Nextland

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Víctor Guiu Aguilar

They were promoting, with great fanfare, one of those extraordinary conferences on Education and other such humbug, where coaches and experts of all stripes gather. The teacher training centres were spreading the Good News through their contact lists, earnestly urging everyone to share it with families and staffrooms alike. This, of course, from the same institutions that deny teachers any real professional training, yet offer an extensive catalogue of mindfulness sessions and other modern-day prayers and devotions. The name of the event itself already contains several warning signs that would make any sensible person suggest rest—or perhaps admission to a specialist clinic: Nextland – Where the Future is Born.

The star speaker, or perhaps cartel boss would be more accurate, was the illustrious Ms Mar Romera, an “expert” in all manner of trendy stuff.

The organiser, a professor of Sciences(?) of Education, is someone well connected with savings banks, town councils and other potential sponsors—those who urge you to “open your mind” while quietly tending to their own interests.

Dozens of foundations and entities have jumped aboard the lucrative little racket of the “education business” (lowercase very much intended), presenting their studies and proposals to solve so many educational issues that one might reasonably think our leaders and sponsors should stop for a moment and realise the problem runs far deeper than this parade of experts in absolutely nothing.

That good old paper that puts up with anything. That good old press that props up everything, dressing up reality with triumphant headlines, will soon award the event its gold medal and glowing reviews. The desert of the real. They’ve chosen their pill, and I suspect it’s not the red one. Why get into a row?

A good friend of mine who works in banking sings the praises of the event, insisting yet again on the need to open your mind. I suggest a few mind-opening reforms of my own to revitalise the banking sector—novel ideas based on Communism—but he just laughs. “You’re off your rocker”, he must be thinking. I hold my tongue. Physician, heal thyself.

Meanwhile, in the social-media multiverse, we remain stuck in the same old rut. After decades of political activism—spending my freedom, my health, and my own resources fighting against the most fossilised forms of right-wing thought—I now have to listen to people calling me a fascist. These are the same self-proclaimed experts who have lied and waffled their way into wrecking Education (with a capital E), telling you that you’re not inclusive, not loyal, not a proper left-winger, not even worthy of your job—and pity your pupils for having you as their teacher.

They indulge in a fake victimhood that looks suspiciously like the politics of the far right, punishing those who have done nothing wrong. And in that false victim narrative—so blatant it’s enough to make you retch—they rebuild their straw foundations every couple of years, while pupils read worse and understand even less, irreversibly so. Though inclusively, of course (if you’ll forgive the mischief).

And yet, those false victims are precisely the ones running this damned shambles. They’re the ones who call the shots, setting the rules, guidelines, and projects from ministries and education departments. They’re the ones who have abandoned the working class, leaving it at the mercy of capital and power, by denying it access to knowledge—the only tool capable of making people critical and free. From their ivory towers, they issue proclamations that sound more like religious dogma than educational reasoning.

And behind the weariness of so many lies the indifference of so many others—the majority—who watch as political disengagement, that cancer so deftly exploited by our pedagogical class, seeps through society, making any progressive recovery guided by common sense and scientific evidence almost impossible.

Tragic. Desolate. Impossible to reverse through indifference. Perhaps the time has come for rebellion. Let us at least save our souls—and our dignity as teachers.

Source: educational EVIDENCE

Rights: Creative Commons