In the courses I teach in free education, I can demonstrate that we have a conflicting relationship with freedom. I am particularly stressed at the fascination generated by the concept, because it clearly demonstrates how far we are from being free. Because would we admire freedom if it really was part of our reality? No, of course. It would not be a utopia, but ours. The axis of our policy of life, our natural way of being in the world. We are a long way from that, and we have idealized, of course, freedom. We feel it's a good thing in the background, but we don't know exactly what it is.

Many people still identify being free doing everything we want, with a reality like a paradise in which everything is possible, with an image of a territory that does not accept limits or consequences. My version of freedom is not so speculative, and surely it will seem insufficient to those who dream of the chimera of immensity. It is a simple procedure, to consciously choose the lot of possibilities offered by a reality – always limited – with the greatest possible coherence with the needs and desires, detecting the limits and where they are, knowing what we lose and gain in the election, including, of course, the variant of the “other”.

Although it cannot give anything to say, in each of these decisions there is a brick to build one's own life. We become “authors” of our lives, “authors” of our own “authors”, more masters and leaders of ourselves. And for that reason, the gesture we can make in the conquest of freedom is small but very significant.

To think that freedom is not compatible with the existence of limits and the consequences is truly harmful, because that freedom, which should supposedly be absolute, never comes, and in our reality is inevitably condemned to feel cautious. It is true that we live in an excessively strict reality and that the consequences that we must suffer from our actions are more and more like pity. And it's understandable, therefore, that these two concepts are for us a little bit of negativity and that it's the primary reason that many adults use not to set limits on boys and girls. It's understandable, but it's not healthy.

This false belief in freedom is at the core of many adults' problem of understanding well what it is and what not to educate in freedom, and in our dysfunctional relationship with the border in general. Because those who deny our own existence are the only clear borders against freedom. The ones that prevent us from being ourselves, the ones that impose on us in order to model our identity. They are the ones that have to be overcome in our reality. Courageously, with courage, even sometimes, why not, with transgression and against the rule, of course. The rest form a map of coordinates that define our world and that are necessary to live well.

Like all the great challenges of humanity, this freedom behaves in a different culture of childcare. We must root out the guiding paradigm, which has as its main instrument the instructive limitations mentioned above, and which is based on evident or camouflaged manipulation, which is detrimental to dignity. Boys and girls are also able and have the right to choose and to make their lives freely. Let us respect the scope of your free will, which may be lower or higher depending on your age. But let us not forget the limits. That is the principle of freedom.