Translated by Katharine F. Baker

      I was a student at Angra do Heroísmo’s Liceu (academic high school) when April 25, 1974, occurred. Democracy and freedom won, and I heaved a sigh of relief upon finding out I would no longer someday have to go to the “Overseas War.”

      The proclaimed revolution brought three achievements of extraordinary importance to the Azores: RTP/Açores (Portuguese public broadcasting), the University of the Azores, and political-administrative autonomy:

● Television was responsible for the dissemination and strengthening of an archipelagic collective consciousness.

● The University brought knowledge and research, and opened paths to a genuine Azorean cultural identity.

● Regional autonomy was the right solution for pursuing a Portuguese path in the Azores, and the way to respond to Azoreans’ justified aspirations for self-government. With it, new development possibilities opened up for these islands.

      In education (today called the teaching-learning process), there are many genuine changes. The school has become democratized, universalized, and mass produced. The number of subjects has increased to the point of curricular obesity. And new concepts of family have emerged. The relationships between parents and children have become more horizontal, that is, they have ceased to be so hierarchical, and many parents and guardians have found it very difficult to control their children at home. The popular saying warns: “Parents’ home, children’s school.”

      In yesteryear. as now, the school’s problem has always been the family’s problem. But there are those who persist in seeing school as a kind of panacea to cure all student ills, and the teacher as a kind of magician capable of solving all of society’s problems. After forty-three years of teaching experience, I am sure of one thing: without family interest, commitment and collaboration, the school can do little or nothing in educational terms.

      New information and communication technologies, along with the pragmatic languages of the economic, social, and political spheres, have overtaken our lives and muddied the waters. On social media we witness the legitimization of insults, the triumph of misinformation and fake news, and a whole avalanche of nonsense.

      I do not question the importance of the blogosphere, but I am wary of its blessings. By the way, a group of researchers from Duke University in North Carolina recently concluded that schools where internet use had increased the most were ones where student results had decreased the most. And there are no small number of researchers who confirm this worrisome fact: computers are making people lazier and less intelligent.

      Unfortunately, it is this virtual world that informs and shapes our children and adolescents. They are digital natives who communicate a lot yet say little. That is why they are increasingly communicative but less cultured; more informed but less erudite. And the result jumps out at everyone: we witness on a daily basis a glaring absence of references, principles and values, and instead ideological voids and many misguided forms of cultural nihilism.

      But the reality is this: we have the educational system we created. So the problem of the school will continue to be the problem of the family. And that is because the school necessarily reflects the society we have and that we built. This is the school we have, no other. The society we have built is this one, it is not the Norwegian one, nor the Canadian, nor the Australian.

      Above all, we have lacked educational agreements and commitments that might free us from the tension of the immediate future, specifically the next election, and allow us to ensure continuity and stability in the structural policies of our education system.

Published in Portuguese as “Da Escola e da Família” at:

https://graciosadigital.blogspot.com/2026/05/opiniao-victor-rui-dores-da-escola-e-da.html

Bruma Publications wishes our friend and Filamentos contributor, Víctor Rui Dores, a great birthday, and we thank Katharine F. Baker for the translation.