This week we turned on the lights. We stepped out of the immediacy that usually dominates this profession and spoke with Juan Manuel Moreno and Lucas Gortazar about their book Universal educationan essay that analyzes the rise of education based on what is happening in the world.
The discourse has gotten a bit out of hand because the book raises interesting theses, shared or not. It tells universal stories based on specific situations that occur all over the world. In India or China, for example, families have thrown themselves into private education so that students would aspire to the best universities. The madness has reached the point where academies have recruited rival professors as if they were sports stars. In the United States, the case of celebrities and millionaires who bought their children’s admission to elite universities has been heard. In Moldova, there was a visionary who risked her nascent political career to do what was best for the system, outside of short-term electoral logic. And she won, she is now the country’s prime minister.
With small, concrete stories like these, the two specialists tell a universal story of tensions in the system. “There is an essential tension in education between a double agenda: that of those who seek education as a means of equal rights and opportunities and between those who seek to differentiate them by their results or their identity,” they told us. “The project of universal education is under siege,” they say.
Because the opposition to the system is broad: there are those who are unhappy with the very idea of educating everyone, there are declared enemies and there are disenchanted people, who believe in a universal system but are unhappy because it is not fully deployed. Then there are the satisfied ones, of course, those millions of humble or poor families who benefit from free public education. But they have no voice.
They also theorize about “the paradox of universalization,” a perhaps somewhat counterintuitive effect of what happens when you expand educational coverage: the system becomes more and more unequal. But that doesn’t mean it’s worse (that eternal debate about level). It just means that more people are participating, and if you think about it, it makes sense that the more people who participate, the more difference there is between them. More, of course, than when only a select few were doing it.
This is not part of the interview, but we discuss with the authors whether the book is optimistic or pessimistic. It seems to me that it has a worrying character because of what it says about the direction we are taking: the search for differentiation is winning, even – or especially – among those who are already differentiated. They say that the back that they receive more optimistic calls. Among other things because, and this is an indisputable truth, education is reaching more and more people. The question is whether the model is dying of success.
In any case, the book has a different orientation from those usually published in Spain, usually more focused on a specific aspect, more specific. It is perfect if you want to know what trends are happening in the world, what makes different countries the same or different, and draw your own conclusions about the future of education.
I know that the authors arouse suspicion in some sectors because they are not teachers of compulsory education (one day we will properly address this confrontation, wild in networks, between the ones and the others), but once the ad hominen is overcome, it remains an interesting question and a well-argued book, whether or not they share their theses. Here I leave you the interview.
And in Spain, segregation
In Spain, the situation is nothing extraordinary. It is a recurring theme, but this week Save the Children reminded us that our education system is the most segregated in the entire developed world between public and private charter schools. As you know, the poor hardly ever attend the private centers subsidized by the State, which should in theory serve citizens in the same way as the public centers. This is our version of the differentiation I was talking about: in the private sphere, concerted or not, networks are woven, connections are established, out of reach of the common man in the public sphere. And it happens.
Save the Children claims that the concerted organization is breaking up largely because it does not have enough public funding, which leads them to charge families, a payment that leaves out the poorest. The story may be consistent and based on some data (without context), but the reality is that the charter school in Spain segregates like no other, engages in illegal practices and in turn condemns the public school, which has become a ghetto in some neighborhoods. And all this is paid for by everyone.
This week we also talked about…
Teachers have no time for anything. Teachers’ work schedules don’t work. I’m sure you know someone, ask them. With 18 to 25 hours of classes per week (depending on the stadium and the autonomous community) plus guards, class preparation, etc. your weekly schedule is full. CCOO has done a study that calculates that if a teacher devoted 10 minutes per week to each student he has (ten minutes!), his day would be so long that he would give almost a week of work per month to the administration.
The school that “doesn’t exist”. In rural schools, students of different ages and levels coexist in a class. And they all have to be educated at the same time. The problem is that in Spain, teachers are not taught how to teach in such circumstances: rural schools do not even appear in training plans. This is just one of the problems that these centers face.
No places in public FP in Madrid. Yet another one of those news stories that are current because they are repeated year after year. The public network of vocational training centres in the Community of Madrid leaves out one in two students who apply for a place. There is always room for a slightly worse situation in Madrid’s education system: last year there were 40,000 excluded, this year 50,000, who find themselves with three options: either they study something they don’t want, or they pay for it privately, or they lose access. year.
To download a note
The government wants to prohibit universities from “buying” internships. The PSOE and Sumar want to amend the law to prevent universities, whether public or private, from paying companies (either directly or in the form of a donation) to provide internships for their students. This amendment seeks to prevent some centres, with more financial resources, from monopolizing internships and leaving others without a place, which has already happened, for example, in PF with health modules.
Are you taking notes correctly? You may remember that a few weeks ago we told you that no one teaches us how to study, which is surprising, considering that it is the main occupation of students. Well, the same thing happens with notes, another basic element of education that everyone manages as best they can. Just in case, here are some tips from an expert.
