13.11.2019

Luís Mauro Sá Martino talks to parents and educators about essential competences for life

As our guest speaker Luís Mauro Sá Martino said, let’s take a walk through the essential competences for life?

In a night permeated by quotes from philosophers and thinkers from this and past centuries, we were invited to face the competences not as skills but as a way of life, as relational competences connected to the development of the personality, which is built by the act and daily repetition.

The speaker chose five skills that he considers to be essential: to embrace before demanding, respect vulnerabilities to develop capabilities, distinguish the uses and meanings of time, find the other in empathy, and learn other truths.

Based on the above, he talked about giving the other a chance and understanding that imperfection is an eternal human condition; the vision of the other beyond the stigmas that society imposes and reflections on time being marked by events and being a irreversible condition; the importance of knowing how to listen and how to put yourself in someone else’s position and, finally, the idea that the obstacle to knowledge is the certainty that the act of knowing involves relearning about yourself.

We ended by reflecting on the impact and benefits of these competences on us, our children, and our relationships. They are important not only for us to live better, but also to prepare ourselves for the future, where socioemotional skills will probably be the most demanding ones, in the face of a more digital and robotic society.