Five Spanish authors delve into the reality of the family from four disciplinary points of view: sociology, anthropology, philosophy and educational theory. The book The Family as an Educational Field is a compendium of six writings that in turn are made up of the following chapters: Chapter I. Changes and expectations in the family, by Francisco Altarejos; Chapter II. Family coexistence: meeting and developing personal identity, by Francisco Altarejos, Alfredo Rodríguez and Aurora Bernal; Chapter III. Social types and unique people: «families» and family, by Alfredo Rodríguez; Chapter IV. Educational framework of personal relationships, by Aurora Bernal; Chapter V. Family environment: trust and respect, from Concepción Naval and; Chapter VI. Education of freedom and affectivity, by Gerardo Castillo.
In 190 pages we work on a common denominator related to the family and its relationships and ties that make it the school, par excellence, of coexistence through the identification of personal being and social being.
In Chapter I, Francisco Altarejos presents his position on the current crisis of the family that “consists of the insufficiency of the sense of the traditional family that is revealed today. Not all the elements that make up the traditional family are disposable; many of them are and will be fully valid, as they are constitutive of the timeless family reality, which can be called the original family ”. He also mentions, in special detail, what is proposed as the initial idea of the book: “The nature of the family as a community of original people means that its mission is to update and plan its original being through the recognition and growth of its members. The family gives rise to the affirmation and the perfective development of people through the care of life as a community ”.
In Chapter II, Francisco Altarejos, Alfredo Rodríguez and Aurora Bernal present the family as the natural environment for the development of human coexistence. "Discovering the possibilities of family coexistence, it is understood that the family is also an area in which each person knows their identity and reveals it in relation to their close friends." They explain how the family reality provides an experience of diversity in the coexistence between its members, a practice that sets the pattern of the person's relationship for social treatment.
In Chapter III, Alfredo Rodríguez addresses, from an anthropological perspective, the position of sociology with respect to the social types that classify the family as a social microgroup and open the door to the approach of the various family models, such as clans.. "The question is not to defend or affirm the traditional family as preferable, better or truer, but to show that the original family does not redound to a social type, whatever it may be."
In Chapter IV, Aurora Bernal reviews the educational value that underlies personal relationships between family members. It widely develops the idea of the family as "an anthropological - relational reality - required by the constitution of the human being - also to be relational-". It raises the repercussion in the family members of the position from which they dialogue since not all of them have the same educational possibilityThat is, some promote more personal than others. "The relationships established by maternity, paternity, filiation and fraternity humanize and personalize." The last section gives the book its name and affirms that the essence of education follows from family relationships; the family is not then a neutral instance regarding the formation of people, it is itself a school of life and “educates with life, with the relationships among its members…, on how those relationships are established… education depends "
In Chapter V, Concepción Naval treats trust and respect as values that are born in the family environment. The family is “the germ of society and the development of natural sociability”, where one learns to live personal relationships between close ones, preparing the person for encounters with more distant others, under the umbrella of respect and trust. She dedicates a good part of her writing to the latter, arguing the reasons why she is considered the fundamental element of family relationships, "it is the relational aspect of human love… the seedbed of feelings of security", which manifests itself in.
In the last chapter, Gerardo Castillo explains the education of freedom and affectivity in the various stages of growth of the person. It indicates that within the family, personal freedom grows and consolidates through the promotion of free behaviors, that is, of the attitudes that allow the person to perfect their ability to direct their own lives; in the same way, it presents the relationship between the degree of maturity and the domain of the affections that allows the reason and the heart to be harmonized, especially in difficult moments.
The authors leave the door open to dialogue and research on a classic and contemporary theme: the family, discussing the benefits that the development of family nuclei leaves in society and in the educational institution that promote coexistence among its members and convert in the place "where you learn to drive your own freedom, you learn to be who you are and you learn to make society a community."
