Teaching School Program in Secondary Education with Juvenile Offenders

Abstract

Education is, along with family, the essential pillar in the processes of those who have committed offences a nd therefore h ave l eft p rematurely t he o rdinary educational system. In this text, we describe the teaching program that the educational team of a high school in Palma de Mallorca (Spain) is developing, in order to reincorporate those juvenile offenders who have to serve judicial final or precautionary measures confinement to the school in social reference contexts. A continuous effort is made inside the Program, to provide educational, social and emotional tools. We carried out a quantitative, observational and descriptive study where the minors and their parents’ satisfaction with the program, highlights the educational success of these students, both from the point of view of schooling and of promotion. In addition, minors and their families value this proposal positively. Education must abandon the supporting, therapeutic and compensatory determinants that place it in a perspective of personal failure, where it should be open to proposals that contain a relative vision of educational success appropriate for each of the students, in order to empower them towards positions of self-esteem and empathy on their own training process. The term success must be understood from a global perspective and should not be linked to the concept of academic performance.