Eduardo Infante (Huelva, 46 years old) is, in all likelihood, one of the best-known philosophy institute teachers in our country thanks to his Twitter account @eledututor, in which years ago he began to raise every day a #FiloReto for his students to which dozens of users are added today, and the success of his books. In the last of them, Achilles on TikTok (Ariel), Infante claims, in a world in which adolescents and young people idolize influencers and tiktokers, Greek heroes and philosophers as references to achieve public virtue and be good citizens.
QUESTION. Do today's children and teens have a harder time than ever to achieve virtue in a world dominated by TikTok, algorithms and likes?
ANSWER. Virtues are educated and trained. The problem is that we, as adults, have generated a type of education and a type of school that does not train in virtue. I remember that, during the pandemic, after the end of confinement, there was a lot of focus on young people, on their lack of civility and public virtues. I always said that these young people are our young people. That is, who has taught them to behave like this? Has anyone taught them to behave civically, to be tolerant, to take responsibility? Young people today have it very difficult, but not so much because of TikTok, but because adults have abandoned functions in that fundamental responsibility.
More information'Tiktok', the bridge to our teenagers
Q. Have we left them without examples?
A. We are devoid of heroes. In a world like ours, where adults and schools do not present young people with models of heroism, what do young people do? Look for those references in the environments in which they move, including social networks. And that's where the influencer or tiktoker on duty is presented as a reference for them. And that worries me. I worry, for example, that a model for them is a fraudster youtuber or a footballer accused of rape. Everything is in the digital environment (truth and lies, information and disinformation, hate speech, etc.) and we are already seeing significant setbacks on issues such as machismo, homophobia or racism. Therefore, we must recover the responsibility of the adult, to be the authority, which is a very nice word in its origin, since it refers to a way of being that supposes a good for the other. We need to teach our young people the virtues necessary to be a good citizen in the twenty-first century.
Q. Where do we start?
A. You have to start from a base: you can't give a child a screen and say "take, do what you want with it". It's the same as giving you the car keys without knowing how to drive! And what's more, we give him the screen, let him do what he wants and tell him that if he hurts himself or others we are not responsible. It's outrageous. We need to spend time with our children. And we need to embody virtue ourselves. The only way our children desire virtue is to embody it ourselves. But we can also transmit it through the figure of the great heroes. I tell my students a lot about Achilles. Wanting to be Achilles, the young Greeks became better people. And his figure is still a great example today. My 17- or 18-year-old students still get emotional when I tell them their story.
Q. In the book he talks about one of the panels of the Duomo di Siena, The Path to Virtue, where Fortune and Virtue are opposed. On that panel is represented Socrates, who disowns the goddess Fortuna. Today, as a society, we seem hooked on it and what it represents (fame, glory, security, material goods, pleasure, comfort...).
A. TikTok works as an example in that regard. It's a big pyramid scheme in which those at the bottom look at those at the top and want what they have (money and fame). In such a way that the boys believe that one can live on "fortune" being an influencer or a tiktoker. But how have they achieved that money and that fame? Making your private life public. And there is nothing wrong with our children wanting to dedicate themselves tomorrow to advertising. The sad thing is that they want to be advertising. That's the key, because really, as a student once told me, an influencer is a flesh and blood advertising campaign. To educate for me is to elevate the human being, not to abandon the child to any form of life, and even less to the most unworthy. And for me it is a real indignity that the highest thing a child of ours can aspire to is simply to be a producer and a consumer.
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Q. Schools and institutes have also been bewitched by the spirit of the goddess Fortuna?
A. I think so. In that panel, curiously, one of the things that is clear is one of the great phrases about virtue of Hesiod, which says that before virtue the gods placed sweat. That is, virtue and excellence are only achieved with continuous work and effort. Our school, however, sells that it is possible to achieve excellence through play. But school is not going to play. Play for play's sake, the easy thing, does not develop human capacities. There is no better way to germinate virtue in a child than by having him face intellectual, spiritual, moral, and physical challenges. Avoiding effort, work and study, you cannot. That is why I often say that true social justice is not to put an iPad in the hands of a child in a working-class neighborhood, but to put in his hands a text by Homer. The greatest damage we can do to a child in a working-class neighborhood is to condemn him to a bad education, because the child in a rich neighborhood, if the public education offered to him is terrible, will always have the possibility of enrolling in an academy. The poor child does not.
Q. He says that the Greeks designed a pedagogical system that aimed to turn children into virtuous citizens. Today, he says, the school's sole goal is to create job-competent citizens for a fluctuating market.
A. Our school was born with the function of creating good citizens, not with the function of being a future placement agency obsessed with training solely and exclusively for work. The school should be the place where the modern citizen is formed, but of course, the virtues that are needed to become a good citizen have to be taught. It is not only about having good professionals tomorrow, but about having good citizens, with public commitment, with a critical spirit, who are capable of dialogue and reaching consensus.
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