Family Coexistence in Equity is Also Taught at School
![](http://cubasi.cu/sites/default/files/styles/slider/public/1_jr_archivo_0.jpg?itok=-oX__ebp)
Home is the best place to learn how the family can live in equity, but the school must also play a large part in that learning.
This was signed in a workshop on the subject organized by Cenesex as part of the tenth edition of the Conference "Maternity and Paternity. Equals in rights and responsibilities”, which with the motto Family Coexistence in Equity, takes place in Cuba from February 14th - April 4th.
Study centers obviously do not remain outside the patriarchal culture that has marked us for centuries and that has been assigning roles and sowing prejudices and stereotypes that are difficult to erase.
Therefore, this heritage and also the present "have given rise to a structure of relationships that’s also reflected in education in a significant way", as stated during the conduction of the workshop, Dr. Jorge Luis del Pino Calderón, from the University of Pedagogical Sciences Enrique José Varona.
An interesting piece of research published last year by the journal Anales of the Cuban Academy of Sciences, Educate for equality. Proposal for the prevention of gender violence at school shows how these statements -particularly gender violence, as indicated by the title of the inquiry- are translated into concrete reality in the classroom.
Professors and researchers Yoanka Rodney Rodríguez and Mirta Veneranda García Leyva, from "Enrique José Varona" University of Pedagogical Sciences, authors of the study, indicate that, even when progress has been made, sometimes schools are contexts for sexist, androcentric educational, and exclusive practices.
They also draw attention to what they call "the hidden curriculum", which translates into the transmission by the teaching staff of sexist behavior models through their ways of relating to their students and other teachers.
The scholars point out that in the training of teachers and professors there are no specific texts dedicated to the prevention of violence in general and in particular gender violence in school settings. The contents on the subject only appear scattered in different texts of the majoring.
Consequently, they recommend introducing the volume Educate for equality, a proposal for the prevention and educational care of gender violence as a work tool for professionals in the education sector.
Although these lines focus on the school as an educator of equity in family life, they cannot ignore, as neither do researchers, that "in schools, sometimes, inequalities associated with various human and socioeconomic conditions are reinforced and they intertwine with each other to determine the academic success and school integration of all the members of the student body…”
Towards a More Inclusive Society
"It’s necessary to understand that in our society there are still many conceptions, roles, naturalized unhealthy parenting patterns, typical of the logic of patriarchy, which require gradual changes in the course towards a more inclusive, equitable, supportive society, with a culture of peace and respectful of the environment”, affirmed Dr. Mariela Castro Espín, director of Cenesex, when reporting at a press conference on the beginning of the current edition of the Maternity and Paternity Days. Equal in rights and responsibilities.
It’s very important that the Cuban school also join these efforts -because the education of the population begins from childhood and also in the classroom- so that the implementation of the Family Code, object of so many consultations, debates and with such broad implications for the quality of life and happiness of Cubans.
This thesis was ratified in the workshop organized by Cenesex on equity in the Cuban school, where educators, experts, and directors of the Cuban educational sector agreed on the need to work from the teaching spaces on the problems of women and men in the social relations that unfold in contemporaneity.
"This relationship between both (women and men) has been marked by inequality, by a relationship of violence, by stereotypes, and of course, this has affected the education of children who start life from that culture and later reflect it in all school activities. The capitalist system coined this relationship of the man for work and the woman for love, sacrifice and care of the house and of the man himself, something that was normalized and codified and reaches our society that has worked insistently to find how to break this structure and how to move forward”, reflected Professor Jorge Luis del Pino Calderón.
Nevertheless the undeniable reproductions in the educational field of patterns of inequity between genders, which are later taken to the family environment, the participants in the analysis also commented on elements that point to the modification of such realities, contained in the Third Improvement of the National Education System.
Stopping everything in the school that tends to perpetuate, and even worsen, to root behaviors associated with gender inequality and in family life must be more than a summon contained in one day, because it depends on its realization, among many repercussions, the future that Cuban families deserve.
Translated by Amilkal Labañino / CubaSí Translation Staff
Add new comment