The philosopher and pedagogue Gregorio Luri unraveled in this paper a reflection on the role of fathers and mothers and left us a really comforting message: “Every child has the right to calm and imperfect parents & rdquor ;. For Luri, good manners must include the magic words “please”, “thank you”, “excuse me” and “I trust” and the well educated person is the one who knows how to reciprocate the love that he has received.
With a great deal of common sense, this philosopher, a self-confessed imperfect father, warned us against aspiring to be a perfect father and stressed that “our son, in order to finish building himself, needs the trust that only we can give him.”
Gregorio Luri’s presentation focused on four magic words of education: ““Please”, “thank you”, “excuse me” and “I trust” They are very basic words. As the world becomes more complex, it becomes more important to have clearer priorities.. The basic priorities must be those that They foster a person’s cordial relationship with others. These four elementary words form the basic structure of cordiality & rdquor ;. Why is it important to ask for something please? Because “we are putting aside the arrogance of” I want & rdquor; or “give me this”. We are substituting the imperative of the self for a recognition that the other can help us, not because he is obliged, but because we recognize his generosity & rdquor ;.
And hence the importance of thanking that generosity. The word “sorry”, for its part, “allows us to go back in time and erase the cross-outs we have made in our biography. We all mess up and make mistakes, we live in a situation, which is that of life, full of ambiguities. If we did not have the forgiveness of others, we would always be subject to those studs that have marked our past & rdquor ;. Regarding trust, “when we trust someone, we recognize his competence and we recognize that he is a reliable person, that is: that he knows how to remain faithful to the words he has given. This means that the future, which in itself is indefinite, we can count on the security that someone will continue to remain faithful to the commitment they have given & rdquor ;.
Luri based a good part of his speech on the importance of trust. For the philosopher “Family life can be summed up as a transfer of trust from parents to children. The psychological balance and maturity of our son require as an essential component that they can trust their parents. Children need to trust us because they need strong allies to fight the monsters that are always under the bed. When he grows up, we transfer that trust they had in us to them & rdquor ;.
Providing security does not mean overprotecting, as Luri clarified: “Deep down, children are like ships: the safest place for them is the port. The problem is that they are not made for that & rdquor;. So, as with the boats, it would be about preparing our children for the journey, but “we know that being a child means having much more energy than common sense to control it and this creates uncertainties. If someone has to put common sense in the family relationship, it should not be the child, it has to be us. Our son, to finish building, needs the confidence that only we can give him”.
Luri confessed to being a “staunch defender of the normal family.” The essential feature of it is “the awareness that you are very often out of the game as a father & rdquor;. Luri defined this normality in the family as “Knowing how to handle their daily neuroses without too much shrillness & rdquor;. Although the audience began to laugh, Luri told us that he was serious. And he stressed that neuroses “are inevitable, first because the urgency to give our children an answer is always greater than the intelligence we have available to solve it. Secondly, because nobody is the owner of their moods, which have a capricious component and come and go a little as they please & rdquor ;. So “When faced with situations to which you must give an answer, you already find that you are not as wise as you think and that perhaps your state of mind is not the most appropriate to face it. But that’s being a father”. Luri has the perfect and improbable recipe so that neuroses do not occur: “Perhaps one could aspire to be a perfect family if one day they manage to have the second child before the first& rdquor ;, a phrase that caused laughter among the public.
But the humor did not end here. Luri told us: “I would like to give you a test on family quality: Do you honestly consider yourself better or worse parents than The Simpsons? & rdquor ;. Again there was much laughter from the audience. “First, if they consider themselves worse parents, they have a serious problem and I can’t help them. If you consider yourself better parents, my warmest congratulations, because being better than the Simpsons is not that easy. The Simpsons, at least, have two essential virtues: they start each chapter from scratch, without carrying a memorial of grievances, having forgiven themselves what they have done in the previous chapter. The second is that I find it hard to understand how that excellent woman Marge is in love with Homer Simpson, but The Simpsons love each other, in a bizarre way if they want. And they know that there are certain lines that they will not cross, precisely marked by mutual love. When that love is at stake, Homer is able to take his son to a museum & rdquor ;.
Luri also told us that we educate more with what we do than with what we say: “Despite the fact that we spend our lives talking about values, the educational organ is not the ear, but the eye. We educate or learn from the behaviors we see in people we consider valuable. And there is no more important learning in our life than learning to love. And along with that, knowing that you can be an imperfect person and yet you can find someone who loves you. The learning of love can only be learned at home and seeing your parents who love each other. How is love manifested? Well, one of the most spontaneous ways is with the four magic words & rdquor ;.
Gregorio Luri was “in favor of adding to the Declaration of the rights of the child two new rights. The first would say “Every child has the right to have calm parents & rdquor;, that they don’t stick their tongues out trying to be a permanent model for their children, cultural catalysts in their lives, teachers and I don’t know how many other things. And the second is that “Every child has the right to have imperfect parents & rdquor;. Being an adult means, among other things, learning to love someone even though you are aware of their imperfections & rdquor ;.
Precisely, for Luri, “a son is not well educated if he is not able to reciprocate the love he has received. This makes educational sense when we recognize ourselves as imperfect parents & rdquor ;. Although Luri was reluctant to “tell them my miseries”, he did want to share that his title to talk about all these issues at the meeting was “being a normal and imperfect father. There are so many things I’ve done wrong! & rdquor ;. However, despite this, her children, now grown up, “like to come home, eat together and all those blunders have not left bleeding wounds but have given reason for irony. One day I told myself that just as aspiring to be a normal and imperfect father was to discover that your children are aware that they have an imperfect father and yet they have not stopped loving you & rdquor ;.
During question time, Luri spoke of the role of philosophy in education: “I think that philosophy is not necessary at all to learn from your daily practice. Where common sense can work, philosophy is superfluous. Being a father is exposed to a continuous bombardment of images that make you believe that you can aspire to be a perfect father.. And we find around us quite a few parents who play that role. There they. Aspiring to be a normal father is a reasonable utopia & rdquor ;.
And he also addressed the stage of adolescence: “Having a teenage son is very complicated. It is when the ship leaves the port. And that ship is still unfinished. But our children need to break the relationships they had with us in order to build adult relationships. The teenagers have to redo everything in a situation where it is impossible not to fly sparks. Dwe should be worried because being worried or we put common sense in relationships or our son is not going to put it. And that is the job of father & rdquor ;.