por equipo editorial de El Reportero
For years, education has been presented as a space that must be kind, flexible, and emotionally safe. No one disputes the importance of respect, inclusion, and student well-being. However, along the way, something essential has been lost: academic rigor. Today, the lack of clear standards and firm expectations is deeply harming students and generating consequences that will be difficult—if not impossible—to reverse.
Contemporary education has fallen into an excess of permissiveness that weakens the role of the teacher. In the name of understanding, mediocrity is tolerated; in the name of empathy, correction is avoided; and in the name of self-esteem, insufficient effort goes unchallenged. The result is a school system that teaches less and demands less, while simulating progress through inflated grades and diluted standards.
When expectations disappear, learning becomes superficial. Students learn to do the bare minimum, submit incomplete work, negotiate deadlines, and rely on second and third chances without real consequences. They fail to develop discipline, perseverance, or tolerance for frustration. Without these skills, knowledge becomes fragile, easily forgotten, and poorly transferable to real life.
This concern is neither new nor isolated. Swedish education expert Inger Enkvist, professor at Lund University and an educational advisor, has been one of the most outspoken critics of the permissive drift in modern education systems. Enkvist argues that today’s education suffers from low expectations for students and excessive leniency from parents and teachers alike, undermining intellectual development and young people’s ability to cope with the frustrations of adult life.
According to Enkvist, the core problem is not a lack of resources or technology, but the abandonment of basic principles of traditional education: teacher authority, classroom discipline, sustained effort, and the prioritization of solid knowledge. Instead of reinforcing these foundations, many education systems have chosen to focus almost exclusively on “innovative” methodologies or digital tools, without seriously assessing whether they actually improve learning.
Teachers, meanwhile, have been gradually stripped of authority. They are no longer seen as figures who guide, correct, and evaluate, but as facilitators expected to adapt endlessly, justify every decision, and avoid any form of discomfort. In many school environments, demanding too much can become an administrative—or even legal—liability. As a result, educators learn that lowering standards is safer than upholding them.
This loss of authority has profound consequences. Without an adult who sets clear boundaries, classrooms become disorganized, attention scatters, and valuable time is wasted. More troubling still is the implicit message students receive: effort is optional, mistakes do not require correction, and responsibility can always be postponed.
Outside the classroom, reality operates very differently. The workplace does not accept emotional excuses as a substitute for performance. Universities do not always offer unlimited extensions. Adult life demands punctuality, commitment, self-control, and the ability to accept criticism. When schools fail to prepare young people for these realities, they set them up for a harsh collision with the real world.
Moreover, the absence of academic rigor widens educational inequality. Students with strong family support can compensate for weak school systems, while the most vulnerable rely almost entirely on schools to acquire habits, knowledge, and discipline. When schools stop demanding effort, they abandon precisely those students who need structure the most. In this sense, permissiveness is not neutral: it deepens social divides and limits upward mobility, disguising educational abdication as inclusion.
Many young adults now enter college or the workforce without basic tools to manage frustration. At the first sign of failure, they shut down or blame the system. Not because they lack ability, but because they were never taught that sustained effort, discipline, and personal responsibility are unavoidable parts of growth. As Enkvist warns, an education that avoids difficulty and conflict does not protect students—it weakens them.
Demanding standards is not abuse. Correction is not humiliation. Rigorous evaluation is not exclusion. On the contrary, demanding effort is a profound form of respect. It means believing students are capable of more, that they can rise to challenges, and that their future deserves a solid foundation. A demanding teacher is not an adversary, but an ally who refuses to settle for less than a student’s potential.
Restoring rigor does not mean returning to authoritarian models or ignoring students’ social realities. It means setting clear, coherent standards and sustaining them over time. It means restoring teachers’ professional authority and prioritizing the selection of strong educators. Ultimately, it means understanding that real learning requires effort, time, and, at times, discomfort.
Education should form free individuals, but freedom without discipline is an illusion. Preparing students for adult life does not mean making everything easier; it means teaching them to confront difficulty with real tools. Academic rigor is not the problem in today’s education system—its absence is. And as long as we avoid that conversation, we will continue graduating generations increasingly unprepared for a world that has not—and will not—lower its demands.
