Para el aula: Making complexity approachable

How do we talk about conflict, memory, resilience, and peace with young people; how to approach these issues depending on students' ages, how to sustain a conversation without falling into either trivialization or close-ended discourse, and how to work with a contemporary art exhibition that does not offer simple messages, but rather complex forms of experience and reflection? In our latest conversation, Rufino Ferreras, Head of EducaThyssen at Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, reflects on what “Para el aula” is really about: supporting educators as they engage with Pedagogies of War and accompanying them through cultural experiences that actually mean something. 

What goals does a Para el aula initiative of the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza pursue?

In this case, Para el aula pursues a very specific goal: to support teachers in approaching a complex exhibition and to provide them with tools so that the experience does not end with the visit, but can continue in the classroom. It is not only about explaining an exhibition, but about sharing ideas, questions, and approaches that enable teachers to later design an independent visit with their group or develop their own educational projects based on it.

From EducaThyssen, how is an exhibition with such historical, political, and symbolic weight translated into an accessible pedagogical experience?

We translate it without diluting it or turning it into a spectacle. Pedagogies of War proposes that war is not only an event that is represented, but a force that reorganizes perception, behavior, and everyday life. From EducaThyssen, the pedagogical task is to make that complexity approachable: to provide context, structure the conversation, and open up questions that allow the four video installations to be understood through recognizable human experiences—observing, waiting, obeying, adapting, resisting—without emptying the exhibition of its political depth. Accessibility here does not mean simplifying everything, but creating possible entry points for thinking rigorously about something difficult.

What conversations, questions, or reactions has the educational community shared with you after this Para el aula session?

What usually emerges in a session like this is, above all, a need for guidance in addressing topics in the classroom that are uncomfortable but necessary: war, violence, the construction of identity, obedience, fear, or adaptation to extreme conditions. Very practical questions also arise: how to approach these issues depending on students' ages, how to sustain a conversation without falling into either trivialization or close-ended discourse, and how to work with a contemporary art exhibition that does not offer simple messages, but rather complex forms of experience and reflection.

If a teacher is not yet familiar with the exhibition, why would you recommend visiting it with their group?

Because it is an uncompromising exhibition, and precisely for that reason, it is educationally valuable. It allows students to explore how images, narratives, and ways of life are shaped by war even before we are fully able to name it. It does not offer a closed lesson, but rather a powerful space for thinking about how attention, collective behavior, and democratic life are configured under pressure. And today, that is not a marginal issue.

When we speak of "pedagogies" in the plural, what does that idea mean for you within the museum?

In this exhibition, speaking of "pedagogies" in the plural has a double significance. On the one hand, it refers to the ways in which war itself teaches: it disciplines bodies, recalibrates attention, and produces forms of learning without language in extreme situations. On the other hand, it compels us to think about the museum's pedagogies: not one single correct way of teaching or interpreting, but different ways of opening up reading, conversation, and shared thought in the face of a complex reality. The plural matters because neither the experience of conflict nor educational practice can fit into a single voice, a single method, or a single interpretation.