Carlos Beltramo is an ICS researcher within the Education of Human Affectivity and Sexuality project at the University of Navarra. He recently published the book Apasionados por amar al mundo. Educación del carácter y emocional para las nuevas generaciones (Passionately loving the world: Character and emotional education for new generations).

The volume gathers the most important aspects of Pedagogy of the Integration of the Human Person, which consists in understanding the person as a set of dimensions, including the physical, psychological and spiritual, combined with social projection. According to its author, education that focuses on a balance among these facets of human life helps children achieve virtue and happiness, incorporating a variety of emotions at all times.

What do you mean by the concept of integration?
Many people talk about integration, but not everyone understands it in the same way. Of course there is a more or less common basis that describes it as the unity of parts. Integration is the unity achieved with many pieces that form a new entity. And the word entity is important because the idea can be applied to a recorder (integrated circuits), to a social body (hence the talk of integrating foreigners) and to many other areas. In the case of my proposal, which is guided by ethics and anthropology, integration refers to the unity and balance of human dimensions.

How is integration applied to the person?
The human person has dimensions that have to be integrated into action. First we must distinguish between these dimensions (including the physical, psychological and spiritual, combined with social projection), and determine how they relate to each other. Then we must show how the balance between them strengthens character and enables virtue. An integrated person recognizes his different dimensions and, when acting, can achieve harmony such that unity prevails, but without negating, the parts. The force that the person acquires by having her dimensions better integrated is called virtue.

How is integration implemented?
The dimensions of the person are aptly represented with a pyramid that is in continuous movement. Every time you perform a good act, such as making the bed, for example, the pyramid of dimensions is organized and ordered accordingly. And as it becomes more orderly, it becomes increasingly easier to make the bed. But if you stop making the bed, the pyramid gets out of sync and integration declines. The next good act is a little harder; there is less inner energy available to do it and the person moves away from virtue.

How is the integration addressed in the classroom?
Through conation. It's true, it's a strange word, but the idea it contains is more frequently used than we might think. Basically it is a series that explains that actions, before being carried out, go through three instants inside every person: knowledge, affect and decision-making, and finally carrying out the action. The first aspect involves understanding: we can hardly live out things that are not at all understood. But it doesn’t end there. The second part involves generating positive emotions (something like "making students fall in love with learning") towards the things that they understand as good. Students have to feel that value as their own and make decisions, which is why this level puts the heart and the will into play. And the third fundamental moment is putting into practice what is understood and desired/decided: without action this series is left incomplete. It is thus necessary to give students opportunities in class to complete this series so that they can enjoy the pleasure of doing the good.

What happens when an education does not pay attention to the conation pathway?
Several things. First it generates students who are illiterate in the affective realm; this happens when the cognitive aspect is overemphasized and everything that happens in the world of the heart and emotion is ignored. It thus becomes more difficult to achieve the virtues because they are presented as purely theoretical: I may know what I want, but since I do not really care, when it becomes difficult, I stop trying. An inner turmoil of positive and negative sensations arises, but since it has never been addressed or worked on, students do not know what to do. Incoherent situations emerge. For example, during the workweek, some people are consummate professionals, but on the weekend they change and behave without any constraints or limits of their own— without integration. Emotions go one way and the mind another. And this terminates any chance at unity in life and cuts off the road to happiness.

Of course, the solution does not imply eliminating the first part of the conation pathway, as happens with some emotional education programs that are unfortunately very superficial: they do not deal with the brain and focus exclusively on the heart.

On the other hand, if classroom instruction is not carried out in practice, the task is only half done. If there are no opportunities in the classroom to be good for the pleasure of doing good, the whole process remains theoretical and will not take root or help build solid student character.

How should the school-family relationship be coordinated?
Schools must define their project in relation to the education of virtues and emotional education, and then provide opportunities for both processes. To the extent that schools have a clear idea, family interaction comes easier. To incorporate, for example, Pedagogy of the Integration of the Human Person implies integrating a global theory, and with that idea, it is easier to offer things to the parents, ask them to get involved, and get a response from them.

Why are virtues so important, especially in children?
Because they are the ordering engine of life. We give the following example to primary school students: imagine that I were a robot and had batteries. Every time I do something good, those batteries are rechargedA virtuous person is an energetic person because he focuses his vital energy (including, obviously, his emotional energy) on an objective, a goal. Most of the great creators of history have been very focused people. Let's say then that virtue is the way by which children are taught to order their lives, to focus their energy and achieve happiness, to flourish professionally, to more intensely enjoy life, to practice solidarity.

Some call the current generation "soft." What’s your solution to this problem?
The weakness found in many children and adolescents is partly due to their emotional energy being scattered. It is necessary to take care of that energy— it should not be repressed or allowed to completely disperse, because children are the ultimate losers here. That is why emotional education is important, but it is important that it be taught correctly. Today emotional education is popular, but when it is raised against any other parameter, an imbalance is created that gives rise to this "soft" generation. The solution is to seek the development of character that gives coherence and meaning to emotions. It does not consist in repressing them, but in knowing them, distinguishing them... sometimes we will follow them entirely; on other occasions, negatives emotions will need to be deferred or even displaced for more constructive ones. In any case, it is clear that today the classroom needs a character education that includes emotional education as a fundamental pillar.