Ideology? Mine's not Ideology!?

School's out on the Camino a Ítaca this week. Today a look at what education might look like if the PP forms a coalition government with the neofrancoists here in Extremadura and then at the national level. Click over to read the original in Spanish published in el HOY or read the English version below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

Each time I hoisted the eight or nine kilo bundle onto my shoulder, I was sure that it was going to be the last. The backpack’s left strap had begun to frazzle and fray under the tremendous weight sometime around Christmas and I was certain it wasn’t going to last the school year.

The senseless back and forth of its overflowing cargo of coursebooks acted as a daily, sweaty reminder of a broken school system overburdened with its excessive content, handicapped by its rigid inflexibility and reigned over by unaccountable civil servants with more job security than monarchs.  

The promised revolution of competence-based teaching that was supposed to be introduced with the latest education law had remained, like so many unimplemented innovations before it, forgotten, lost under those weighty tomes among the torn bits of paper and pencil shavings at the bottom of that pack. The law may have changed, but old habits hadn’t. (De)memorization, la copia, fill in the gaps and endless page turning still make up the bulk of classroom time in the mad rush to cover the seemingly endless contents.

And before this new law, the eighth since Spain’s return to democracy, has even had a chance to be thoroughly ignored and disregarded, distressing signs are pointing towards a possible change in government. One that could result in a coalition with the extreme right that would presage yet another reform.  

And that could be nightmarish.

The PP no longer holds a monopoly on the right and needs support to govern. Disaffected ultras from within its ranks have now migrated towards a much more extreme, aggressive brand of conservatism. One that bristles at the mere mention of pillars of modern education like inclusivity, plurality, diversity, sustainability and critical thinking. And it’s a party that desires power.

It’s a neofrancosim that unabashedly harkens back with fondness to the black and white days when education was solely controlled by the Church with stern nuns posing as teachers dishing out equal measures of liturgy and cruel punishment.

Under the euphemistic slogan of freedom of education and freedom of choice, this party wants to devolve even more power back to the Church that holds the vast majority of concertados in the country. All the while contradictorily insisting that ideology be removed from the classroom.

Another of their mottos is freedom of memory. A fallacious concept which would repeal the historical memory law, paving the way to them twisting history and begin presenting far right dictators like Hitler, Mussolini and Franco simply as misunderstood good Samaritans.

Our education system is seriously flawed and is in need of renovation. But the answer does not lie in going back to the days when it was taught that women came from men’s ribs or that the world was created in six days. What is needed is a profound overhaul in the way teachers are trained, chosen and then managed, along with a shift away from the excessive focus on content.

Contemporary methodologies present in the current law, where competences and learning to do are emphasized, work. They simply need a chance to be properly implemented, giving some much needed relief to those strained and worn out backpack straps.