Naturalized places and times for the children and young people

Terê Fogaça de Almeida

“Education is the art of transforming society”, said philosopher Ortega Y Gasset (art, not technique or science; transform, not educate, or instruct). So, the good School, desirable to the society of the future, is the one that offers what society is missing, the tools, the instruments necessary for the desired future changes.

Since the beginning, around forty years ago, Ágora has offered its students the possibility of discovering and occupying its natural physical space. It offers much more, however: time, an essential element in building this coexistence. The amount of free time offered to the young does not find the remotest equivalence in other elementary schools. After all, what is a place without time to appreciate it?

There are no longer as many large family gatherings, nor street games for children and young people to experience coexistence between different people, build a social repertoire, and learn that diversity is fundamental to our formation as more integral human beings. Recovering the function of the School, initially explained, it must take charge of this mission, which I call social literacy.

The open rooms of the Ágora, as well as its multiple spaces – built or adapted – exist to promote and favor human encounter: sociability, the natural circulation of children, young people and adults have always been objectives of the School, they were essential conditions for the design of this social and affective cartography traced decades ago by the hands and feet of everyone who walked here.

Sustaining naturalized times and spaces, without doorbells, bells, vigilant adults was, is and will continue to be a humanized and humanizing mark of our trajectory.