What's that Sound?

The newest results of the international PISA test in the Camino a Ítaca this week. Once again, excuses are made but the root cause is once again avoided. Click over to read the original article published in Spanish in el HOY or read the English version below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

The programmed ritual self-flagellation has once again begun. The echoes of lashes reverberate throughout the country, from the smallest of teacher’s rooms to the editorial pages of newspapers to the highest offices of the Ministry of Education, as this devotional practice of self-criticism runs its course.

The results of the PISA test have been released and show that Spain has achieved its worse results since testing began back in 2000. In this eighth edition of the global test, 690,000 students from 81 countries aged 15 and 16 participated, 30,800 of them Spanish. The tests were conducted, with a one-year delay due to the pandemic, in the spring of 2022 so the newest of the never-ending string of education laws hadn’t fully come into effect.

Once again the flawed Spanish education system demonstrated that the window dressing changes that have been implemented towards a more competence based education system haven’t made a difference. The law may have changed and will certainly change again, but what is happening in classrooms across the country hasn’t.

The results have provoked a mad rush to uncover reasons and to assign blame. In Catalonia they even went so far as to release a xenophobic excuse that immigrants were overrepresented in their case.

In this edition the format of the math test changed again to become even more competency-based, one that requires students to make a greater effort in reasoning and relating knowledge in order to apply it to solving real life problems, which also certainly took its toll on the results.

Reading comprehension is one of the most basic skills, not because the OECD says so, but because it is the essential stepping stone for other learning. It is a key competence for educational inclusion, for the academic success of all students. This means working with competences rather than simple mechanical practice in class and the overwhelming load of homework Spanish kids receive is the way forward. The excessive focus on rote learning and memorization so common in Spanish classrooms is far past its sell by date.

But while the sounds of flagellation still reverberate, they refuse to acknowledge the real root of the problem. It’s almost like the Filipino Catholics or the Shiite Muslims in Iraq who continue to practice self-flagelation woke up one day and began whipping themselves only to realize that they had the wrong day marked on their calendar. They’re completely missing the point.

You can make as many changes as you want to the law but if you don’t change one of the fundamental pillars of Spanish society, real change will never happen.

The elephant in the room remains the opocisiones, the way that public employees are chosen. There is nothing more medieval and anti-competence based than the public exam system here in Spain and its presence can be felt in all levels of education, from primary all the way up through University.

Consciously or subconsciously, what teachers are preparing are opositores.

Teachers can’t be expected to believe in and apply competence-based education when their very careers came about due to an exam where they simply had to memorize and vomit a series of topics.

Until this system changes the whipping will never cease.

Looking for the End of the World

In this week's Camino a Ítaca a look at the mad men (and women) who hope and pray for the end of the world. Religious zealots who pine for the apocalypse and who actively try to bring it about through genocide. Click over and read the originally published piece in Spanish in el HOY or read the English translation below. (pdf en castellano abajo)

The photo was devastating. It was the complete and total opposite of what was normally expected, disorienting and confusing the viewer while making you look twice to make sure what you had seen was in fact real.

There, nestled amidst the rubble of what looked like the aftermath of an explosion, lay a gleaming white baby.

However this one wasn’t real. It wasn’t one of the thousands of horrifying images of children being dug out of the rubble that have been shown on TV (depending on the channel you watch) since the beginning of the current war in Gaza. It was less traumatizing yet more poignant, something deeper than the senseless daily massacre taking place in the so-called Holyland.

It was clearly a nativity scene, but one like you’ve never seen before. There in the middle of all that destruction lie a figurine of Christ wrapped in a Palestinian keffiyeh.

It was a message that the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem wanted to show the world. Orthodox Catholics, Armenian Assyrians, Melkites and Lutherans have all come together and announced that Christmas celebrations in the land where Jesus is said to have been born were cancelled.

This cancellation had nothing to do with the fictitious war on Christmas that the hysterical right claims takes place every year, nor Soros inspired wokeism that they say is ruining the backbone of Judeo-Christian society. This cancellation came about in protest against the ongoing genocidal bombing campaign that has killed more than 15,000 civilians and displaced almost 2 million people taking place less than 100kms away in Gaza.

But while the churches in the Holyland denounce this televised genocide, the religious right, and in particular their leaders in the west, have shown nothing but blind support for the radical right Israeli government’s non-proportional response and collective punishment to the war crimes committed by Hamas on October 7th.

In fact, one of the few western leaders to call for a permanent ceasefire has been Pedro Sanchez. But his bold move was immediately criticized and branded anti-Semitic by the right for doing so. Feijoo went against his own party’s electoral program and backtracked against a two-state solution saying that his party could not support the President’s stance.

The fascists have gone even further with Abascal touring kibbutzes in Israel decrying “the embarrassment that most Spaniards have felt at the statements made by Pedro Sanchez”. Even if the national Catholics have anti-Semitism in their DNA, its seems their pro-Zionism and hatred against Arabs is even stronger.

But bronze-aged biblical prophesy isn’t the most effective foreign policy tool, especially when based on the Rapture. The strand of evangelical theology which holds that the return of Jews to the region starts the clock ticking on Armageddon, after which Christ will return. Their interpretation of Scripture requires Israel, a war, and a Temple, before the conversion or destruction of the Jewish people. 

The push by evangelical Christian leaders to make this part of their Apocalypse is not really about supporting Israel. What they are trying to do is make their own religious desires real, desires that demand violence, blood and sacrifice of others, so that they, from the comfort of their homes, can achieve their deluded vision of a happy ending.