18 years in Education

In the 18 years I have been in this country, which, despite my criticisms, I love dearly, education has changed, and not precisely for the better. The failure rate at schools is abysmal. This year alone 6000 children (nearly 17% of the total number of students in secondary education) have not been able to attain the most basic certificate of ESO (CSE Compulsory Secondary Education certificate) in Cantabria. But what is even more saddening is since the introduction of ESO, the requirements for each subject have been progressively lessened to accommodate the under-achievers.

Education academics have wonderful theories on how to put across information that will form future adults. But, the crunch comes when the teachers, armed with all these wonderful theories, are faced with a bunch of lazy, unmotivated, noisy, disrespectful and vengeful students in the classroom. And to make matters worse, they can’t do anything about it. No wonder so many are on sick leave! In the past, if a teacher said, “Tell your parents I want to see them,” the child cringed but today, it is the teacher who dare not say those words because he is the one who cringes at the thought of facing a vociferous parent! “What? My child? No way, he is the most wonderful child in the world, it is you, who’s wrong, not my child!”

As a parent, I have felt it terribly unfair that, in the classroom, my child has had to put up with the “clowns” who have hindered her progress. My question to the authorities is, “Why are my child’s rights to learn hindered by another child’s rights to schooling, when he obviously does not want to learn? Why can’t we put the troublemakers all together in one place and the more industrious in another?” Oh, I get it! We would be discriminating against the clowns, right? Or is it that the future project of certain parties is to have more and more malleable sheep in society in order to manipulate them at will? If that is so, then the poor will continue being poor without opportunities to get out of the hole, and the rich, who can afford private schooling, will continue occupying positions of control and wealth, unless you are a politician in which case you can control everybody, and even if you are in the wrong you will have the sheep voting for you time and again.