Prohibitive mandatory readings
Notice for castaways and other products derived from existential shipwreck: this article is based on real-life flotation devices. It begins on a moving island. Zulu time. September 2026. Interior day. Public transport in Barcelona (it could be any other space-time of the bitter Catalonia). The boy (9 years old) sits on the floor like a rock from the Upper Chalcolithic. The mother: "Oh, honey, stand up, the floor is dirty". Rock boy: "I don't want to!!!" (A unique phrase, like an expansive sonic destructive missile.) More mother: "Oh, honey, it's dirty, people can't pass, oh, your trousers, oh, oh, oh...." Operation dialogue and more dialogue. Final result of the journey: the kid didn't budge a micrometer. Nor will he for the next thousand years. 1st Century of the human rock.
No, fellow scuba divers. The mother did not do that thing so natural, basic, pedagogical, educational, rational, real, of pressing the nuclear button: "Get up in 3, 2, 1!!!" (Another 1st Century of parents sublet to empowered squatter children.) Nor will she ever do it. Not even when he is 10, 15, 20, 30... The stone boy will never move. And he will make everything and everyone collide. He will always impact with life. They are meteorite creatures. Everything goes against the flow. Everything against them. The city, the country, the planet, the universe.... And in the space-time of school, they do the same. I don't move. No need to believe. No need to read, write, multiply, study, be quiet, respect, tidy up... Nothing is needed. There is only one pedagogy: ""I'm not stupid"-and-"Because-I'm-worth-it"” (Castilian linguistic immersion, of course, of course). Me-me-I-I. It is the only movement of the quarry.
The rocky, granitic, petrified kid, who will have passed all the courses, and discourses, of the blah, blah, blah pedagogy... with cum laude happiness. With excellent-detergent-we-don't-want-problems-conflicts-traumas-bad-vibes-or-anything-at-all. He will reach the university, the moon, or the loft-start-up sewer next to home. And he will finish it. And perhaps he will even be a teacher and teach this to other children. Who will also have been taught this before at home, on the train, in restaurants, toilets, bunkers, transport... And the hamster will continue on the wheel, spinning and spinning, going nowhere, and spitting sunflower seeds like a defensive protest machine gun. Prohibited to prohibit. Long live bread, wine, and the mother who gave birth to me! Freedom for me!
One day, any day, the least expected, people, society, begins to burst –not from happiness– like a garbage bag, and asks itself: what is happening?, what is going on, brother, bro, pro, ro, ooooo? And many kids don't know their heads from their tails (calm down, it's tradition, heritage, transmission: like their parents). They don't cut or prick. They can't be wolves or sheep. They don't know how to blow their noses. They don't know how to do anything. They are good for nothing. And it all started that day. Do you remember it?
The day that everything stopped being mandatory. There should be no mandatory readings. Just as there should be nothing mandatory. Nothing. Please, more pedagogy of nothing mandatory. Let's fight against dictatorship, oppression, repression, educational fascism. Because life, oh life, is not this... Because all these creatures decided to come into the world freely. Snap! They pressed a button and came out of their mother's belly. Magic! As everyone knows and is prophecy. And they will also die when they decide to. And if it is necessary to finish off all those who prevent it along the way, they will do it. It is not written, nor read, anywhere. But it is an obligation of the me-myself-and-I.