The school of the eighties and 'farming aura'

BarcelonaI started the school year seeing countless photos posted of my friends with teased hair and dressed in the synthetic neon-colored tracksuits typical of the eighties. It has been a viral trend on social media where people of all ages have asked artificial intelligence for an image that evokes this iconic decade. Our aesthetic has changed a lot, but I'll warn you that the school keeps the desks with the greenish iron legs and a drawer underneath where chewing gum still gets stuck. Years pass, school furniture remains.

Perhaps I started this school year a bit more nostalgic, but I analyze how the first few weeks have been and I have observed many details identical to those I experienced when I was a child. My mother used to say: "Don't throw anything away, everything comes back into fashion." As always, she was right. Books and notebooks have returned and we have completely banished screens from the classrooms. Students have to hand in their phones first thing in the morning and live in analog for the rest of the day. The result? The playground has filled with battles of farming aura. My first playground shift I experienced between astonished and entertained by these combats.

In case you don't know what it's about, I'll explain it to you quickly. Two students (mostly boys, because I've seen the girls are a bit more shy) stand in front of each other and perform dance steps or gestures that convey style and please the audience. They jump, lie on the floor, and move their arms while the rest watch, shout, and cheer them on. The idea is to stand out (farming is a video game term that means accumulating points to level up) and, therefore, the winner is the one who manages to have the most aura, that is, more charisma and confidence. If in the eighties style was achieved by jumping and singing on elastic bands, now it's done with steps learned on TikTok. It is better that they dance than that they be abducted by the infinite scroll of their phone.

In this back-to-school season, I have seen the giant Milan eraser logo stamped on school supplies, the three-tier pencil case, and Snoopy the dog again. But what really stopped my heart and made me remember the Magda of the eighties was seeing that the Catalan teacher has brought back the reading of Zoo d'en Pitus. A book that I had reread countless times and that my class students will now read. Will it have aged poorly? Will they like it? Will it hook them and make them want to read more? Will they move from Pitus to The Catastrophic Zoo Visit by Dicker and from Dicker to Agatha Christie?

At a time when there is so much talk about students' poor reading comprehension, choosing the right reading is key because for many it may be the only entire book they will read this year. I also warn you that reading comprehension will be difficult to improve because I assure you that there are fragments of textbooks that even I do not understand and university entrance exam statements that are impossible to decipher.

For now, we have started the school year with students dancing in the playground, a classic book in the drawer, and who knows, maybe we will manage to reach June reciting The Blind Cow from memory. I feel a bit like Michael J. Fox, embarked in the DeLorean, eager to recover the essence of education and bring back into fashion the values and content that have helped us grow in every sense. Because there is nothing with more aura than the Catalan school. Now and forever.