Our motivations for the creation of “Plaza del Ciel”

We consider that one of the most important aspects in the harmonic development of a person is his relationship with the natural environment in which he lives: in that environment he initially trains and enlarges his curiosity and the capacity for astonishment, both innate properties of human beings. It is so much so that we could locate the germ of all creative future activities, scientific or otherwise, in what happens with those characteristics during the years of childhood, that if fully developed will help children to become sensitive and critical adults. So we consider it necessary to generate the mechanisms to reinforce the sensibility, the critical observation and the interaction with natural phenomena, in a systematic way, as we propose in “Plaza del Cielo”.

Education by means of Astronomy is the principal nucleus of our proposal. This is so especially because we consider that those aspects of Nature studied by Astronomy and the way this science works is a powerful tool to motivate children and adults, that it is one of the best ways to study Nature, and that it brings us as educators new means to show the evolution and full integration among the many ways, not only scientific, Humanity has constructed throughout History in order to comprehend not only the Universe, but ourselves as well.