Back to the Future or Back to the Past?

Back to this?

As our children head back to school, this week's Camino a Ítaca looks back to the future and the eduaction that awaits them. What will this academic year year? Click over to read the original in Spain in el HOY or read the English version below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

The long Spanish summer has come to an end, at least on paper. The temperatures might still soar into the high thirties and the rains may yet to fall, but yesterday the nine o’clock traffic jams have returned to the streets. The kids are back in school.

They do so under a cloud of uncertainty regarding how the pandemic will evolve in the coming months. With the much more contagious delta variant now being the most common type in the country, it remains to be seen how the school year will develop, even with the extremely high level of vaccinations across the country.

In most cases, the measures from the previous academic year remain in effect. The general protocol remains in place for the so-called “stable coexistence groups” or “bubble groups” in nursery and primary school in a continued attempt to avoid contact with other students, even if specialist teachers move from group to group. Granted, the minimum distance between desks has been reduced to 1,2 from the previous 1,5 meters, but the importance placed on this seems to be about as incongruous as many of the other restrictions that have been imposed outside of class. These are kids that may have ridden for hours on packed buses and airplanes over the summer, sitting just centimeters from people they don’t know. But even still, schools are once again supposed to minimize the movement of groups of students throughout the center and avoid assemblies or face-to-face meetings and, where possible, avoid all activities that involve mixing different groups or classes. This socialization factor of schooling, ever so important at these ages, must once again be put on pause.

We all want the best for our kids and of course want teachers to enjoy a workspace where they feel safe, of these things there can be not doubt. But there are such things as calculated or measured risks, activities that are worth undertaking because the benefits outweigh the acceptable risks. Last year, in many schools across the region, group work in class was forbidden by certain school committees even if the Junta’s general directive clearly stated that it was permissible if the minimum distances were respected. The pandemic served up the perfect opportunity for those in the educational community who do not believe in community learning theories to drag their students back into the black and white classrooms of old with straight rows of desks and with rote learning at its core.

Working in small groups provides learners with opportunities to articulate ideas, uncover misconceptions, and negotiate with others to create projects or reach consensus, even during the first stages of education. Group activities allow students to discover deeper meaning in the content and improve critical thinking skills. Effective use of group work engages students with higher-level content that is thought-provoking and that can have multiple interpretations. But this kind of teaching doesn’t neatly fit into exam-driven teaching, it takes hard work and planning.

I appreciate the concern that the authorities have shown when faced with getting out kids back into school safely. I only wish that half of that concern was spent on what actually happens once they are there.