Do you want to kill someone?

There are times when the exercise of teaching becomes strange and complicated, not because of indiscipline or disruption in the classroom, but because the responses of the students can lead to a serious problem of conscience. The question in the title served this, his sure servant, as a matter of debate in the field of Philosophy and even in Psychology, both taught in high school. 

One intended, at least in the second of those mentioned, to verify the degree of acquisition of the fundamentals of the subject, that they understood the basic task of criminological science and found, consequently, a minimum profile of the psychopathic personality. In the case of Philosophy, it was only a matter of sounding out the moral component of the individuals who attended class. His answers are the basis of the present and, in a way, also explain events such as the recent deaths of very young gang members.

In Psychology, there was no greater distance between what was normalized, from what was socially accepted. What's more, I was pleased with the tone and the ultimate meaning of the boys' pronouncements. Not one of them thought of ending the life of another human being, except in situations favored by the legitimate defense.

I repeat, no one was able to elaborate a coldly reasoned discourse about the ideation of the death of a similar person. However, in the matter of Philosophy, the response of some guys gave me the willies. From the groups of my direct pedagogical responsibility, it turned out that, in one of them, up to seven students openly confessed their intimate desire to cause the death of a third person. They even went so far as to state how and when. On this point, what surprised me, apart from the number of adolescents who entertained the idea of ​​killing or murder, was the coldness of their attitude, the complete absence of moral restraint on their behavior. How To Kill Someone?

Given the statement of the boys, I opted for silence, waiting for them to reflect for themselves, to submit their fantasies about a possible crime to moral validation. Though it was a thoughtful strategy, I didn't even come close to achieving the goal I had set for myself. On the contrary, I saw myself inhabiting a cruel world of disinterest in conscience, the value of life, and the importance of ethical teaching. It was a shocking experience, as well as revealing, of what a significant part of today's youth thinks about murder and its moral and social endorsement.

My conclusion, which I submit to your judgment and evaluation, is that excessive permissiveness in behavior and, therefore, the unhealthy suppression of the necessary limits in childhood and adolescence have generated this harsh reality. 

And, in another aspect, it explains much of the news that, from time to time, is spread about the death of parents at the hands of their children or that of minors by their peers. One of two: either Rainer María Rilke is still right when he wrote, in March 1913 and in a beautiful letter addressed to Katharina Kippenber, that "in Spain, one finds oneself completely at the mercy of the strange" or something is being done completely wrong in education.