Dinner for three. We are at Xemei enthusiastically celebrating the return of the tuber magnatum. My friends are responsible parents (the first has two children who are already sensing pre-adolescence and the second a sprout who will turn twelve months shortly). They are also two of the most intelligent men I know, which means they act as parents with little rhetoric (they are not, to be clear, among those motivated cretins who appear in the Ara Criatures supplement), meaning they guide the growth of their kids as one of their very first moral duties, meaning that, in a two-hour meal, they don't spend more than half an hour giving me the turra about their offspring. The father of the youngest child is starting to think about which school his heir will attend: one of his very understandable priorities is for the little one to end up speaking native English. That's why he is looking for (and saving money already) an English immersion school that, if possible, enjoys British or Yankee imperial accreditation.
I am tremendously in favor of education (and therefore languages) that have the moral support of an army; but while he lists some of Barcelona's international schools, I can't help but grimace. I know very little about kids, but regarding education, I have always followed the advice my teacher Francesc Garriga once gave me; namely, when you go to a nursery, school, university, or whatever is appropriate, always choose the oldest one. After listening to the options my friend is considering, I end up suggesting that he stop with the posh nonsense and have the kindness to take the kid to the Lycée Français (mental notes: 1, I do not renounce my militant and absolutely visceral hatred for everything related to the French, but I have to acknowledge their excellence in educational matters and 2, the child's mother is French), a school where they will teach him the extraordinary cultural foundations of this dreadful country of prudes based on the only educational method that works: that the students work hard.
I am convinced that after many years in which education has suffered the influence (as positive as it is disastrous) of psychopedagogy, of technological innovations of internet virtuality and of political positions such as feminism or the democratization of teaching itself, the art of transmitting culture and science will soon return to the foundations of what my dear José de Calasanz theorized for schools: namely, teaching children to read, write and add. Whatever they do in life, and no matter how many ChatGPTs and other bullshit are invented, our students will have to be learned in reading and will have to grapple with the complexity of a text (they will also be forced to apply calculation to make an invoice or check the fluctuations in the price of cod). This may seem very old-fashioned but, if I were a recruiter for a company, it's the first thing I would ask an applicant; if they can write a text, read the newspaper and figure out a square root, the individual is a real gem.
Whatever they do in life, and no matter how many ChatGPTs and other bullshit are invented, our students will have to be learned in reading and will have to grapple with the complexity of a textThe echo of this conversation resonated in my mind following the special supplement published last Thursday by La Vanguardia, precisely dedicated to the school theme (Towards a more collaborative training). Reading most of the advertising texts from many international centers in Barcelona, I had a blast admiring to what extent everyone had been infected by the pedagogical nonsense.new age. There were schools that defended a more participatory, technological education model and all sorts of nonsense, and, chewing up the marketing to very shameful limits, also centers that presented themselves as a guarantee to educate the leaders of the future and students willing to change the world. While I was reading, I was cracking up with laughter, thinking what these people had been smoking, not only because education was a minor issue in the whole mess, but because I would say that one must have a minimum responsibility when it comes to not contaminating children with the mental masturbations typical of adults.
Educating in sustainability, a teaching to guarantee the happiness of students and where the contents are participatory... give me a break. Please do the damn favor of guaranteeing a good education for the students and, above all, remind the children every day that teaching is not something fun and that often, in the classroom and in life, we are here to cram and suffer like pepitos. Amidst the general nonsense, I found it amusing that the Lycée Français de Barcelona (despite falling into the same clichés as other centers) titled its promotional writing "Lycée Français de Barcelona: almost a century of quality education." This "almost a century" and "of quality" seemed to me an island of hope amidst so much imposed falsity. It's quite ironic; that it is precisely me who has to end up defending the collons of the French, with their cathedral-like political cynicism and those endless effeminate operas. But we will do everything necessary to guarantee normal, suffering children, and lovers of white truffle.