Andreu Navarra: “We must start thinking about our intellectual renaissance”

Interview published in Fundación Episteme, December 9, 2021

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Eva Serra

“At some point, the simulacra will crumble, and a voice will rise, advocating for the seriousness and constructive nature of education,” asserts the teacher and author, Andreu Navarra. He steps beyond mere pessimism as he analyses the current educational landscape, unhesitatingly characterising it with bold adjectives and incisive social criticism against the obedience of citizens, which he describes as ‘herd-like’ behaviour. In response to this evaluation, he calls for a battle, a battle for education.

Andreu Navarra (Barcelona, 1981), a graduate in Hispanic Philology from the University of Barcelona, was awarded the Extraordinary Degree Award and was a recipient of a Predoctoral Training Scholarship for Researchers from the Generalitat de Catalunya. He is a secondary education teacher of Spanish Language and Literature. He is also a professor of Contemporary Culture History at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. As a columnist, he contributes to various media outlets and pens a monthly column on educational topics in El País.

As a historian, he has authored numerous works dedicated to regenerationism and the intellectual life of Catalan and Spanish culture in the 20th century. Among his works are: 1914. Aliadófilos y germanófilos en la cultura española (2014), El ateísmo. La aventura de pensar libremente en España (2016), El espejo blanco. Viajeros españoles en Rusia (2016), La escritura y el poder, a complete and nuanced biography of Eugenio d’Ors (2018), La Revolución Imposible, vida y muerte de Andreu Nin (2021) and educational works such as Devaluación Continua (2019) and Prohibido aprender: Un recorrido por las leyes de educación de la democracia.

When considering all the educational laws, from the LOGSE, what are the common points? What effects do these have on different generations of students?

LOGSE, LOE, LOCE, LOMCE and LOMLOE share a common trait – a populist design accompanied by intense propaganda and internal marketing campaigns that have ultimately blurred with pedagogical needs. If one analyses the preamble of the LGE of 1970 and that of the LOMLOE, they bear a striking resemblance. They are promotional laws, intended to fabricate the illusion of progress that is subsequently unverified. Both laws evoke a sense of broad moral principles and propose to homogenise the country and modernise it, but through resonant structures. In essence, there is an excess of charlatanism and a lack of attention to budgets: not only how much is invested but where those resources are directed: whether they serve to nurture cronyism and dysfunctional administrations, or whether they are instead destined to lubricate the dynamics at the classroom level.

If one analyses the preamble of the LGE of 1970 and that of the LOMLOE, they bear a striking resemblance. They are promotional laws

Laws and associated decrees have been designed for too long for show, not for pedagogy. To verify this, you only have to review any interview given to the last three holders of the Education portfolio: there is not a single original or democratising idea, only clichés, populism, self-promotion, as if the leader’s shine magically transferred to the attitudes of teachers and students. Therefore, we need serious policies – a rational analysis of our problems and construction of real solutions, even if they deny our ideological prejudices, beyond the megalomaniac slogan.

Second of all, all these laws have been based on myths and theorems that have been imposed uncritically. Examples of myths: attention to diversity in 1990, which remains a bitter riddle for all those who have suffered it; the competences of the LOE, the LOMCE and the LOMLOE, the hyper-classroom, co-teaching, working within areas, and things that never arrive because there is no real interest in improvement. We live in a world rich in educational products but pedagogically poor.

As for the effects they may have had, we do not know it in a loyal and quantified way. Indeed, this is a problem: Have the impacts of those reforms on actual learning outcomes ever been meticulously tracked? Is there any concern to account for potential adverse effects or cognitive disasters triggered by these laws? These questions lead us to a disturbing conclusion: we persist in legislating based on ideologies that fail to confront the realities of the classroom. The outcomes are a muddle of bureaucratic confusion, giving rise to the impression that we have been chasing unattainable objectives for decades.

We continue to legislate based on ideologies that do not confront the reality of the classroom. The results are amalgamations of bureaucratic confusion

More bureaucratic pressure on teachers, more confusion and the drop out of youth due to official neglect. In essence, we need a policy that is serious and not merely pleasant.

You assert that neoliberal ideology has turned to be a religion. Where do you see the complicity of social democracy in educational terms?

It’s not just me making this claim; intellectuals of the calibre of José Luis Villacañas also echo this sentiment, for instance, in his book Neoliberalismo como Teología política (NED Editions). Social democracy stands accused of renouncing its own principles. That is, of conforming to the extreme centre that seems to dictate the politics of the lesser evil in Europe. It is unacceptable that left-wing cabinets are promoting policies strikingly similar to the Franco’s technocracy of the 60s and 70s. Educational populism was a characteristic of that ostensible modernization under which a dual society of winners and excluded continued to subsist. We are reaching a point where we will be teaching entrepreneurship classes to students who haven’t eaten anything in 24 hours. Confronted with this austere routine and sophisticatedly pleasing facade, I would advocate for a genuine deepening of the class fractures that render us an unviable country, beyond superficial remedies that fail to bring about real improvements.

The LOMLOE aims to incorporate measures such as gender equality, global citizenship, or emotions into academic content. In your opinion, what motivates these objectives?

As Marina Garcés writes, our primary adversaries are obviousness and stupidity. It appears that, in order to sustain itself, the market post-democracy needs to continually update the global factory of banality and tiresome foolishness so that only a scant minority are capable of analysing what is happening in politics. Additionally, the already classic binary battery of blame accusations against teachers is employed. For instance, with the issue of gender: are studies in our country patriarchal? Why is there no trust in our intellectual and teaching class, which has been predominantly feminist for many years? I have been having all the writers who are not in the books studied in class for many years, starting with Carolina Coronado and ending with Sara Mesa or Almudena Sánchez. Do we need a law to dictate that we must teach human rights and basic ethics? All this masks a hidden world of bureaucratic discipline and cuts. It is announced that these directions will be supported, but the contents that should nourish critical thinking are removed. All of this has led to a massive lexical crisis: “the average reader seems to no longer comprehend a basic news item or reflection”, a Culinary vocational training teacher once wrote to me denouncing that her students cannot understand a five-line recipe.

The average reader seems to no longer comprehend a basic news item of reflection, a  Culinary vocational training teacher once wrote to me denouncing that her students cannot understand a five-line recipe

To know what to do, one must know. There is no alternative. Extremist competency pedagogy is a colossal fraud.

While well-intentioned band-aid solutions and superficial doctrines are being promoted, the true humanistic essence of education is being stripped away from the system, penalising depth, rigorous reflection, and the future construction of truly creative and disobedient thinking. A low-profile standard of citizenship that will fail spectacularly, as it will generate pockets of extremism, is created. It is terrifyingly naive to think that because activities related to tolerance will be carried out, society will improve: a minority will mock these soft contents and ‘herd-like’ groups and quarries for contemporary violent neo-fascisms will be consolidated. Democracy must be more respectable and must promote genuine humanism, genuine commitment to the analysis of nearby reality, beyond the four orthodox topics. Unfortunately, I fear that it may be too late. For now, we can only aspire to restore academic minorities, exactly the same as when “the thought” left universities: as in 1500, as in 1700, or as in the Jena of 1800 or the Catalonia of 1900. We must start thinking about our intellectual renaissance.

You speak of a credulous and irrationalist society that accepts and assumes benefits almost without protest. As a professor of Contemporary Culture History, do you think that in previous stages the current educational model would not have been allowed?

I don’t think so. We must not be nostalgic or futuristic. We come from the horror and absurdity of Francoism. I am interested in the period 1975-82 in the way in which groups of families and teachers overcame Francoist sclerosis to think and implement authentic alternative models. Let’s think, for example, that only in Santa Coloma de Gramanet there were 3,500 children without schooling… in 1979! We must not idealise. We must analyse where we are and what we need. Of course, the state of academic fraud in which the LOMLOE leaves us installed will not benefit us.

Currently, we are not succeeding in defining a reasonable alternative to the great party of happy pseudo-pedagogy of the bank and the OECD

Make-up is no longer of any use. We must rectify and neo-educate. Currently, we are not succeeding in defining a reasonable alternative to the great party of happy pseudo-pedagogy of the bank and the OECD. Gurus, pedabobos¹ and corrupt civil servants who have not taught in years have allied themselves to adapt to the comfortable proposals of the market dictatorship, which requires cyber proletariat and very poorly qualified workers. Academic content is being privatised, so that an exclusive price has to be paid for a third of the population.

Where do you place the role of the teacher in this panorama?

In extinction. The conversion to mere animator or supporter of applications and games, or coordinator of frauds such as the areas, is the door that leads to the substitution of the teacher by the much cheaper and docile monitor. In reality, the real name of educational innovation is extirpation, as demonstrated by the fact that all decrees “suppress” something: assessment, subjects, specialised personnel, in a falsely transversal and inclusive sense, in a cutting and deregulating sense. We do not know how to build anything. We only know how to suppress. It is already impossible to disguise it. We are living a in an age of smiling Thatcherism.

Do you consider that curricula should adapt to the ‘new social model’ or remain intact? Where is the balance between digital society and academic rigour?

What is the new social model? The country continues to resemble, in its dual social structure, dangerously to 1960. We have lost industry, rights are receding, a small media apocalypse is given to our youth every morning. In regards to the “new social model”, as demonstrated by Marta Peirano and José María Lasalle, we are witnessing the consolidation of a cyber-state. Whereby, the norm is dictated by administrative silence, and digital surveillance and cognitive and platform capitalism prevail. What surprises me is that leaders who identify themselves as republicans or socialists fail to see this and consent to implement policies that are purely right-wing. We are trading with the attention of students. This is immoral. The newly imposed social model is also immoral. It must be combated, combated with an education that encourages reflection, not just banal, precarious, and festive. I propose a rearming of knowledge in the service of intellectual self-protection.

As a professor of Language and Literature, how do your students perceive the importance of texts? Is the lack of reading comprehension truly alarming? What consequences do you think it can have?

Students perceive these problems more clearly than adults. In fact, the current gerontocracy transfers their anxieties, disorientations, poor aesthetic taste, and insecurities to the youth.

We are moving towards a new oral society and our laws, instead of taking corrective measures, exploit the situation and promote visceral and easy thinking

Reading comprehension is a fundamental skill, the mother of all other knowledge. Many problems in mathematics are a consequence of not knowing how to read or understand statements. We are moving towards a new oral society and our laws, instead of taking corrective measures, exploit the situation and promote visceral and easy thinking. We will pay dearly for that. The LOMLOE explicitly states that attempts will be made to alleviate reading comprehension problems with digital resources, which are useful for other things. This is a contradiction, a glaring absurdity. Unfortunately, we have normalized obedience to grotesque decrees for decades.

You are very active on social networks. Do you believe that educational messages resonates with the networks?

I know that my former students follow me on networks, that’s why I recommend books and talks every day. I don’t post anything personal or appear dancing or eating chips. Well, sometimes I do. But the uneducational messages have much more power. In fact, what can we expect if our institutions lie, intoxicate, confuse, hide cuts and shames and blatantly accuse, without any rigour or objectivity? We have come to see a minister criticising “encyclopaedism”, as if knowledge were a problem or a plague. This has happened, and nothing noteworthy has happened.

We have come to see a minister criticising “encyclopaedism”, as if knowledge were a problem or a plague

Through networks, I have met wonderful teachers and every day we share resources and concerns. The best thing about writing about education is the number of people who share their experiences with you. We must also bear in mind that texts on education are ephemeral, so lately I am trying to address more theoretical and general topics: the way out is in the egalitarian reform of our society, it will not come from fights between teachersaurians and innovators. I myself am a hybrid of teachersaurian and innovator, but above all I owe myself to what my students need: lexicon and readings, thought and reflective writing.

How would you rate the role of new technologies in the classroom?

The mark of populism is the application of broad-brush measures without distinguishing levels or ages. The mark of someone who sells a product instead of thinking pedagogically. The role of technology is different in childhood education or university, in the Technology class or in a foreign language class. I would discard it until the students knew how to read, write and calculate with complete certainty. In class we use it to search for texts and comment on them, science fiction stories, myths, dynamic grammar materials. As a university professor, the experience with distance projects is very enriching. I dedicate myself to monitor incipient research and the results often dazzle me. What cannot be is to abandon oneself to easy clichés. For example, contrary to what is usually thought, I quickly realised that distance and online work requires much more structure and discipline than face-to-face class, which is more relaxed, pleasant and participatory.

Is there room for optimism that criticism of the quality of education will improve it?

I do not believe so. I think it is on clearance and falling into the hands of opportunists. Knowledge is being privatised, and this is happening because social classes are closing in all the countries in our environment. This will start to resemble the United States. We have abandoned a third of our population to their fate, and we think that with some innovative products we will earn the right to a clear conscience, but the increasing inequality and poverty deny this self-satisfied and conformist attitude.

There will come a time when these illusions will crumble, and a voice will rise, advocating for the gravity and constructive nature of education

I maintain an optimistic outlook in the sense that almost no one believes in the frauds sanctioned by this curious fauna of pedabobos¹, uninformed politicians, and ignorant economists who persistently echo the same mystical mantras each dawn, without any connection to tangible reality or authentic pedagogy. There will come a time when these illusions will crumble, and a voice will rise, advocating for the gravity and constructive nature of education. However, we are at risk: the triviality of populism, serving the interests of invasive mercantilism, has triumphed overwhelmingly.

The question remains: how long until we see the emergence of honourable politicians who champion a society that is both cultured and well-informed? The idiotic posturing no longer fools anyone. Will such a day ever come?

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¹ Invented word from the Spanish ones ‘pedagogo’ (pedagogue) and ‘bobo’ (silly).

Source: educational EVIDENCE

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