“MONK” File 003: Who Was School Built For
- "MONK"
- May 23
- 6 min read
Still in the back-to-school spirit, we could say today’s File is practically a special edition. And a very special one.
At the end of 2025, we released the first volume of Benji — a comic about a boy who would rather draw than pay attention in math class, and is exhausted from being punished for it.
To us, Benji raises questions that go far beyond the comic itself: education, teaching models, individuality, listening, creative freedom. Questions that break through the boundaries of fiction.
That’s why we decided to go deeper and speak with someone truly qualified to navigate these themes. Someone who works directly alongside the creator of one of the most provocative and questioning educational projects that challenges the traditional model.
For the past 15 years, educational pedagogue Tina Carvalho has been part of the team of professor José Pacheco, founder of Escola da Ponte — a Portuguese public school that, since the 1970s, has experimented with ways of learning beyond traditional divisions by grades, tests, and rigid curricula.
She accepted our invitation, and the conversation unfolded naturally — without rush, without a fixed script, allowing the questions themselves to guide the path.
And the first one is simple — and somewhat uncomfortable:
1 — RULE AND DEVIATION
“MONK”:
Tina, in the comic, Benji is reprimanded for drawing during class. That gesture is interpreted as deviation, not possibility.
How does the traditional school system, in general, begin to see certain behaviors as problems — and what is lost when that happens?
TINA:
When traditional schools begin labeling certain behaviors as problems, perhaps the real problem lies elsewhere: in the difficulty of dealing with difference, with what does not fit within the school’s structure. By reprimanding Benji for drawing, the school is not correcting a deviation — it is interrupting a possibility.
What gets lost when this happens? Artists, inventors, thinkers are lost. Picassos, Da Vincis, Mirós are lost. But more serious than that, we lose the chance to recognize that each person learns in a singular way and carries a potential that does not necessarily manifest itself through obedience.
Why is Benji drawing? That question is rarely asked. It is easier to label than to listen. Perhaps drawing is a survival gesture in the face of a dull class. In that context, drawing may be resistance — an attempt to preserve one’s sanity.
A question for the school: what does it do with what it cannot control?
2 — LISTENING AND AUTHORITY
“MONK”:
In the story, the silence in the classroom does not come from attention, but from the absence of listening.
What changes when a school truly begins to listen to its students? And how does that listening transform the idea of authority within the school?
TINA:
The silence inhabiting many traditional classrooms is the sound of giving up. Giving up on asking questions and exposing oneself. A child arrives at school talkative, curious, persistent in their “whys?”, but throughout the school journey, learns something very precise: school is not a place for questions — it is a place for repeating ready-made answers.
When a school truly begins to listen, everything changes. An environment of listening is, above all, an environment of respect. And respect, when it becomes the foundation of human relationships, creates safety to fail, to think, to learn, to be who you are.
In this context, silence gains another meaning — it stops being an imposition and becomes a choice. It becomes an act of care, an expression of mutual listening. Genuine listening creates connection, and connection creates affection. And affection is not an accessory to learning — it is one of its essential ingredients.
This shift also profoundly transforms the idea of authority within the school. Authority stops being something imposed through control and begins to emerge naturally, sustained by trust. In a humanized school, authority does not silence — it welcomes.
How much of the silence in schools is exhaustion?
3 — SINGULARITY
“MONK”:
Benji does not seem incapable of learning — he simply learns differently.
How can we deal with students who do not adapt to the predominant rhythm, structure, or logic without treating them as exceptions or problems?
TINA:
Benji is not incapable of learning — he simply learns in another way. And perhaps the most honest question is not “how do we deal with those who do not adapt?”, but rather “why do we insist on a system that demands adaptation at the cost of self-erasure?”
I confess that, many times, I feel more pain for those who do adapt to school. They are children who, very early on, learned that in order to belong, they must silence their questions, restrain their bodies, and trim away their singularities. Adapting is not maturity — it is surrender.
The children who do not adapt are still resisting. They are still fighting to be who they are. They are labeled, isolated, and often medicated, yet they carry something precious: the refusal to fit into molds that were never designed for human diversity.
How many talents are encapsulated every day simply to avoid suffering within an educational system that more closely resembles a factory assembly line, designed to produce a single type of individual?
As professor José Pacheco reminds us, the disabled one is not the child in the wheelchair — it is the school that has no ramp. The problem is not the child who moves, who draws, who questions, who learns at another pace or through different paths. The problem is a sick school, imprisoned by a standardized and exclusionary system.
As long as we treat difference as an exception, we will continue producing exclusion.
4 — TEACHING AND UNLEARNING
“MONK”:
People talk a lot about innovation in education, but very little about unlearning.
From the experience of Escola da Ponte, what might traditional schools need to leave behind for learning to become a living process again?
TINA:
This answer must begin with Rubem Alves when he first encountered Escola da Ponte: invited by a girl around ten years old to forget everything he knew about school in order to truly understand it.
Forget the school of grades, classrooms, tests, lessons. Forget the logic of lines, imposed silence, standardized answers. At Escola da Ponte, there are no classes in the way we traditionally understand them — and precisely because of that, there is a great deal of learning. A living kind of learning, born from the meeting between curiosity and shared responsibility.
An education where the center is neither content nor teaching itself — the center is human relationships, guided by autonomy with responsibility, and solidarity as a lived value rather than a proclaimed one. Learning happens because it makes sense, because there is belonging, because someone believes in you.
If I had to highlight a single thing traditional schools may need to leave behind, I would say: teaching-centeredness. As long as schools insist on prioritizing teaching, the learning subject continues to be erased. When the focus shifts toward learning — and since learning only happens through affection — everything begins to reorganize itself.
Learning is a complex process of developing individual potentialities, a living, human, and unpredictable movement. Perhaps understanding this is the most radical — and most urgent — gesture of innovation schools need to make.
5 — WHO WAS SCHOOL BUILT FOR
“MONK”:
There is one final question running through both the comic and this File.
Who has school been designed for?
And who tends to be left out when it is organized around singular standards?
TINA:
Who has school been designed for? Honestly, I do not know. Perhaps for an idealized student: quiet, obedient, with good short-term memory, capable of repeating what has already been thought. A student who does not question, who copies from the board, memorizes the workbook, and reproduces exactly the expected answer on tests. Preferably without critical thinking, curiosity, or creativity.
Left out are the restless, the curious, the creative, those who think through images, those who need movement in order to learn, those who ask too many questions. I dare say I hope many never adapt. I hope they resist, that they fight to preserve their sanity, their living intelligence, their singularity intact.
As Jiddu Krishnamurti reminds us: “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
Our thanks to Tina for the openness and depth of this exchange.
Benji was born precisely from conversations like this — the kind that generate even more questions.
If you still haven’t read Benji – Vol. 1, it's still available here:
See you in the next File.
And don't miss future
"MONK" FILES.
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