Monday, June 05, 2006

Backs Against the Wall?


Sometimes I feel blessed. Blessed to be born at a meeting point of two millennia.
I visited "Museo de las Escuelas" last friday. And afterwards, I began hearing strange noises. Of paper rustling, of nervous feet dragging down to old classrooms filled with a chalk dust atmosphere, of girls and boys' voices, apparently happy, eager to be in there.
Mercifully enough, our minds hide dark memories of mindless drills given for punishment, to defend our innocence up to the moment we are living. And fortunately, I still do not hear the sound of the meat-mashing machine.
I now feel most grateful to have been there. To know which path I do not want to re-tread. And I feel grateful that most of my classmates did not have to undergo that kind of brainwashing in the sixties. That's what the museum is useful for: cherishing evolution, enshrining human development, doing away with the wall we grown-ups have still to deal with every day. The flashbacks you most probably have when visiting the "museo" are a permanent reminder that true education was absent there and then.