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I remember that at the beginning of the pandemic, a thousand ideas circulated the world about the different school alternatives that could be adopted in the new context. Some proposed that children abandon their studies and devote their time to learning about household chores and family coexistence. Those of us who for a moment flirted with this idea were soon outdone by the initiative of the institutions, who, fortunately, reopened courses and convoked the student community to conclude the school year.
The whole society was apprehended to continue regular teaching. Avoiding the temptation to subvert everything to mimic the pandemic’s chaos, educational institutions clung to what they were doing, first adhering to the imperative of healthy distancing and then addressing the lack of technical tools and the continuous failures of those they had. By television, radio, Zoom, email, and all kinds of virtual messaging, and even personally bringing to the students’ homes the materials necessary to continue the courses, millions of educators bore the school institution on their shoulders. They were inspired, I believe, by the intuition of some profound value to which they could and should honor throughout the crisis.
It took me some time to identify and name that profound value that floated in the environment. Today I think I can refer to it as the “ritual essence of education,” an essence that goes back to the human’s first appearance and is still present today under the high pile of “innovations” that have been mounting throughout history. Like the fairytale princess who perceives the pea under dozens of mattresses, the educators of 2020 were capable of discerning that essential element I mentioned and latched onto it to overcome the world’s quake.
Certain excerpts from the book “The Disappearance of Rituals” by the South Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han allowed me to identify the forceful educational strength that, as a community, we managed to preserve what we call “the school.” Today, the various educational models have moved to the background to give pass and prominence to the only value that has always been present, although hidden: the school community’s ritual character.
It is the rituals, Han tells us, that shape the transitions of life’s phases, opening magical thresholds that take us to unknown places (from childhood to youth, from youth to maturity, and so on). Similarly, it seems to me, the school ritual allows students and, to a large extent their families, to order what happens in everyday life and create a narrative about it, without which the days would become the same and time would pass without us noticing. Fortunately for us, we have the class schedules, the different subjects, the recesses, the ceremonies, the celebration of festivities, the weekends, the holidays, the seasons of exams and the pressure to pass them, so we go through the year and move on to the next stage: the “Magic of the thresholds” by which human beings, magically, indeed, become different. The school year ends. From one day to another, the children are older; some become teenagers; others turn serious because they know they have begun to prepare for adulthood. Some enter that through the academic door to a profession. Meanwhile, like an army of vigilantes, teachers accompany the students and see them through the various exit doors when the time comes.
More than the commercial aspects or simple inertia, it is the ritual character, in my opinion, that has allowed the school to weather the storm. Above the specific strategies that each institution has implemented is the memory of those legendary scenes in which one of the tribe’s sages gather the children and young people around a bonfire to tell them the story of past generations, infecting them (or rather, immunizing them) with the narration of the vicissitudes and feats that have allowed their community to survive the centuries. Our ritual is sustained by simple and profound things: attending classes, sitting with other classmates, warming from the flame of the common goal (even if barely lukewarm in the early mornings), and keeping alert and “present” to listen and ask the teacher questions.
Eroded by fear, the world community today has the opportunity to repair its contours with the simple act of repeating something that human beings have forged since their origins. Around that bonfire that is “the school” (even virtual and disarticulated), children and young students gather again daily to preserve, even in such difficult conditions, one of the axes of our world (just like a tribe that keeps stoking its ritual fire in a situation of absolute poverty, with scant branches, in the cold and wind).
The rituals, Byung-Chul Han reminds us, allow us to perceive what endures, freeing us from the contingency. Interestingly, we can apply this word that he uses in a philosophical sense to the pandemic (the contingent is the accidental, the accessory). It is true: with all its tragedy, it is still a fleeting thing in the face of the essential and permanent that rituals allow us to preserve. Among them, the school ritual occupies a pre-eminent place.
Translation by Daniel Wetta.
Disclaimer: This is an Op-ed article. The viewpoints expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, viewpoints, and official policies of Tecnológico de Monterrey.
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This article from Observatory of the Institute for the Future of Education may be shared under the terms of the license CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 
