“Bring us your proyect”

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Andreu Navarra

December 1957. Paulino Garagorri, a disciple of José Ortega y Gasset, was delivering a lecture at the Aula de Cultura of the Faculty of Political and Economic Sciences at the University of Madrid when he stated:

“Teaching consists in transmitting the knowledge accumulated by preceding generations, in selecting that which, within such knowledge, has become most consolidated and recognised within the given discipline. Yet, in adhering to this reasonable imperative, education inevitably focuses almost exclusively on questions that have already attained, if not a definitive resolution, at least a status approaching indisputability“. (Introducción a Ortega, Alianza, 1970, p. 174).

Garagorri sought to elucidate the distinction between systems of beliefs and systems of ideas, while simultaneously advancing his master’s concept of historical generations. It is at this juncture that we might begin to pose certain questions: What would happen if, instead of transmitting consolidated scientific knowledge, we merely affirmed that contemporary beliefs are natural and immutable, permitting only a narrow, predetermined selection of identities and attitudes? What would be the outcome if our educational system were reduced to a mere catalogue of professional pathways and specific skills? Or worse still, what if we shaped our educational policies around the fragmentation of disciplines—of subjects and fields of study?

The answer is already apparent: there is nothing left to teach. The educator has been reduced to the role of a facilitator, gently cradling identities that are never subjected to the scrutiny of an inherited legacy of experience. Self-affirming identities fall into programmed inertia, a cultivated laxity that proves nearly invincible. There are no historical generations, no past, nothing to transmit—because there is nothing left to dispute. Education is reduced to an accumulation of fleeting stimuli and emotional reactivity. The fundamental belief of our time is automatism.

The most striking feature of this new form of renunciation is the exhaustion it engenders. We parade a project about until it withers, at which point we no longer know what is to be done. Classrooms empty, libraries empty, job postings go unanswered. Society enters a state of mysterious lassitude: when everything is permissible, nothing is worth attempting. One cannot protest against abstractions; there is no longer any point in negotiating with the omnipresent voices of financial AI-cracy. Everyone comes to regard themselves as superfluous, an obstacle to social optimisation. As human beings, we add no value to any transaction.

Garagorri also warned us (as early as 1957!) of a world in which specialists lacked general ideas, while students possessed no concrete ones. Without systematic foundations at the base, and without overarching vision at the summit, society founders. Educators and learners speak wholly divergent languages, while the dominant grammar—inescapably—is that of financial automatism, a force imposed from without, yet largely imperceptible.

Reflecting on the nature of knowledge, on the necessity of subjecting it to scrutiny in order to transform it into an evolving—perhaps even revolutionary—idea, I could not help but think of the many postgraduate and Master’s programmes I have encountered. With so many hours to fill, most lecturers resort to the refrain: “Bring us your project“. Academic activity is reduced to scattered assemblies, to support groups that take for granted our shared afflictions, our collective victimhood.

In a world devoid of transmissible techniques, stripped of trades and the legacies of established disciplines, we are left only with ephemeral commitments and superficial allegiances. The most convenient ideas from the available repertoire are selected, and we take refuge in them, in opposition to all others. The educator falls silent and withdraws, reduced to the role of coach or pseudo-positive psychologist. The “project” appears to advance, yet in reality it serves only as a substitute for true commitment—the necessity of establishing firm foundations from which genuine progress can be made, beyond the confines of one’s initial mental bubble, beyond the pristine, infantilised identity that our educational reforms seem intent on preserving.

We are the first Western generation to choose withdrawal and silence. But not to allow personal projects to flourish—rather, to prevent them from doing so, through systematic deprivation. Disinformation is encouraged, laxity rewarded, so that externally imposed directives may take root: subtle forces that stimulate us in exchange for exorbitant sums. The greater the expenditure, the greater the stimulation, the more immersive the experience. We are told: “Bring us your project, bring us your life”. We have nothing to offer you, young person. Everything has become experiential because there is no accumulated knowledge left to understand. We are expected to be creative, yet uninformed. We are told there is nothing of which we need to be informed, and no one reminds us that knowledge is structured information—that is, information that has been filtered and refined. We are the first generation to leave the automatic reproduction of pre-existing powers unchecked, without challenge or discussion.

Source: educational EVIDENCE

Rights: Creative Commons