By Josemaría Moreno and Rodrigo Díaz
Student’s Day is celebrated, but it is certainly not a day in which we have much to celebrate here. In Mexico, according to the 2020 census, there are almost four million children (under the age of 19) who cannot read or write. In addition, according to the latest results from the OECD PISA test, of the 83 countries evaluated Mexican students are in the penultimate place in mathematics.
Education in Mexico is a constitutional right protected under Article 3. It guarantees that education is the responsibility of the State, that it must be universal, inclusive, public, free, and secular. But the discrepancies among regions and various social and ethnic groups is overwhelming. Answering mathematical problems presented by PISA is very different for a student from Mexico City than it is for one from the Sierra de Guerrero. Education in Mexico still leaves much to be desired but the student’s role has potential. Here we have three examples to inspire the student on his long journey toward self-knowledge and wisdom.
Epictetus: “The Discourses, 108 CE”
This beautiful book on Stoic meditations was not written by Epictetus. Instead, it is a transcript of his courses by his student, Arrian. It is amazing to imagine the chain of coincidences that had to take place for such a book to reach our hands. That a philosophy student, who was also a great thinker and philosopher in his own right, was modest and skillful enough to capture the teacher’s teachings. That he was the maître à penser of the student emperor, Marcus Aurelius. That students in obscure medieval monasteries have called him anima naturalier Cristiana—a Christian soul. That later students of the classics translated it into all the European languages not even a hundred years after the appearance of the printing press. That both Pascal and Descartes—two of the greatest teachers of philosophy—have sincerely praised him. These are just some of the reasons why today his book continues to give comfort to the desperate and the seeker. Epictetus is the author of the first formulation of the serenity prayer we know today: “Lord, grant me serenity to accept all that I cannot change, courage to change what I am capable of changing, and wisdom to understand the difference.»
“Red Dawn,” Jorge Fons, 1989
With the student’s day festivities, it is almost inevitable to think about what happened on October 2, 1968, in Mexico. On that date, a student movement was violently repressed by the army, leading to the deaths of 28 students. It is an episode that left a deep scar in the modern history of the nation. Inspired by this, the Veracruz director Jorge Fons and his team made this film in a political environment where artistic censorship related to this terrible event still prevailed. They shot and edited it almost completely in secret. Its release was postponed for more than a year due to various political pressures. “Rojo Amanecer” (Red Dawn) is a story of a middle-class family from Mexico City. They live in one of the apartments of the Chihuahua building—in the Plaza de Las Tres Culturas, where the climax of the repression took place. Their two sons, Bruno and Demián Bichir, are students at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and are part of the student demonstration in the plaza. Here, the students are ambushed by the army and killed by snipers positioned on the rooftops of the buildings. The survivors were rescued by the neighbors who hid them from the special military counterinsurgency groups. This film is, without a doubt, a good artistic exercise that stages the national tragedy.
“Blue dawn-Blue nights,” Wallace Roney, 2019
The famous jazz trumpeter Wallace Roney (Philadelphia, 1969), displayed his enormous talent from an early age. He began studying music at the age of four. He was fortunate in having artistic training with Clark Terry and Dizzy Gillespie. Above all, his role as a student stands out when he became a student of the bebop legend, Miles Davis, with whom he took lessons until the latter’s death in 1991. It has been said that their relationship was beyond that of a teacher-student, it approached a spiritual complicity. Roney stood out with his participation in the “Tribute to Miles Davis” (Blue Line, 2016), playing along with Herbie Hancock and Ron Carter, among other greats. They performed the songs of his teacher such as «So What,» «All Blues,» and «Pee Wee.» During the event he declared, «I was close to the trumpeter who taught me to love music.» “Blue dawn-Blue nights” was his last production. In it, he balances the dark warmth of the after-hours, with the strong propulsion of post-bop. The eight unmissable tracks have made him a legend, close to his beloved teacher. Roney passed away on March 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic.
