Víctor Bermúdez returned in September to his public institute in Mérida, where he teaches philosophy, after five years at the Ministry of Education, where he coordinated the writing of the current programs for his subject and several others, such as history. Just published with other authors Defense of the teaching of philosophy: trajectories in Latin America (Humanities Classroom), a book in which he explains that to understand why philosophy is taught in secondary schools in Spain, and that it is not the same in central and northern Europe, we must go back to the religious wars of the 16th century. Over the course of an hour-long interview, Bermúdez goes over the history and characteristics of his subject, then launches into a conversation about how he sees children and school, the part which, if there is a choice, is included here. Born 57 years ago in Barcelona and raised in Triana, Seville, he answers questions via video call from his home studio. The camera shows the cozy space where someone who is not exactly a clean freak works.
Ask. He states in the book that one of the concerns of Spanish teachers is that students present “general difficulties with attention, comprehension and expression.” Do you share it?
Answer. This is a very complicated question. It is not something unique or specific about philosophy. As a teacher, I believe that we are living in a moment of great educational confusion. We have almost completely lost control of the educational process of boys and girls, of future citizens. And to a large extent, the education that we continue to provide in educational centers is a bit of a simulation.
Q. Because?
A. First, the channels for obtaining information have become uncontrolled. There is no one to control them, because they belong to a large extent in the private sphere. Starting with companies that provide tools not only to obtain, but now to produce information using artificial intelligence. The school does not know how to update the educational language to be able to compete with it. Secondly, I believe that the school abandons its fundamental objective, which was to generate a kind of general culture common to all citizens, which could serve not only to obtain a job, but to generate community bonds, common references and a moral formation which would allow people to face the world. Education fails in this area, and it is not because there is no will. I see my colleagues working like crazy to try to engage students. But we don’t know how to compete, how to reach, or what to transmit. And we don’t know how to recover this background of general knowledge, of common cultural references that children cannot share with us.
Q. But do they have more difficulty understanding and expressing themselves?
A. There are difficulties, it is undeniable, in understanding written texts and expressing complex content in writing in a complex and broad manner. That is to say, there are difficulties in expressing yourself in the language in which you and I were educated.
Q. Do you think this is influenced by the environment in which they grow up outside of school: screens, cell phones, social networks, etc.?
A. Yes, and now artificial intelligence. It’s not that they generally understand less; They understand less and express themselves less well in certain codes. With this, I do not want to be relativist; I don’t think any form of communication is as good, I think verbal language is much better than others because we think with it. As I tell my students, if you don’t write well and speak well, you can’t think well either. But I don’t want to say that boys are stupid either. They are very intelligent and have enormous potential. In my opinion this is wasteful because they are not learning all the languages they should be learning and mastering.
Q. What concerns you about their use of AI?
A. What I fear is not that children are using artificial intelligence, they are using it a lot. But many now use it without malice because they truly believe that it is a tool to better express themselves. A bit like him automatic adjustmentthe device that makes it sound like you’re singing in tune even if you’re not. They come to believe that this expression is the result of their collaboration with the machine, when deep down, the machine does practically everything. Many people are wrong about this. The school should take advantage of the tools that artificial intelligence offers to educate, which is very useful, even if the very concept of evaluation would have to be changed. But I don’t think that’s the root cause of the confusion.
Q. What is this ?
A. That this area that we called general knowledge is rapidly disintegrating, and it made it possible to talk to any citizen of Cervantes or a boy about where Egypt is. A symbolic magma and ideas that can provide coexistence. There are a lot of children who don’t know, for example, how to clearly situate themselves historically, and I’m talking about children in their second year of high school.
Q. To what do you attribute it?
A. I think this is because education in recent years has fundamentally focused on procedures. Whether the boy or girl is able to develop certain skills. But this poses the problem of losing this common language which was previously the culture, I don’t know, of Europeans, to speak of a more specific cultural area. On the one hand, globalization has broken, and it has its positive side, this cultural bubble in Europe and in each of its countries. But on the other hand, it did nothing to bridge this cultural gap. This language of concepts, contents, common problems at the cultural, philosophical and political levels. So we communicate less and less well, we understand each other less and less. And this is also channeled by the phenomenon of political polarization and, in general, by the superficiality of communication which is fundamentally carried out by global networks. Communication based above all on the consumption of very simple, very prefabricated products.
Q. What is the role of the school?
A. This public training space, dependent solely on the State, which is notably the public school, is an increasingly reduced pocket of interaction between citizens. It is becoming smaller and smaller compared to the global market for communication, training and now the production of information by private companies. Where there are no shared references, a common cultural language which allows us to pose deep problems and find an interlocutor. But there is a very superficial level of information, and deep down a great individual, existential loneliness, especially among young people. And it’s not just here. On a global level, schools are losing their importance.
Q. Can philosophy do anything about it?
A. Call me naive if you want, but I remain convinced that philosophy, philosophical competence, could be a certain stimulus for education to articulate something that would allow children to defend themselves a little against the aggression that they continually suffer from the environment. What I don’t know is how they don’t have more mental problems. If they don’t have conceptual tools, concepts to understand, categories to organize information, the ability to create mental maps integrating what comes from here and there, I don’t know how these children will be able to cope not only with what is there, but with what awaits them. Because a huge eco-social crisis is hitting them, I don’t know if it’s a pre-war or war context… In short, I may already be very old.
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