The good and the bad example
There is a lot of literature about the effects produced in the classroom presence of other, different, better or worse companions, and it is interesting to observe the diversity of possibilities in which this influence can be translated. A diversity and effects that can be observed outside the school: in family life, the company, neighbors or friends.
The most invoked model over the centuries, curiously, is the "rotten apple" (bad apple in English). The classic example is that of an undisciplined or untutored student who harms his classmates and annoys the teacher, or who corrupts others with their bad ideas or customs, or who disunites others by maligning one against the other.
How should an environment be so that the influences are positive? Some point to the fact that there is a general positive environment that is homogeneous. They assure that students improve when they are surrounded by others with similar characteristics. According to this model, those who have lower performance feel more supported if they are surrounded by students of a similar level, and the same happens with those who have higher performances.
Others say that it is better to have a certain heterogeneity in the classroom, where the presence of students with different levels is positive for some and for others. Others consider that the presence of bright students It is important as a reference and encouragement for others. And there are those who claim the opposite and affirm that less gifted students are harmed by the presence of colleagues who achieve good results with little effort, because that leads to odious and hopeless comparisons.
When I read these diverse interpretations about the dynamics of influence in the classroom, or outside it, I see that they all have their reasons and their objections, their face and their cross, their part of truth and their simplicity.
It is very good, no doubt, to educate in a caring, stimulating and positive environment. But also you have to learn to handle yourself when the environment is not like that, then education must prepare for that too. The children, or the students, will witness many bad examples in their lives, and maybe from well before what we believe, and someone should prepare them for that. They themselves will do many things badly, and they must have been educated to get ahead despite not setting a good example for themselves.
Good example is important, no doubt. But perhaps it is more important that we each train ourselves to learn from good examples, and also from bad ones.
Sometimes bad examples can become more useful to us, seeing where they lead us. Perhaps one of the great challenges of education is there. It can not be said that the ideal education is the one that develops in a perfect environment, free of bad examples, supposing that this can be achieved.
Nor would anyone defend as an educational ideal the opposite, permanent exposure to bad example. It seems clear that this is not a simple or obvious topic.
Perhaps the key is that everyone should educate themselves by learning to discern good and bad example, without too simplistic classifications, knowing that increasingly mature and more personal judgments are formed, because in the end it is about forming autonomous people, who find their own way discovering in the lives of others, and in their own, what develops and what spoils their nature.
