Juan Gómez Millas

Hi, today I’ll talk to you about the greatest Chilean of all times; Juan Gómez Millas.

Mr. Juanito was a very important academic for Chilean education. He was born in July of 1900, in the city of Santiago and died in 1987, if you know subtract you know he died 87 years old. He was a Masonic man.

Juanito was a great pedagogue and a good teacher; also he was minister of education under the government of Carlos Ibáñez Del Campo and Eduardo Frei Montalva.  But the most important job of Gómez Millas was to have been rector of Universidad de Chile between 1953 – 1963.

JGM was a very relevant man for history of education in Chile, overcoat for university level.  His contribution is very important, he established Editorial Universitaria at his period like rector of U. Chile.

He studied at Sn. Ignacio School in Santiago and later he studied history in Instituto pedagógico and he graduated in 1923. Two year later he was contracted as teacher in the same place that he studied. In 1947 he was elected as dean of Facultad de educación y letras. Then in 1952 Carlos Ibáñez Del Campo called Juanito for to be minister of education, and Juanito accepted this challenge, but he worked here just one year, because in 1953 he was elected as rector of U. Chile. During his period as rector the university began an expansion process, opening campus out of Santiago, like Valparaíso, in this way the university was national and not only for the capital of Chile.

He was rector until 1963; later he was designated minister of education again, this time for Frei Montalva. He was minister until 1968, during his period there were a lot of reforms.      

He died in 1987 in Maitencillo, near to Valparaíso.

I would like ask to Mr. Juanito what would he think about Chilean education.

And I want tell you that our campus Juan Gómez Millas is in his honor.

Cien años de soledad

The best present I have received is probably a book, this book is “Cien años de soledad”, written by my favorite writer the Colombian Gabriel García Márquez. This was the present that my mother gave it to me for to incentivize to read every days. I love this book and I value too much this present, because I read for first time “realismo mágico” and it’s one of my favorites literary topics. I don’t remember how old I was in this time, but I guess 13 or 14 years.

In this book we can see a big part of Latin-American history, the typical war between liberals and conservatives and the construction of national states. The story of book is the life; the daily life of one family in Macondo, this family is “Los Buendía”. And as the name of book says, this story last one hundred years. The first Buendía is José Arcadio who was married with Úrsula Iguarán, they were cousins. They had two sons, José Arcadio, Aureliano (Coronel) and two daughters Amaranta and Rebeca (she is adopted). Then there are a lot of Buendías in Macondo, even Aureliano had seventeen sons. One characteristic of this family is that all Buendías was named with the names of the two firsts generations.

A notable character is Melquíades, a gypsy that visited Macondo a lot of times. He is my favorite character with Coronel Aureliano Buendía. I like them because they are very amazing, there aren’t characters like they in others books.

Now I have the book in my room, and I would like to read it again.      

There is a cumbia of Cien años de soledad: 

About language and his power.

Mark Pagel is a biologist, an evolutionary biologist, and he has worked about the language, but from a biology perspective, like Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, both are much admired in scientist world

Mark Pagel suggests that language is an expression of our genes, it means language is an ability acquired and it was selected because allowed a better adaptation to survive in the world. In this way the language has a big power, even Pagel call it ‘Magic’.  Using the word we open new worlds, new perspectives and new knowledge. The language is our communication and it is one of the bases of our culture, and culture is one of the things that make us different of other animal species. The language is a very important social technology for Pagel and it’s one of his approaches.

“We can learn from other using the language, by copying or imitating” Says Pagel, and he is totally right, even we can to debate it´s a very useful option to make new knowledge and not repeat mistakes. The language is a very important ‘tool’ for to build human’s culture, and human’s society. Without language we can’t to design technology and a lot of other things.

The human development is linked to the development or language, and philosophy too. A more developed language allows a more developed philosophy and a more developed society.

If we think in language like an evolutionary tool we can see why we are as we are. We can understand our history and to imagine the future.

Other function of language is to make us different between the human groups and cultures, for example we have the same language that Spanish people, but our language has different elements, different word and it’s a reflex the identities of both cultures. The language builds the culture, and at the same time culture builds the language, it’s a symbiotic relation.

I think that Pagel is right in his theory, and I think this theme must be studied and debated for to get a better knowledge about human development.

 But I would like to say that the language doesn’t create reality, I believe that reality exists and language can plays whit it, but not create it. 

I want you watch the video, so you have it here: