In her recently published new book, “Conversaciones con mi maestra. Dudas y certezas sobre la educación” (“Conversations with my teacher. Doubts and certainties about education”), Catherine L’Ecuyer, a Canadian researcher based in Barcelona, dismantles current clichés about school and education.
As an expert on childhood and on the use of new technologies among children, the author warns of the trend that she calls «educational homeopathy», which are «ideas without scientific evidence» that seduce some teachers.
BACK COVER TEXT (own translation)
At a time of discontentedness with «traditional» education, and in the face of an increasingly wide range of innovative offers, too often, both parents and educators, feel lost. Classrooms have always been the battleground of political powers, and, for the last few decades, also of some economic powers, that use this space for the service of their changing interests. The absence of reflection on the aims of education has given free rein to the witticisms of educational gurus who have been allowed to play with schools.
WHAT IS HAPPENING IN TODAY’S CLASSROOMS? WHAT IS BEHIND CURRENT EDUCATIONAL PROPOSALS? “Conversations with my teacher “explains the main educational trends in today’s schools. Through a Socratic dialogue between a restless student teacher and a wise retired teacher, Catherine L’Ecuyer clarifies what the widespread methods are and where they come from: emotional education, neuroscience-based education, multiple intelligences, early stimulation, project work, cooperative learning, and others.
A work that breaks with the false dilemma between «new» or «traditional» education, and that provides clarity and tools for parents and educators to understand what is happening in schools today. A calm reading that deals with the importance of attention, and the role of imagination, and opens the horizon to culture, beauty, the pleasure of learning, and the desire to know.
Mayca San Andrés