Educators will be where? In graves that have been hiding?

Educators will be where? What holes will be hidden? Teachers, there are thousands. But teacher's profession is not something that is defined inside, love. Educator, by contrast, is not profession, a vocation. And every vocation is born of great love and great hope.

Professions and vocations are like plants. Thrive and flourish in niches, all that precarious situations that make them possible and - who knows? - Necessary. Destroyed the habitat, life goes on shrinking, fading, sad, myrrh, enters the bottom of the earth, and eventually disappear.

With the advent of industry and the artisan could survive? It was transformed into second-class worker until he died of grief and longing. The same with the drovers, who relied on narrow trails and solitude, who died when the asphalt and the car arrived. Target also had the sad apothecary, without the resources to survive in a world of drugs ready. It was devoured in cannibalistic feast of multinationals.

And the educator? What has happened to him? there will still be the ecological niche that makes possible its existence? He is left with some space? Did someone give you a word or listen? Deserve to survive? Have any economic or social function to play?

Once cut the virgin forest, everything changes. It is true that it is possible to plant eucalyptus, this shameless race that grows quickly to replace the old trees that no one saw the birth of secular or planted. For some tastes, is even more beautiful: all lined up in a permanent position sense, prepared for cutting. And for profit.Above all, go to the mysteries, the shadows unentered and unknown, the silences, the places not yet visited. The space is rationalized under the requirement of organização.Os winds will no longer be ridden by mysterious spirits, because they all speak only of figures, finance and business.

It may be that educators are confused with teachers, just as one can say jequitibá and eucalyptus, is not all tree wood? At the end does not give all the same?

No, it gives all the same, because each tree is the revelation of a habitat, each has a specific world citizenship. The first, the mystery world, the second in the world of organization, institutions, finance.There is a tree that has personality, and the ancients believed that they possessed a soul. Is that tree, different from all that he felt things that no one felt. There are others that are absolutely identical to each other, which can be replaced quickly and without problems.

I would say that educators are with the old trees. They have a face, a name, a "story" being told. They inhabit a world where what matters is the relationship that binds them to the students, each student is an "entity", carries a name, also a "story", suffering sorrows and raising hopes. And education is something to happen in these invisible space and dense, it comes down to two. Space craft.

Fragments of the book "Talking to those who like to teach" Ruben Alves