Spanish public education, always controlled by socialism, is an instrument of socialist indoctrination that excludes all liberal ideas.
Human capital is the most important thing an organisation has. Spanish youths are sold off cheap. When they reach university, they think passing is the most important thing. What is essential is: appreciating the worth of making the effort; cooperating; rising after failure; discovering innovation; developing critical sense; managing uncertainty; being disciplined to attend class; moving from ignorance to knowledge. Badly educated in Secondary Education. No enthusiasm for encouraging student projects, but materialism and mistrust. They have been taught to act the victim and make no effort, and the same applies in many homes.
Campbell’s Law (CL) states: if the evaluation of a social process becomes a quantitative objective, the process will be distorted and obtain opposite effects to those sought. Systematically with any exam, many students obtain marks for free despite not attending half the classes. Teachers are seen more like judges than a source of information; they become potential enemies, which is confirmed when students do not obtain the desired mark. Healthy self-esteem from making the effort, which is not known, is replaced with victims’ irresponsibility.
Educational distortion came first, but worsens because Rectors favour it. How can an old evaluation system do so much harm? Why and since when? Who benefits?
Spinoza said that people are moved by emotions, not by reasoning. Youths reason worse because, without experience, their capacity to relativise lowers, and they become more infected. When an evaluation system concentrates on a measure (i.e. an exam), insecure students react emotionally and distort their essence. This reduces the educational process for passing exams. Having been trained, students play the victim role, a true vaccine against making the effort. Continuously lower academic expectations result in devalued degrees.
Since 1978, public education has been controlled by PSOE, even without it being in government, while PP was distracted by economy. When Zapatero arrived in 2004, PSOE de facto abandoned social democracy and became radical by following the totalitarian Sao Paulo Forum agenda: gaining power by cultural hegemony through education and propaganda; subsidising the world of culture, the mass media and feminist organisations.
The strategy is to lower academic expectations and pass as much as possible. Independently, the government ignores CL, finances universities according to number of graduates and Rectors who, by confirming the perverse effect of CL, encourage more graduates in order to obtain more budget. Students vote Rectors and Deans.
The benefit for the left is twofold: its seeds future electoral support from students satisfied with relaxed expectations; as students are not used to making the effort, are critically incapable and lack self-esteem, they are easily manipulated by propaganda media. In this setting, a demanding teacher figure is an obstacle, and ends up giving in to many laid-back submissive colleagues who go with the tide or look the other way. The few discrepant ones feel fed up, are tired and give up.
University access exams (EvAU) should be done for large student destination areas, but are uniform for future physiotherapists, artists or engineers, which is absurd and does not guide students to know which Higher Secondary Education qualification to choose. Concentrating students’ future fortune means that opposite emotional incentives flourish in Secondary Education. Rather than teachers teaching what they must, they prepare students for EvAU by distorting education, while centres ignore CL and measure their educational efficiency by an absurd ranking of successful EvAU levels.
This problem affects our country like very few other problems might. Recovering effort, an evaluation system that favours cooperation and trusting teachers are urgent matters. The political choice of Rectors and Deans distorts university education. A change from the top will not take place because of political interests. The healthcare crisis has confirmed that a bureaucratised and politicised public university is not adapted to digitisation, with education centres closed in COVID-19 phase 3, while bars, shops, gyms and beaches were open. When families realise that devaluated university degrees are worth less than a trade and offer minimum lifetime income, some universities will have to close.
Post published in Las Provincias