Much has been said lately about the “alarming” failure of secondary education in light of the data provided by the report on the state of education in Catalonia 2006-2007, prepared by the Fundació Jaume Bofill and duly publicized by the media that, intentionally or not, encourage the harangues in favor of discipline and what the Anglo-Saxons called “back to basics.”
This article by Nora Catelli, published yesterday, escapes the false dilemma to which this situation seems to lead us: either we return to discipline and a traditional curriculum based on the “basic skills” of literacy, mathematics, and little else, or we flee forward in a perpetual pedagogical renewal led by pedagogues and technocrats armed with the most diverse recipes for the “improvement” of education.
In reality, as Catelli does, the situation must be examined from a much more complex perspective that takes into account structural factors that remain intentionally veiled, as well as the role of education in current production systems: the abandonment of non-compulsory education by 30% of students allows for the covering of a huge pool of “unskilled” jobs while leaving the field free for the elites to access the management of public space.
The article is worth reading in full.