The latest news we’re publishing late, we swear. Earlier this month, Madrid hosted the first Educational Innovation Congress, which brought together representatives from the centers and entities that are part of the Innova portal/network, promoted by Mariano Fernández Enguita from the Department of Sociology at the University of Salamanca. Reading the article published by El País, we find affinity with some of the criticisms and proposals mentioned; for example, the idea that innovating in schools implies fighting “against organizational structures and inertia dating from the 19th century” or the impossibility of mobilizing a teaching staff and management teams that are content to maintain a relatively comfortable status quo. However, and without wanting to prejudge, it would be worth examining closely what the organizations that are part of Innova understand by “creativity” and “innovation.” From the outset, we find that a good part of the projects published on the portal are included in the field of values education, education for citizenship, education for democracy… A representative example, and we don’t want to be mean or anything: Educreación. We’ve gone from the peace mural with white hands stamped on packing paper to a music video of a song for peace made with a cell phone. Is this really innovation? Of course, we can’t forget that we operate in a field where the fact that students “sit in a circle around the teacher” is still something remarkable…
