Notes of a course end

The initiative is being taken by staff of teachers who no longer tolerate any more fictions or official lies

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Andreu Navarra

While we were talking in the High School Hall, a colleague from another Union told us a few days ago: “The management teams and the Department of Education are beginning to encounter organized staff, who stand up, and they don’t know what to do about”. She was absolutely right. In September we were wondering what would be the eventual effects of the teachers stabilization process it was by then starting to run on: we might by now know already something about: on the one hand, in October there was already an unusual fatigue with the draconian implementations of ‘Project-based learning‘ and digital anti-humanistic delusions, as well as other authoritarian pedagogical «solutions»; secondly, there have been some scattered phenomena of corruption that have raised some alarms; and, finally, revolts by teachers and students have broken out against the bloodiest aspects of the  unfortunate education catalan law that causes teaching staff in Catalonia to be selected through arbitrary an absolutely non-transparent process by the School management.

I have always believed that teachers rather want to teach than going on strike. On June 13, Josep Sala i Collell published an important article in Vilaweb, where he defended that the 2023-2024 academic year had been the course of discontent against the siren song of false pedagogical innovation. Once the Cambrayismo certified that the administration was hostile to its own employees and the absolute disconnection between politics and reality, an unusual and totally irrational situation, which we still suffer, in which it is very noticeable that the institutions want to get rid of the same ones that should be protecting, and in a context where it does not seem very popular to dignify the teaching profession, the pedagogical bunker is entering a zone of terminal state: pedagogism and the privatization carried out by related foundations are moving more money than ever, but they have completely lost its prestige. Today, the only efects of politician smiles and false social promises it’s only actually to irritate and stress people, but now, seriously, to the point that the only two viable options for teachers are to give up or to start disobeying.

The initiative is being taken by staff of teachers who no longer tolerate any more fictions or official lies and resolve to tear down many schools managments. The institutional crisis is accentuated. If workers prefer to face retaliation than enduring daily humiliation and contempt, the system has a problem. Teacher riots could cease to be isolated cases and spread even more. In this case, a pedagogical bunker would have little future, it would only remain as an official framework, like a kind of Narváez or Arias Navarro government, pushing through the days with difficulty and inertia, defending a past like a nightmare or an emolabyrinth. Pushing official fictions of granite and marble, without wheels.

In Barcelona there are especially several open wounds. The directorates cannot be civil governments. The pedagogical debate cannot continue to be stifled: in Catalonia we have completely lost the sense of what democratic and quality education is. Reality has been making its way: the only thing our institutions do is shield privileges and budgets of pure shame. Wouldn’t it be much more constructive to encourage anti-neoliberal reform? Transparency to clean up the Public Service and return to the principles of morality and transparency? To really fight against segregation to gain equality instead of  the current humiliating and fraudulent propaganda? Wouldn’t it be more realistic to abolish the current educational laws and put an end to the accelerated deterioration of our schools, put an end to crazy and anti-educational contracts, and respect the internal pluralism of Catalan society? The teachers work meetings  should then be focused on pedagogical issues and not anymore panegyrics of privatization and bureaucratization.

Wouldn’t it be more reasonable to let teachers to teach? If we begin to expel parasites and bosses, we would possibly once again be pioneers in social policies, and not poor servants of austericidal recipes. If not, teachers will continue to face it, more and more intensely, more painfully. The system is stopped and knocked out, lying on the ground. Today, in Catalonian educations, the only thing that keeps working are the profiteable economic incomes of the parasitic entities that have rotted the educational system.

Source: educational EVIDENCE

Rights: Creative Commons