The teacher and expert in teaching innovation, César Bona, nominated in 2014 for the Global Prize–the Nobel Prize for teachers–gave a talk at the Faculty of Education at the University of Castilla-La Mancha Campus in Ciudad Real in which he defended the teamwork of families, children and teachers and the need to be “invited” to participate in Education.
Whilst attracting a great number of people willing to listen with intent to what he had to say, Bona assured in his speech that “we cannot continue to educate individual beings but instead to social beings.”
“Schoolteacher. Let’s invite children to participate in our society: they have a lot to say”–this is César Bona’s Twitter biography, one of the best 50 teachers in the world, according to the Global Teacher Prize–so called Nobel Prize for teachers–the same teacher who, today, gave a speech in the Faculty of Education defending the idea that “family, children, and teachers are an undividable entity”, and that there is a necessity to “invite” them all to participate in the institute and in society.
In his speech, Bona informed his audience that both society and the school have evolved and that we therefore, cannot continue educating the children of today the same way that were educated in the past. We must try to create a school that provides and contributes to today’s society and, in order to achieve this, according to Bona; the first step to make is to “educate children as social beings, not as individuals.” He also adds that, since the majority of actions in the world of today are based on the interaction between one another, we should “stop thinking that knowledge is a tool that we should use individually.”
In this respect, and precisely now, political parties start to bring positions closer in order to reach a social agreement for Education, pedagogical innovation expert, Bona, evaluated that it is important that politicians consider not only the fact that they represent themselves and the party they support, but instead all of society; it is the moment to listen to families, children, and teachers “because they are a team and they should always walk together.”
César Bona has a degree in Teaching and also graduated in English Philology. In 2014, he was nominated for the Global Teacher Prize. Among the 50 finalists, he was the only Spanish candidate to be nominated for this prize. To date, he has dedicated 14 years to practising teaching and he is also the author of three books: Las escuelas que cambian el mundo, La nueva educación: Los retos y desafíos de un maestro de hoy, and Las increíbles aventuras de Don Quijote y Sancho Panza como jamás te las contaron.
UCLM Communication Office. Ciudad Real, 16th March 2017