Becoming teachers for this new century

Education is the greatest investment a country can do. The great challenge for society this new XXI Century is not developing the military industry, being above over other nations or winning sports competitions. The great challenge for society is becoming a community where freedom, respect, solidarity, self-realization, social protection and innovation; and this goal only can be real with people highly trained and with a big education.

Schools  are freedom factories and, in this point, the figure of the teacher takes capital importance.

The teacher of this new century must be a friend who guides the children to get their own way, a person in which they can trust and who teaches the value of respectful and solidarity; a figure who is really far from the classic dictatorial teacher from last centuries and with a teaching based on repetition and obedience:

And in this new society, communication is a capital point, communication between persons and nations; so, the study of foreign languages becomes an important objective in school.

About languajes, the absence of a common language in the world (the idea of the Esperanto unfortunately has not been successful) and the big cultural, economical and military influence of the United Kingdom and specially the United States of America has made the English language becoming de facto the most common language, with Spanish and French behind it.

As Spaniards, the study of foreign languages was centered in French during a big part of the last XX Century and English actually.

Unfortunately, the study of foreign languajes in our country has big deficiencies in the method –we only have to compare the bilingualism in the countries of the north Europe and the low level of our students, even after having studied English for years at school- and elements like dubbed films don’t help in the learning.

Our method, based in the grammar, like the ancient study of the old Latin language, makes the use of the language something dysfunctional. The language is alive and must be used in life, because, otherwise, becomes something useless with no identification with the children's life.

The new teacher of the XXI century, when faces the teaching of MFL must make the children enjoy the subject with an active learning and giving them the freedom for being creative. The use of the new technologies and audiovisual resources shall help in this task.

The most important, making the children feeling the learning like something from them, something that shall be with them forever and that will be useful in their lives.

This is our great challenge: help educate people and open frontiers of understanding between cultures.