Materialism

The same old story of self-help and motivational recipes

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Andreu Navarra

Talking about education, moral sermons go in one ear and out the other for me, leaving little trace behind. As Roland Barthes pointed out, “encratic” language, that is, the bureaucratic and inertial jargon of the grammar of power, ends up becoming a kind of empty and cyclical chant like the babbling of infants or the fixations of the obsessed. We always find the same mystical nonsense in banking propaganda, in electoral programs, in rhizomatic curricula, in childish political justifications, and in in diatribes to energize teaching staffs.

The same old story of self-help and motivational recipes. Libidinal capitalism. I am not interested in being energized, and I would like someone to answer this trail of questions that do concern me: firstly, why have we maintained an explicitly segregating school system for over four decades? Why do teachers lose their jobs for teaching multiplication tables? Where does the public money go? How was the Escola Nova 21 network funded? Why do we buy obsolescent computers without the possibility of adequate maintenance? Why was I forbidden from teaching grammar or literature in some educational centres? Why do we fail to understand that the Staff Decree will lead to the downfall of all our initiatives because it creates a stinky and authoritarian atmosphere in many high schools?

Why are we afraid of cultivating academic history? What sin is Catalan literature paying for, having been removed from the Baccalaureate? Why do we think that free knowledge does not dazzle our youth? How can we think that we will attract the most disheartened students with songs and tricks? How can we think that classroom video games will be more appealing than those at home? How is it possible that we impose digitization plans in schools that do not have internet access? Why do students have to go to school in Catalonia with warm clothing because the heating doesn’t work, or there isn’t any, or the school cannot afford it? How is it possible that there are educational centres that expel or lose half of their staff when the school year is over? Does anyone genuinely believe that teachers will be more compliant towards autocratic management teams than those emerging from an organically self-managed staff? How can anyone think that teaching in Catalonia equates to torture, or that learning can occur without any real teaching? Why are thousands of public vocational training places left vacant every year? Why do 60% of substitute positions remain unoccupied? Why do courses for thinking or developing European culture are viewed as heretical? Why do we confuse inclusion with exclusion? Why do we promote projects with zero social impact instead of committing structurally to equality? Why do we so often confuse Carlism with republicanism? Why are teachers dismissed upon pregnancy? Why do we trust gurus and scammers rather than our veteran educators?

An excess of insincere spiritual bluster. I believe it was Unamuno who clearly distinguished between spirituality and theology. An overload of theology and a dearth of republican administration bear heavily upon us. Simplification, elegance, Bertrand Russellism, intelligence and administrative discretion are needed. Faith in science. As someone who is Spinozian in literature and Pimargallian in politics, I wonder why we are condemned to listen to cliché-ridden sermons every morning of our lives: sermons about vocation, leadership, the comfort zone, the jobs of tomorrow, the future that is already here… Blah, blah, blah; blah, blah, blah… Does anyone really truly buy into this drivel? Who is really plotting a strategy for the next thirty years? It’s all smoke and mirrors, the worst form of scholasticism, thick and blaming verbosity. Carlist Calvinism. What if we ask questions without metaphysics for the real and concrete education of our present? We are discussing the education of individuals, not the reaffirmation of our phobias, antisocial idiosyncrasies, or Rousseauian biases. It is time to reconstruct a logical and coherent educational system, rather than perpetuating muddled mantras or assembling ideologically manipulated masses under the guidance of political pygmies.

Source: educational EVIDENCE

Rights: Creative Commons