Many of the forms of incivility that are constantly manifested on the street and in people's attitudes have their origin in poor education. At home and at school. We ask the politicians who govern the administrations to alleviate the uncivil consequences, and they must do so, but the breeding ground for bad decisions is in training. There has been a lot of talk these days about the poor level of Catalan schoolchildren, according to the latest PISA report, in such core subjects as mathematics or reading comprehension. At the tail end in Spain and at levels where teaching professionals put their hands on their heads.
Jordi Basté, the leading radio player in Catalonia, was right yesterday by giving voice to teachers on Rac 1 to give their opinion on the matter. And the truth is that he was devastating. Especially the comments of Pilar, a teacher who launched several headlines that made us understand why, while in this community we are thinking about useless things, the level of teaching invites us to emerge without knowledge and without values. The most lacerating summary presented by the teacher is that schoolchildren are not taught. Two hours of Spanish, two hours of Catalan, weekly, sharing importance, for example, with many other activities of lesser pedagogical value. That is the educational system that teachers have to deal with. Little demand, laxity when it comes to instilling knowledge and little confrontation because as soon as a teacher gets a little firm, a threat to the singing is launched. Pilar blushingly confessed: “I tried to take a student's cell phone and he told me he would cut me.” That is the situation that ends up leading to pathetic results that place Catalonia in a process of clear deterioration if it wants to be more competitive and a better destination for its citizens.
Honestly, as a society we cannot allow brats to decide how they have to be in class and that attitude causes young people to suffer a deterioration in the level received that takes its toll on them in the future. Administrations do have to demand a better agenda and firm discipline, even if that means a degree of unpleasant confrontation. The approach of a school where forcing is a verb that is not conjugated allows giving wings to goodism. And all this means that a significant level of young people are becoming more and more shy, more lazy and more badasses.
In this climate of disaffection, it is also normal that teaching professionals, outnumbered by everyone, are more likely to take sick leave and that everything seems fine to the parents of the boys as long as these problems do not upset them too much. And if they have to pay a reinforcement teacher so that, instead of teaching, he does the children's homework, then it is paid. What a troop.
