rules

Today it is more common to find the concept of education linked to terms such as emancipation, autonomy, or freedom, than to norms, discipline, authority, submission or boundaries. This article sets out to show that limits, norms, rules, and even physical limitations are fundamental in education because they are an essential part of human reality and the human condition. Its main thesis is that rules not only regulate human activities from outside, but they also operate from the root of the activity itself as an expression of the peculiar rationality of human beings and their way of being in the world. The article firstly demonstrates this thesis by examining certain physical limitations that are approached educationally, and then in various other human areas, such as language, play, ecology, the Internet, and sexuality. It also shows how rules, by limiting the possibilities for how certain actions will develop, allow us to intuit or glimpse other types of limits and other possibilities —not always better ones— for human development and its standards. From an anthropological perspective, this has led us to suggest how an individual’s future possibilities expand, increase, and develop if her family, school and social settings for growth are spaces bounded by limits and norms. These allow her to feel safe enough to begin a process of critical assimilation of her received inheritance. The subject better understands reality, and the different possibilities for evaluating that reality, when the process of evaluation starts from a relatively enclosed perspective (with limits and norms) on the received tradition.

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This is the English version of an article originally printed in Spanish in issue 273 of the revista española de pedagogía. For this reason, the abbreviation EV has been added to the page numbers. Please, cite this article as follows: Reyero, D., & Gil Cantero, F. (2019). La educación que limita es la que libera | Education that limits is education that frees. Revista Española de Pedagogía, 77 (273), 213-228. doi: https://doi.org/10.22550/REP77-2-2019-01

In this article the results of the investigation carried out into procedures in the Basic Curricular Design are presented.Starting from the attitude contents of the Basic Curricular Design, those which are rules or which refer to the learning of these, are selected and are classified into categories, subcategories, educational stages and areas of knowledge. Finally an analysis and a critical evaluation of the distribution of procedures in the school curriculum are made, extracting certain pedagogical implications.

The existence of conflicts in the classroom is a usual phenomenon, which is inherent to every Formal Education System. These situations don't necessarily have to become negative, because if conflicts are dealt with adequately and a satisfactory solution is given, they acquire an educational potential and can be used to strengthen relationships between people.

But we must take into account that, with the raising of the school-leaving age from fourteen to sixteen years, the number of conflicts in the classroom and their seriousness has grown. Because of this, it is necessary to face up to the new situation using techniques and strategies that are more adequate. Some of them are proposed in this article: organization in the classroom, a climate of democratic participation, assemblies in the classroom, learning of rules, mediation and negotiation, self-esteem of the pupils, control and handling of the aggressiveness and work plans.