"There are problems in teaching. Professors at the university say that students arrive with less knowledge and skills, because they express themselves very poorly. In the debate about content or competencies, the reality we encounter when students finish high school is that neither content nor skills, the amount of content is very reduced, lower than what they had before, and neither are the skills that are so vaunted. They end up understanding worse and expressing themselves worse. We have to look for solutions and this report tries to study it and put it on the table, to propose a debate," stressed the RAE academic Salvador Gutiérrez in the presentation today of an unusual report in the RAE, in which the Academy has focused on the teaching of language and literature in Spain.
The director of the RAE, Santiago Muñoz Machado, has stressed that the report, prepared in collaboration with numerous professors, is not animated by a "devastating" or "critical of anyone" spirit, but that it has the clear desire to "generate a great national debate" and to influence "a public debate that is as complete as possible" and the bases of "a future State pact on education", which they consider necessary "given the defects posed by the current system". And because, as the academic Ignacio Bosque has recalled, "the problems of education are not measured by legislatures, they are measured by generations."
"There are very real problems that are barely highlighted in official documents. Many young people are not able to put together the meaning of a text, summarize its fundamental ideas and distinguish them from accessory ones. Why is this not talked about? Not only is it not They express fluently or write in an agile and articulate manner, but they have many difficulties in understanding the meaning, and that did not exist a few years ago," Bosque pointed out.
And Gutiérrez has summarized that "we live in a transition between two educational paradigms, the traditional one, of very exaggerated memorization, and that of competencies, which tries to transmit to the student not so much knowledge to learn but skills that will enable him to life", and has opted for a balance between memorization and skills and for all teachers to be involved in teaching the language. "If a student reaches the age of 14 without knowing how to read and write adequately, he will not only fail in language, but in science, in history, he will not be able to read a page in less than 20 minutes. It is one of the fundamental causes of failure in teaching. Language is everyone's home, everyone's role, it does not correspond only to language teachers."
The academic Pedro Álvarez de Miranda has insisted that "without denying the importance of the competency approach linked to the weight of didactics, the report emphasizes the need not to postpone the contents" and to combat the demonization of memory without returning to memorism "neither pass At the opposite extreme, the history of teaching lurches and we would try to avoid them." And in the face of the current gamification of teaching, he has remarked that "interesting students is much more difficult than entertaining them, but much more important."
And among the causes of reaching the current situation, "the relaxation of demand levels" stands out. "I was shocked two or three years ago when I learned that in the exams for teachers, even in language, the grade was lowered for spelling mistakes. But you shouldn't be a teacher until you make them. This lowering of the levels of demand has a lot to do with it. And also relaxation in the level of specialization of the teachers. I was a high school professor and due to educational policy needs the concept of related subjects was introduced, we were all good for everything, and no, in secondary school there is a level of specialization and the Language teacher must be the one who best teaches language classes. And from those dusts come these sludges.
The writer, academic and professor of Literature Carme Riera has also pointed out that since the teaching of language and literature was merged, the latter "is left helpless." "Before, literature was an element of national cohesion, in the first part of the 20th century we felt very proud to have the Cervantes language. Today national cohesion involves football, the red one, not literature. Azaña said that he who does not has read Don Quixote is morally diminished. You could ask the congressmen, because I believe many have not read Don Quixote. And literature serves, as Octavio Paz said, to remember what we are, in its etymological sense, to awaken to what we are. " and has assured that he does not understand "that the editors do not ask for the return of the teaching of literature in high school."
Among the solutions, in addition to a rebalance between memory and skills, Salvador Gutiérrez has pointed out the need for more hours of language and literature classes. "The need for more hours to practice is absolute. Many more hours are needed to acquire that complex cognitive faculty of writing and expressing yourself well." Álvarez de Miranda has also opted for "a social dignity for teachers, it is the country in which we have the expression 'hunger than a schoolteacher'. This is no longer the case, but their remuneration is low compared to other countries. And the number of hours, an outrage for the quality of teaching.
