The eighties school and 'farming aura'

BarcelonaI started the school year seeing countless photos posted of my friends with teased hair and dressed in synthetic tracksuits in neon colors 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 aesthetics have changed a lot, but I'll warn you that the school still keeps the desks with greenish iron legs and a drawer underneath where chewing gum still gets stuck. Years go by, school furniture stays the same.

Perhaps I started this school year a bit more nostalgic, but I am analyzing how the first weeks have been and I have observed many details identical to those I experienced when I was little. My mother used to say: "Don't throw anything away because 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 must 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 up with battles of farming aura. I experienced my first playground shift between astonished and entertained by these fights.

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 a bit more shy) stand in front of each other and perform dance moves or gestures that convey style and please the audience. They jump, lie on the ground, and move their arms while the rest watch, shout, and cheer them on. The idea is to stand out (farming is a term from video games that means accumulating points to level up) and, therefore, the winner is the one who manages to have more aura, that is, more charisma and confidence. If in the eighties style was achieved by jumping and singing on rubber 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 return to school, I have once again seen the giant Milan eraser logo stamped on school supplies, the three-tier pencil case, and the dog Snoopy. But what really stopped my heart and made me remember the Magda of the eighties was seeing that the Catalan teacher this year has brought back the reading of Zoo d'en Pitus. A book that I had reread countless times and that the students in my class will now read. Will it have aged poorly? Will they like it? Will it hook them and will they want to read more? Will they go 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 hard to improve because I assure you that there are fragments of textbooks that even I do not understand and 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, perhaps 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 to 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.