The Faculty of Educational Sciences of the University of Granada has become famous this week for a simple paper poster that has become viral on social networks. In the message, posted by the Vice Dean of Internships, you can read: “Parents are not attended to. All students enrolled in internships are of legal age.”
Among thousands of other users, the poster was spread by the professor at the University of Granada Daniel Arias Aranda in your LinkedIn profile, stating: “When you have to put up this sign at the university, something is going wrong. Dear student: solve your own problems and don’t boss around mom and dad. Remember, the age of majority in Spain is 18.”
Debate in networks: autonomy and maturity. The reactions on social networks have not been long in coming, with an intense exchange of opinions between students, families and teachers. There are those who strongly defend that the students “are too old to defend themselves,” as one student pointed out. interviewed by Antena 3and that “it makes no sense for parents to go to manage exams or tutorials.”
Tap on the image to go to the original message
On the other hand, the general secretary of the Association of Friends of Vicente Aleixandre responded to the message of the professor from his account on Another user went even further, thinking that “It should even be illegal, a person of legal age is no longer represented by his parents in legal dealings unless a judge determines otherwise; I consider that assisting parents goes against the autonomy of the student’s will.”
helicopter parents. In the background of the conversation hovered – pardon the redundancy – the concept of “helicopter parents”, a term coined in 1969 by the writer Haim Ginott in his book “between parents and children“.
The term describes the behavior of mothers and fathers who are so attentive to every issue of their children that they often intervene in processes that they, as adults, they should resolve on their own. Especially in university or work matters. However, a study revealed that this excess of control can lead to children with problems resolving conflicts and dealing with daily stress, something that would make them more anxious and dependent.
Although the staff of the University of Granada I remembered in The Country They remember that, fortunately, these are “completely isolated cases”, the placement of the poster was motivated because some parents have come to make complaints, manage enrollment or request explanations directly from the university staff on behalf of his children. “In these cases, I explain to the mother that what needs to be promoted is the student’s critical reasoning, that he is the one who refutes a correction, not his parents,” he declared to The Country José Ángel Morales García, professor of Neurosciences at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM).
A new parent profile. Beyond the helicopter parent phenomenonanother of the social keys that explain the rise of the debate is that current university students belong to generation Z, whose parents belong to generation X or millennials, born between the seventies and the nineties.
This generation of parents was the first to go massively to university in Spain and is made up of professionals who have worked in multinationals, which gives them sufficient solvency to feel like legitimate interlocutors with teachers, academic staff and even before recruiters for a jobcoming to assume a more leading role than the student or candidate themselves.
Compared to previous times, the fact that a greater proportion of parents have university experience has changed the relationship with the centers. Now they feel entitled to intervene or debate because they know the system from within. Even so, teachers insist that “the academic relationship is between the student and the university.” The research reveal that encouraging independence during youth improves their maturity and self-esteem.
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Image | Pexels (Arina Krasnikova), Daniel Arias Aranda
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