Recently, I learned the story of a tree that forms part of the memories of many people who passed through Escola da Vila, in São Paulo, and that had to be cut down after so many years of accompanying generations of children. I immediately thought of my own childhood. Because there are experiences that remain inscribed in the body and in memory long after they have disappeared from our daily lives.

The school’s decision could simply have been to cordon off the area, cut down the tree over the weekend, and by Monday everything would have been resolved. Instead, it chose a different path: it took the children to the tree. It gave them time to look at it, touch it, remember, talk, and say goodbye. It may seem like a simple gesture, but it is profoundly educational.

Carlos Neto, a researcher in the field of child development, says that children should arrive at school “excited because they are going to climb trees.” It is a perfect image of a childhood truly lived.

In my childhood with Zaida, there was also room to experiment: to run, climb, fall, and try again. There were small adventures that today, from an adult perspective, we might perhaps classify as risks to be avoided. And there are scars that remain. Today, I look at some of them differently: they are the marks of a childhood lived.

I am not suggesting that children should be exposed to unnecessary dangers. But there is a fundamental difference between protecting a child from danger and protecting a child from every experience of risk. Between accompanying a child as they discover their limits and preventing them from ever coming close to those limits.

Carlos Neto reminds us of the importance of free play, movement, and what he calls the “school of the street”: that space where children learn through their bodies, through autonomy, negotiation, and discovery. A school that, in many places, is disappearing.

Perhaps that is why a tree can also be a teacher. It gives no instructions, makes no corrections, assigns no grades. But it teaches us how to climb and how to come down, how to find support, how to understand how far we can go, how to fall and try again. It teaches us that the body thinks, that risk can be assessed, and that autonomy is not built merely by listening to adults, but by experiencing the world.

This tree taught something else as well: how to say goodbye. At a time when everything tends to be quickly consumed, replaced, and discarded, this school transformed a technical procedure into a moment of farewell, and a loss into a shared experience. And that, too, is education.

I look at the scars of my childhood. They are small proofs that I was there: I ran, I climbed, I fell, I tried, I discovered. They are traces of experiences that helped shape who I am.

A truly educational school is not one that removes every difficulty from the path, but one that creates the conditions for a child to move through those difficulties with guidance and companionship, learning to give them meaning.

And so, when an old tree disappears, it is not merely a tree that disappears. A place of memory disappears, a meeting place, a piece of the inner landscape of many people.

But if the farewell is made with time and care, what remains is the lesson that what we love deserves our attention while it is with us, and deserves a farewell when the time comes for it to leave.

Some trees teach us how to grow. Others teach us how to fall and rise again. And some teach us, quite simply, that there is learning, too, in saying goodbye.

And so, a tree is also a teacher.

Alexandra Manes

Alexandra Manes is from Flores Island but lives on Terceira Island in the Azores. She is a regular contributor to several Azorean newspapers, a political and cultural activist, and has served in the Azorean Parliament.

NOVIDADES will feature occasional opinion pieces from leading thinkers and writers in the Azores, providing the diaspora and those interested in the current state of the Azores with a sense of the significant perspectives on some of the archipelago’s issues.

Translated to English as a community outreach program from the Portuguese Beyond Borders Institute (PBBI) and the Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures Department (MCLL).

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