Professor of Philosophy at the Universidad Complutense of Madrid, author of a great number of books and collaborator in Spanish and foreign publications, the name of Fernando Savater is clearly linked to ethics. He maintains that educa-
tion and the protection of minors are basic ethical problems. Before the challenges and questions that this statement poses to those who have to educate, Savater proposes training and reflection and, above all, that the interests and the rights of minors should be kept as top priorities. These are some of the answers to our interview:

«Ethics depend fundamentally on intention; that is to say, it is not a question of making external rules because that is what the law codes are there for: what counts is the intention. In the case of  ethics in the protection of children what is important is that what really is being sought is the best for the child or for the youth, not the satisfaction of some sort of personal vanity or whim. I repeat that in the case of ethics, what is important is the intention. Nevertheless, in the legal sphere what counts is the rule, the norm. When we speak of the ethics of the protection of children, we are referring to what the children can expect from the adults who will take charge of them, regardless of whether these adults are their biological parents, guardians or the people who are going to adopt them, and to the moral reflection that having a young child in one’s care, the responsibility for that child, arouses in us. It is a basic ethical problem. The moral aspect derives precisely from this fact of taking charge of other individuals. And in the case of minors, due to their state of having been put under our care, protection, orientation... the ethical guidelines become even more necessary.»

«Childhood is a moment of preparation for adult life. When we ask ourselves what has to be protected in the child, the answer is very simple, we have to protect his/her childhood, to protect this interval, this time for play, for discovery, for learning. We mustn’t turn the child into an adult too early, as in those terrible cases of children who work as slaves from very early childhood or the children who, due to the fact they have been abandoned or to poverty, are compelled to become adults; that is to say, their childhood and time for play have been stolen from them and nobody takes the responsibility of being an adult while the child is a child.»

«In the case of adoption, the only difference is that, instead of being the biological child that is born without any other requirement than that of the procreation of the couple, here, some procedures have to be followed. The child is not biologically linked to the family. Instead, he has to be linked by a decision, by a commitment. The biological child only arrives but with the adopted one we commit ourselves, and this has a dimension of chosen commitment which, I believe, is even stronger than biological parenthood. The true parents are those who take charge of transmitting humanity, who will make themselves responsible for the transmission of the human message, the symbolic dimension, the verbal dimension, the recognition of human similarity and social norms.»