One of 'Ours'

Is he one of 'ours'?

This week's Camino a Ítaca takes me back on tour. Back to the days when I literally lived on the road and then zooms to the present and questions just how the regional government sees its citizen. Are you one of 'ours' or not? You can click over and read the original in Spanish or read the English version below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

When I think back to it, it must have been quite the sight. There, in the oil-stained corner of a gas station parking lot, were four long-haired fifteen-year-olds trying their best to play African American music from the 1950s. The Blues had originated 3,000kms away in Mississippi, but here were four young kids trying their best, playing for tips in northern Canada. The music might not have been the best, but something must have worked, because the owner asked us to come back and even gave us some money for doing it and I’ve been playing music professionally ever since.

Music has its ups and down. I’ve had the pleasure to play for thousands of people on some nights, only to play for two drunks the next in some small town in the middle of Nebraska. One day it’s encores and congratulations and the next is a beer bottle thrown at you because you don’t play any country music. It was thanks to my guitar that I first crossed the Atlantic and got my first taste of European life. It was with a band that I first came to Spain back in the early 90s and first realized that it was a place that I would one day like to settle. It’s also from behind my guitar that I have explored remoter corners of Extremadura, from Talarrubias to Pinofranqueado.

I’ve been lucky enough to play with some of those who helped create that music from Mississippi and am thankful to have had the chance to record in some of the great temples of music, like Jimi Hendrix's Electric Ladyland deep in the bowels of the village in New York City. It was a fun ride until one day, the music died.

It happened almost overnight. As the pandemic set in, mini tours and festival bookings from France to the Algarve vanished. A few brave souls have tried to resuscitate our moribund cultural scene, but as you look out from the distant stage to see white masks sitting two meters apart, unable to get a drink, dance or even go to the bathroom, it just doesn’t feel the same. Besides, how can you plan an entire tour when you don’t even know if you’ll be able to leave your house?

Like others, I was glad to see that the Junta then offered a grant to try and help those who had seen their livelihoods disappear and I sent in my application too. In reply, I got a letter saying that I needed a certificate proving that indeed I was an artist. In today’s world where everything can be seen on Facebook, including each and every mistake you make on stage, this seemed a bit Kafkaesque. That said, I suppose it wasn’t as bad as those poor souls who are something declared dead by the administration when they are, in fact, very much alive and kicking. I then read the fine print a little closer and the story morphed into something more sinister, a story more akin to something by Mario Puzo. Not only did I have to prove that I was in fact a musician, but that proof had to be in relation to the regional administration. It didn’t matter if you had played two hundred gigs that year, if you hadn’t worked for them, better luck next time.

Since I began living here, I’d always heard that quien hizo la ley hizo la trampa (literally those who make the laws know how to break them) but I never knew that it was also quien hace la ley certifica la trampa (those who make the law, certify the way to get around them).

The Cilice of Education

In this week's Camino a Ítaca we return to the trail of education and the challenges the kids face here in Extremadura, Spain. A place where 'no pain, no gain' is the way forward in learning. You can click over and read the original published in Spanish or read the English version below. (PDF en Castellano abajo)

I grew up in a staunchly monolingual part of a country that is officially bilingual. Even though I’m from a lost city out on the Canadian prairies, 3,000 kilometers from French-speaking Quebec, every single package has to be in both languages. With this in mind, my mother sent my brother and I to one of the public immersion schools in the city where we spent our mornings enveloped in the language of Voltaire while the world the surrounded the school sounded more like Margaret Atwood.

I remember opening the doors to the school and being shifted into an alternative reality. A world that contrasted sharply from the generalized prudish austerity of the Canadian prairies. It was a place where smartly dressed teachers from distant Montreal and even further off Bordeaux melded methodologies from both sides of the Atlantic.

I can’t help but compare my childhood commute to school with the lovely walk I have with my kids every morning here in Caceres, Spain. Here we walk past renaissance palaces to the soundscape of storks or swifts, depending on the season. A sharp contrast from my memories of shoveling half a meter of snow in minus thirty weather just to get to the sidewalk.

The contrasts don’t end there though. Schooling is quite different here, even if the education laws are similar, at least on paper. I remember having exams every semester or so when I was in school, but here one of my daughters sometimes has two, three and even four a week. Being from a different culture, I began asking what other parents thought and was alarmed at what I heard. While most seemed to agree that this incessant testing was excessive, some commented on the fact that the children might as well get used to it now, because as they advanced through the system things would only get worse. Powerful words like horrendous, terrible and suffering resounded and were some of the most common that I heard as we talking about this. Keep in mind, all of this when referring to the education of our children. I then became frightened for a moment. Did so many share the idea that children were meant to suffer? Was there some sort of psychopathic COVID side effect running rampant in society? Was there really a widespread desire to see kids suffer?

I then thought about it further and then realized that there actually might be some truth in what they were saying. In a region where around 30% (low-balling) will face a public exam that will determine their future, being good at taking exams isn’t just another life skill, it is the life skill. Forget actual learning, disregard interiorizing information and revision and don’t even consider learning by doing. The game here is to memorize, spit and forget. That’s how you get ahead and the sooner you learn how, the better. The platitudes you hear about the need to 'make an effort' really has nothing to do with actual learning and in fact translates into a view that one needs to suffer in order to learn. The prevailing concept of education is that it equates with suffering and penance. The alarm I heard wasn’t really a question of sadism, but actually a grumble of discontent and a rattle of resignation and surrender.

 The Spanish government can change the education law ten times more, but until it is capable of actually implementing the modern methodologies, complete with the key competences found in it, this prevailing view of the need to suffer will be passed on to yet another generation.