Fiction and reality in the Catalan school system

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Joan Nonell

If it is the symbolic that sustains the real, rather than the real sustaining the symbolic, then everything becomes fiction. This is one of Mark Fisher’s key contributions to our understanding of the conditions imposed by late capitalism and postmodernity upon our time.[1] Applied to the educational sphere—a field Fisher knew well—this maxim takes the form of teachers performing all manner of roles—psychologists, career advisers, parental counsellors, mentors, supervisors, and so forth—which have, in effect, come to replace the instructive function and transmission of knowledge that define their profession. We know that teachers cannot adequately fulfil all these roles, due both to a lack of training and to a lack of time. Yet we also know that, within the dominant social framework, it is scarcely conceivable that a teacher should not confront—head-on—all the challenges and demands inherent in their work, particularly in a context of social precarity and hardship such as the present one, resulting in students with greater educational needs than ever before.

Symbolically, then, we attribute to teachers qualities closer to those of social-care superheroes [2] than to those of educators responsible for ensuring the continuity of a cultural tradition and the body of knowledge that sustains it, as was the case in earlier times. Reality, however, stubbornly points to a continuous decline in the quality of education delivered in Catalan public classrooms. This decline is partly explained by a lack of resources—the so-called model of inclusive education, implemented in our case without even the minimum investment required to meet its ambitious social and moral aims—but it is also the consequence of prioritising the fiction of an impossible task: namely, that students who are increasingly deprived of knowledge and fundamental skills should nevertheless attain the so-called competences prescribed by pedagogical curricula. Because the fiction of student attainment has to be maintained at all costs, teachers—when this is not done by the pedagogical system itself [3]—tend to lower the assessment standards by which qualifications and progression are granted. In the end, we pretend that time spent in the classroom, combined with ‘feel-good’ methods designed more to entertain and distract than to cultivate attention and cognition, will compensate for the acquisition of knowledge that schools ought to promote. In doing so, we conceal the induced ignorance to which we are, in reality, consigning the most vulnerable students—those who lack a family or social network capable of compensating for the learning deficits with which they complete their schooling.

The reality of the Catalan school system is therefore that the symbolic beliefs constructed by pedagogism and education authorities serve more to conceal, gloss over and disguise the facts that we witness daily in classrooms than to drive the educational changes they claim to pursue. When reality no longer fits the narrative imposed from above, the most sensible course of action is always to change the narrative, in order to bring the symbolic order back into alignment with reality. This, at least, was one of the rules of the provisional morality adopted by René Descartes in his Discourse on the Method [4], precisely when he sought to articulate the new rationalist symbolism that would mark the advent of modernity. Our educational experts, by contrast, go to considerable lengths to conceal reality behind a pseudoscientific symbolism imbued with techno-faith in the miraculous thaumaturgical powers of artificial intelligence and future advances in neuroscience which, when combined with the emotivist methods already mentioned, are expected to lead our children to full competence with little effort.

This is entirely consistent with other symbolic frameworks set in motion less to reveal than to simulate reality itself. One need only consider the way in which news is handled by the media—particularly those sustained by public funding or part of multinational media and entertainment corporations—which deploy strategies closer to propaganda and marketing than to the truthfulness and objectivity expected of journalism. A recent example is the agreement signed between the Department of Education and the trade unions UGT and CCOO, presented as a major national pact that will advance education, rather than being properly scrutinised to expose the falsehoods that make it yet another deeply flawed measure—one that further precarises teachers and imposes draconian constraints on the resources actually available to schools.[5]

The danger of making reality dependent upon a symbolic framework designed to conceal it is that cynicism spreads, overcoming all resistance, until it paralyses critical thought—reduced to something like landfill waste—despite the constant invocation of such thought by our politicians in the name of preserving the democratic symbolism they claim to uphold. When everything becomes fiction, including democracy itself, we are closer than ever to a totalitarian mindset. The infantilisation of young people—through educational fictions that are paralysing rather than emancipatory—has always been the first path towards such an outcome. The second is to make us believe that there is no alternative, that there is no other way of understanding educational reality than that imposed through reformist discourse. Exposing this fiction is the underlying aim of the struggle teachers are engaged in this year. What is at stake is not only the reality of our profession, but the entire symbolic framework that gives meaning to the educational project—in other words, the real guarantee that the education acquired by our young people during their time at school does not ultimately turn them into new cynics who perpetuate the very fiction we inhabit.

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[1]     Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism. Is There No Alternative? Collective Ink, 2009.

[2]     Els superprofes – Educational Evidence

[3]     See the changes introduced in the basic competences assessments in the fourth year of Spain’s compulsory secondary education: https://elmon.cat/societat/educacio/educacio-redueix-alumnes-competencies-basiques-1083498/

[4]    The third rule of Descartes’ provisional morality states: “to try always to conquer myself rather than fortune, and to change my desires rather than the order of the world”.

[5]     https://secundaria.info/portal/article.php?sid=20260309205531

Source: educational EVIDENCE

Rights: Creative Commons