Who hasn’t mythologized their childhood? I had the privilege of going to active schools, first Tàber and then for many years at Sadako, and of having very dedicated teachers. There was excitement. The end of Francoism was in sight, the educational world was in turmoil. With little means they did wonders. I was lucky. Many schools of that time – the sayings national, the religious ones, the resultist academies – if they stood out for anything, it was for their rigidity and mediocrity. The GBS? Well, it depends on where you do it. We did cinema, theatre, music. Also a lot of mathematics – I’m one of those who had a block – and language. Lots of homework, also in the summer. We went to museums, we did ethics and coexistence. And we played volleyball.
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The teachers had authority, we respected them. But I have the feeling that we boys and girls were more hooligans than those of today. Or maybe they let us be: they scolded us often and at the same time gave us a lot of freedom. We used to escape from the playground and make some big ones. We had room to make mistakes and the teachers had room to punish us. This has changed. The scoundrel is very – too much – controlled and monitored, hyper-protected, and the teachers are also too monitored by the system. All tucked away On both sides. And also with the family.
I’ll be very wary of nostalgia. Because now there are wonderful schools. And most importantly, there are no disastrous ones, as was the case in the 60s or 70s of the 20th century. The average level has certainly risen. If there had been PISA tests 50 years ago, the results would have put us even worse than today, there’s no doubt about it. Also at that time there was a lot of social vulnerability – poverty – and a lot of segregation – immigration. Schools like Tàber or Sadako, familiar, able to innovate without losing the north, were very few and had native middle-class students. They were inspired by the memory of the great Catalan tradition, from Montessori to Rosa Sensat. And they couldn’t count on the administration for much: even with a dictatorship, they had it against them; then it cost the start of the self-government.
What marked the renewal impulse of those years was above all an entrusted optimism, a transversal citizen commitment. There was hope to get out of the dictatorship and build a new country, to recover the language, to train boys and girls who would be citizens of a freer and fairer society. All of this provided energy and courage to move forward. This really is what is missing. In education and everywhere else, we have gone from a creative utopian naivete to an emphatic dystopian defeatism. Everyone is upset, the feeling of helplessness and mistrust has become widespread. And so it is very difficult to build anything. And if we turn a leaf from the bad roll?
It will be difficult to regain the illusion, but it is essential to do so. One could start modestly to regain a climate of serenity, of dialogue, initially parking the confrontation between classics and innovators, so polarized and unhelpful (in this methodological debate there is a very technical part that cannot be resolved with a simplifying shock ). In addition, looking for culprits is a risky sport because the blame tends to be shared. Everyone comes out shaken. Change is as necessary as continuity. We need the usual education – working on the basic knowledge: reading and mathematics – with the new tools – the digital world is here to stay – and the new methodologies – projects, skills -. Need more demand? Absolutely yes. And this is the job of both teachers and parents. Again the responsibility is shared.
The shock of the PISA tests can be left as a passing storm that is of no use or as a stimulus to start over. Who takes the lead for change? Not a new change of methods or directives, but of climate. Who builds a new alliance of teachers, families and administration?
2023-12-08 23:03:29
#PISA #illusion #continuing #education
