psychoanalytical research, can aspire to be considered as social phenomena, then standing in opposition to certain other processes, called by us narcissists, in which the satisfaction of the drives eludes the influence of other people or dispenses with them at all. Thus, The opposition between social and narcissistic moods (Bleuler would say perhaps autistic) -falls within the domains of individual psychology and does not justify a differentiation between it and social or collective psychology. (Sigmund Freud "Mass psychology and analysis of the self") ¿This could be applied to psychopedagogy?¿Learning difficulties are only due to the individual or "to him, his links and circumstances"? .

Not a few pedagogues believe that many of the evils suffered by schoolchildren should be sought at the same school. For some particles and responsible for the educational activity, speaking and not even mentioning the difficulties of school and the shortcomings and the malfunction of the educational system, is having "bad waves" or "making attempts to destroy the school".

Carrying this reasoning to the extreme, They are responsible for the disintegration of the system to those who describe it and diagnose it. In this way they have an excellent alibi to refrain from any action on this reality. For my part, I think that knowing the mechanisms by which disinterest and mutilation involved in apathy is better and more deeply, is to create the conditions to act and undertake the deep changes that our boys, adolescents and young people need to be to be themselves, without affective or intellectual mutilations.

The discussion of whether the described conditions are given or not, and to what extent they are given in school fields, it is superfluous: it belongs to another research that was already conducted and repeated countless times. It would be convenient that the reader of these notes interpret that if these conditions occur, it does not matter where or to what extent, it is likely that the phenomenon of apathy is related to them. There is also no linear relationship between causes and effects and much less on the field of human behaviors that are located in another model of understanding and analysis. Human behaviors follow a circular causality model taking forms of "feedback loops" the detection of apathy as a school experience, it is likely (and will have to be proven) that is linked to the situation that children and adolescents live inside and outside the education system.

It is also linked to other causes that must be investigated and related to each other And this is more than obvious. The idealization of the conditions in which education or denial of its most unpleasant effects is developed, probably do not lead or help at all solve the problem of school apathy. They only serve to give an excuse to the adult but block the possibility of worrying about the student. (I interrupt the writing of this note. A student of a psychopedagogy career comes to greet me. I ask about your studies, how things are doing, if you are happy. He tells me no; that is doing badly in the studies (however, I remember her as a good student) Reason? You can't end a matter because they have "embossed" three times and goes to the fourth. I ask why.

Does not know. Believe having studied a lot. I keep asking to see if the teacher gave him reasons for why he does not approve. It seems not. Only receives a "It's not what the teacher wants".And what the teacher wants? , I insist uselessly. They do not explain it. I'm still asking: ¿They told him what is the criteria with which the subject is evaluated, what are the minimum requirements to approve, what are the objectives to be achieved, how it has to prepare the subject, with what method does it have to study, what are the failures that have to correct, etc., etc. etc.? Negative answer. I say goodbye affectionately and I offer my unconditional support so that I can move on. (Psychopedagogy is a key career at this time in a country that needs to learn) I thank me but tells me that "he has no more desire to continue, he does not know if it is worth finishing the race" . It goes. I stay alone. I get out. Full with anger. I feel a heat that goes up my whole body ... it must be the passion ... I recognize it ... it has accompanied me all my life.

I feel that I am alive ... I swear to continue fighting for a better education, without dropping my arms even though the voice delegates me in my ears: "Five centuries the same ..." After all, a very obvious question arises and it is the one that is asked Many teachers: what can be done? The treatment of apathy ¿It's just a specialist problem? ¿It is exclusive to the therapeutic field? ¿It is possible to undertake a transformation of the structures that enable apathy and disinterest?¿How is it done?¿Where you start? Apathy as I pointed out before must be investigated and treated from an interdisciplinary approach. These adnations are intended to treat the approach from the role of the teacher and that of the institution. It is essential that these ideas be completed and extended through the active role of the reader of the same. The first consideration about the role of the teacher and the educator is that the most effective task is the prevention. I turn to etymologies again: the preposition "pre" means "before", "in advance", "by advance

The educator's responsibility

¿What is the role of the teacher in the learning situation? The learning situation is social. Teachers have "partners" in learning, no "subjects". The educational task consists in organizing experiences through communication:

1. Leave that the student speaks and expresses itself
2. Prevent that you repeat lessons learned from memory
3. Induce it to Use other capacities In addition to intellectuals
4. Promote the Expression of personal experiences (What did you see, what did you feel, how did you live it?) and above all your opinions (what do you think about what we are dealing with?
5. Ensure that the student establishes with their classmates a communication "Constructive"and not merely "Informative"
6. Bring the capacities (work with the best each one has)
7. Create a climate where Each one feels valued
8. Look for the way Each student triumphs in something
9. Present education such as capacities development (self -despliegue) and not as a career of obstacles or fences that must be jumped
10. Ensure that the student learns to "Love yourself"
11. Boost the identity growth: enhance and promote being the being than having
12. Ensure that "Student does not eat the person"
13. Accompany development Total person

The more valued and accepted the student feels, the more he will help him advance his learning. If the teacher manages to have An authentic and transparent relationship, Of warm acceptance, of valuation as a different person, where he sees the student as it is, this probably helps the student to experience and understand aspects of himself, to better undertake and face the problems.It would be very naive on the other hand, wait and pretend that everything is given in a magical way. It is hard work and the results are not always perceived; That is why the educator's task has been compared with that of the gardener:

"We can think of ourselves not as teachers, but as gardeners. A gardener does not grow flowers, he tries to give them what he thinks will help them grow and they will grow by themselves. The mind of a child, just like a flower, is a living thing. We cannot make it grow by putting things, just like we cannot make a flower grow by sticking leaves and petals. All we can do is surround the growing mind with what you need to grow and have faith that it will take what you need and grow " (John Holt)

For many teachers the problem of motivation in the daily task is an insurmountable stumbling block. Motivation has been very studied by all psychological research currents. Today we already know that the term does not indicate a movement (motivation comes from "move")"From outside in" (It is called "incentive") but on the contrary it comes "From inside out" And that a person "It is motivated" to herself. Strictly not possible "Motivate others"Although we have installed it in popular language, but in reality what we do is create conditions and climate so that others can "motivate (Move) Faced with any questions, consult Frederick Herzberg's work on motivation.

Returning to the educational task, student "It is interested" and "It is motivated" If the teacher does his best to put it "Faced with reality" Taking into account that an experience makes sense if compared and confronts the life that the student lives. Active pedagogy is more a mood and an attitude of the teacher, than a technique application problem.

A theme has been developed among education focused on the role of "mediation" of the teacher whose function would be to officiate "bridge" Between the student and the task, between the student and the object of knowledge. The performance of this role would make it possible for the student to carry out their own experience in the achievement of knowledge. This co-operation model (also called "Symmetric link of complementary co-operation": symmetric because both are learning; of co-operation because they work together; Complementary because the teacher complements what the student needs, because he began before and knows methods of how to learn) has a starting point: the student's needs and an arrival point: the acquisition of knowledge "by appropriation".

Note that the activity:

1. this Student focused
2. he teacher orders the obstacles of knowledge
3. does not exercise violence to achieve a "passive adaptation"
4. The objective is the difficulty that the student must overcome in The achievement of knowledge
5. Learning is to appropriate the instruments to know and transform reality (one of the three objectives set by UNESCO for Education: learn to be; learn to learn and learn to do).

In this model the object of knowledge is no more exclusive property of the teacher but is outside both and the strategy would be to convene, invite, excite the student to "Go together in your search" thus constituting a true "adventure" of knowledge, which would no longer be "accumulated" but sought, analyzed, investigated, transformed and "built".

This situation allows the teacher to be released from the "Anguish for accumulating" Information and then transmit it routinely and then dedicate their energies to developing learning and search methods, proposals for materials and experiences, to contact the student the student promoting research and experimentation. Instead of pretending that students "They attend him", The teacher will be "To serve students".

All of this pedagogical hustle It is a true transaction in the rigid symbolic space of traditional education, roles, links, objects of knowledge, methodologies, use of materials, location and use of the physical learning space (the classroom).

Everything above places all of us who dedicate ourselves to education against the problem of change. Changes in education are systems changes. But there is a reality and even when the changes in the teacher are interrelated with other aspects of the system, there is nothing or anyone who can change the teacher if he does not do so. Only the teacher can change the teacher.

The target "Active pedagogy" It requires deep changes. As well as apathy requires to develop a climate and certain conditions at the individual and social level, in the same way to promote students as active subjects, constructors of their learning, require a significant re-structuring of the spaces of the spaces of learning.

This leads us to the idea of ​​a "passage" From one situation to another, from one model to another; From one place of passivity to another of activity, from an exclusion model to one of inclusion that prioritizes participation in the educational task, the only condition for the apathy not to be present.Participating is "Take a part, the one that corresponds to it" In a social group, apathy is "withdraw it"

This article is merely informative, in psychology-online we have no power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

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