TRANSLATION AND EXCERPT FROM JOSE MARTÍ’S LAS CLASES ORALES

Nelson Núñez-Rodríguez
Kim Sanabria

INTRODUCTION

Recent pedagogical research emphasizes student engagement in the learning process. With this in mind, instructors, as experts in the field, need to deconstruct their teaching methodology to influence the intensity, persistence and quality of student learning behavior.2 Jose Martí (1853-1895) provided valuable insight into the way oral lessons enhance this process.

TRANSLATION

Reading does not focus your attention: it distracts it. Human nature, particularly in the Americas, needs reason to be addressed with imagination: it feeds on lively, nuanced discussion: it calls for a vibrant format to envelop topics that are essentially dry and serious. It is not that American intelligences reject depth: it is that they need a bright pathway to draw them to it.

One could say that reading aspires to give respectability to oral classes. Classes do not need this. Knowledge becomes better established if it is imparted in a more enjoyable way.

Those responsible for college lessons certainly have nothing to fear as regards the success their words may have. They are all distinguished experts, appreciated for their merit, and mostly loved by the young people attending their classes. (…)

Classes thrive on animation and skirmish. Sometimes, attention becomes weary, and it needs a chance incident to shake it up and reanimate it. Concepts expressed in a daily, natural way are recorded by one’s intelligence better than those that are presented in a diluted way, that of written communication, which is intrinsically stark and detailed. People who write something for others to read know that what they write is to be submitted to scrutiny, because it is not improvised. They therefore seek to write nothing objectionable.

ORIGINAL TEXT

Una lectura no sujeta, antes distrae la atención: la naturaleza humana y sobre todo, las naturalezas americanas, necesitan de que lo que se presente a su razón tenga algún carácter imaginativo; gustan de una locución vivaz y accidentada; han menester que cierta forma brillante envuelva lo que es en su esencia árido y grave. No es que las inteligencias americanas rechacen la profundidad; es que necesitan ir por un camino brillante hacia ella.

Pudiera decirse que se pretende dar con las lecturas cierto carácter respetable a las clases orales. Las clases no lo necesitan. -Los conocimientos se ftjan más, en tanto se les da una forma más amena.

No tienen ciertamente las personas encargadas de las lecciones del Colegio, nada que temer en cuanto al éxito que allí pudiera tener su palabra. Son todos ellos juriscon- sultos distinguidos, apreciados en su valer, y en su mayor parte amados por la juventud que ha de asistir a las clases. (…)

Viven las clases de la animación y el incidente. Necesita a veces la atención cansa- da un recurso accidental que la sacuda y la reanime. Grábanse mejor en la inteligencia los conceptos que se expresan en la forma diaria y natural, que los que se presentan en vueltos en la forma diluida, siempre severa y naturalmente detallada, de las peroraciones escritas. El que escribe lo que ha de leer, sabe que escribe lo que, por el hecho de no ser improvisación, ha de someterse a juicio: quiere, por tanto, que el juicio no halle nada censurable en él.

Works: 7 Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching. Jossey-Bass. (2010).

1 Revista Universal, México, Vol.6. (18 June 1875): 234 – 236.

2 Ambrose, S.A., Bridges M.W., DiPietro, M., Lovett, M.C., Norman M.K. How Learning
Works: 7 Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching. Jossey-Bass. (2010).