Why has Catalonia suspended the PISA tests?
School failure has multiple causes, but at the root of all of them is that 20% of our schoolchildren – the same percentage as in any country or social class – suffer from dysfunctions in their neurodevelopment that make learning difficult in today's school.
Didn't that diversity exist in the past?
Charlemagne was as dyslexic, hyperactive and impulsive as Bill Gates or Edison. They were not good students in the classrooms; but they are excellent entrepreneurs, like so many failed schoolchildren, and successful in life.
Isn't that success of some failed schoolchildren usually the exception and not the norm?
We estimate that 30% of prisoners would not be prisoners if they had been diagnosed and treated for these learning problems as children. I have treated some inmate from wealthy families who drives without a license, because it is difficult for him to read and he fails the test. The richest have a driver.
How to detect and diagnose that 20%?
Aptitude or attitude tests are useless; The intelligence quotient (IQ) test is useful and from it we could help them improve their performance and thus everyone's.
And if they are not treated, what happens?
Well, everyone's performance in the classroom suffers. And they, if we do not help them in time, enter a degrading circle; They blame themselves and hate school. The richest are helped by their family; the poor are marginalized.
Are there the same percentage of these children among poor, immigrants or rich?
The same one in the school in the poor neighborhood as the rich one; There is both among Catalans of several generations and among recent arrivals.
Why is it obvious that socioeconomic level influences academic failure?
Because the rich detect this problem early in their children and can pay for therapies. The poor, no. That is why charter schools suffer less from the problem, and that is why we propose that everyone be diagnosed and treated equally in public schools as well.
Couldn't the teachers themselves diagnose and treat these different students?
Up to 90% can be treated in class and by the teacher himself with external help in some cases. But in public schools today, of that 20% with problems, only 1 or 2 children are diagnosed. The other 8 or 9 are simply considered “poor in school performance” and the tendency is to pass everyone.
Can't it be that there are lazy children?
The human brain likes to solve, get it right, succeed... If it doesn't succeed, it's because it can't. Blaming the child for his peculiar neurodevelopment, which causes his poor academic performance, is to increase hers and our problems.
How many Catalan schoolchildren suffer from them?
In Catalonia we have 1,300,000 in primary, ESO and high school, which means that there are 170,000 with innate difficulties concentrating, hyperactive and impulsive, but only 30,000 are diagnosed.
Why does Catalonia do worse?
It has been 15 years since we saw the failure of PISA coming precisely because we do not know how to integrate that 20% with problems.
Due to laziness, ignorance, ideology...?
More from certain pedagogues than from teachers. There are pedagogues who resist medicalizing education and stigmatizing children.
What would you answer them?
If you don't treat them at school, the label of failure is given to them by life when, as adults, they find it difficult to read, write and calculate: they suffer from addictions and have more accidents, because their neurodevelopment makes them impulsive: let's treat them as children. And they improve.
Do you want to put a psychiatrist in every classroom?
My team has been studying these disorders with 14,000 students for 12 years and when you detect and report them you already have 50% won.
Which countries serve them best?
France has suffered from these learning problems in its neighborhoods for years, but President Macron himself inaugurated a plan last week to treat that 20%.
And is there a plan here to deal with it?
The Generalitat has just approved a plan with a budget of 20 million euros and European aid: it is a good beginning.
How have you dealt with it until now?
Expensive schools maintain the culture of effort, memorization, and testing, which is what really improves performance.
And don't most schools?
Many apply frivolous pedagogies without a scientific basis and avoid evaluating. Exams are replaced by team projects.
Pareto's Law: 5 look; 1 works.
And they talk about a child without exams who should be happy doing what he wants every day.
And so we failed in PISA.
I was a psychiatrist for Camarón de la Isla and I was brilliant. He suffered academic failure not because of a lack of aptitudes, but because his family could not pay for treatment for dyslexia: 300 euros a month... Without dyslexia and drugs, Camarón would have been even bigger!
