Spanish views from a small town

It's been a rainy midwinter, so far. It hasn't been cold, except yesterday morning, and only because the night before had been so clear that valley fogs formed. It has been a strange vacation, though, because our daughter has taken a job so that she can help pay for the next few months she has left of her vocational course. That means she's not home except for the holidays themselves, since the job is in Santiago, so she stays at a friend's apartment. The job is in a bookstore. Her main job is to package presents and help out customers. Her coworkers are nice people, but she is amazed at the amount of customers that could very well be labelled "karens." Sometimes because they're rude, other times because they act entitled, others because they treat the store clerks like lackeys. She's surprised at how few people are actually empathetic towards her and the others.  She's also surprised at how badly children read. Our daughter has always been a reade...

So much has been said and discussed in this past year of lockdowns about education. That online classes are good, that they're bad, that they're safer. What I'm pretty sure of is that they most likely helped save lives by cutting down contagion from school age children within the families. What I do know is that people have short memories. I was surprised this week when, perusing Facebook, I came across a post that mentioned radio classes during a polio epidemic in the United States. That there were epidemics before the polio vaccine was created, in which children were recommended to stay home during the summer, I do know, but polio is a disease that tended to be passed around in summer, rather than during winter and the school months.  In August of 1937, the epidemic of polio was so bad in the Chicago area, that the school committee and the city hall decided to postpone the opening of school. However, so as not to cut much into vacations and weekends during the coming mont...

It came out last week that the Princess Leonor will receive her last two years of high school education at a boarding school in Wales. They are the equivalent of sixth form in Britain, junior and senior years in the US, and the bachillerato in Spain. The total cost for the two years comes out to over €70,000, which will be paid out of the yearly asignation given to the Royal House out of the national budget. We commoners will be paying for her education. At the school, the UWC Atlantic College, she will study the coursework of the International Baccalaureate (IB), as well as participate in community workshops. She will live in a thirteenth century castle and its grounds, in what looks like a version of Hogwart's, along with over three hundred other children. Some of them are there on scholarships, others on family bank accounts. The daughter of the King of Jordan studied there, as did King Wilhelm of the Netherlands.  As a journalist said on television the other day, all parents i...

Yesterday was my second day with video classes. There was no comparison between Monday and Tuesday. Monday was tranquil; yesterday was chaos. Add to that a blackout, and online learning is still a thing of the future in small towns and villages. It started out fine, with just one student. The second hour was one of the most challenging ones, however. The howling winds and strong rain caused a blackout that affected me and three others. Only one was spared. So, my phone switched to the phone data from the wifi, and things slowed down a lot. I didn't even have a 4G connection; my phone said H+. I had had my Whatsapp open on the computer, as well, so I could look at pictures the students had sent me of exercises they had to do. Now, I couldn't answer questions or explain how to get the answers.  The lights came back on after about ten minutes. I restarted the computer, but the wifi signal was red, and I didn't have an internet connection on the computer. It seemed that the bla...

This morning I went for my walk. I've not been walking of late, and I really need to do so, so I'm trying to get back into the habit. It's not exactly easy, since the colder and later sunrises make it difficult to start out early. Which means that I either run errands, or I go walking.  Some mornings, when I scroll the different news agencies I usually check, I feel like starting to walk and not stopping until I drop, leaving all this behind. There is a quiet air of exhaustion this fall. Everything has been hitting extremes, and one can only have their nerves strung out like violin strings for so long. From politics, to Covid, passing through the usual idiocies, it's too much to keep taking in. I noticed an article today that mentions that Christmas might be a solitary affair. In Spain, Christmas is much like Thanskgiving in the United States; everyone goes home for the holiday. Households of two people become households of twenty, as children, in-laws, and grandchildre...

I've been doing a few classes since the lockdown began. Before that, I had classes every afternoon from three to eight. Now, I have a few scattered phone classes along the week, the most are two in one day, and I even have a day without any. There's been talk that the future of learning will be online. In fact, some universities are only going to offer online classes next fall. It sounds interesting. It would mean studying would be cheaper because you could connect with someone a thousand miles away while still in your own home. It means you could, logistically speaking, sign up for classes from more than one school.  But is it better than sitting in a class? I don't think so. While it is very comfortable to just set up the phone or sit in front of the computer screen, it is not the same as sitting in a classroom, with the teacher explaining something or writing examples on the blackboard. The teacher may answer questions online, but there isn't the immediacy of tha...

Every new government has tweaked the education system in some way, mostly to reflect their ideological convictions. Because, none of the tweaks have actually done much to improve education in this country. Today, in Galicia, university students and secondary school students have been called to strike, protesting against the law and against the cutbacks which are condemning a generation of young people to a mediocre education. This coming month one of the aspects of the new law will come into effect. Sixth and third graders will have to take a nation-wide exam. It's not meant to affect their grades or promotion to the next grade. The promotors of the law intend those exams to show how well the students are doing for their age and grade, and which schools do the best jobs. The better schools will get more funding, and the slower schools will be admonished.  I always thought a primary school teacher was the best-placed professional to know how a child is doing in school. Are they ...

Three weeks ago , t he students of the Education and Philosophy departments began occupying their main department buildings all day and night in protest, demanding the professors and funding they need for all their classes. They are still there. As one student mentioned, even though there are few students in those departments, they have still paid for their classes and have the right to be taught those subjects well, just like the students in the more popular majors.  During all those evenings and long nights, they don't only dedicate themselves to studying. They are, after all, young adults who would have naturally gone out and enjoyed some evenings on the town with their friends. It's part and parcel of a college education. Since they have begun their protest, though, they have supplanted those excursions with in-protest entertainment. The Philosophy students have a stash of board games of all kinds, cards included. They have a room set aside for different movies and docu...

My daughter is majoring in philosophy at college. She has been reading the major philosophers and learning about its history and different interpretations, and other things philosophers philosophize about. She likes it and is interested in most of her classes (except Logic, but she has never liked to follow logical thinking). A liberal arts education here is not the same as in the U.S. Here a student studies only what they major in, never subjects that pertain to other departments. For example, the only class that can be called scientific in the philosophy major is Logic. And it is taught because it is pertinent to forming a good argument. Which is necessary for philosophy students to learn, because they will be forming arguments at some point in their studies. My daughter is learning other things, though, through her involvement in student associations. She has also been learning about student politics and activism. She is currently involved in a protest that students in both the De...

School has recently begun again after the Christmas vacation. Kids are waiting at the bus stops in the morning to go to classes, most of them only anxious to see friends again and play with them at recess. In our township there are three large schools, along with the high school. But the younger children in some of the villages still attend the local escola unitaria .  These small unitarias , as they're called by most people, are one or two room schoolhouses. The classroom is on the bottom floor, and on the top floor is a small apartment for the teacher. The smallest are only one classroom. The biggest have two classrooms, and apartments for two teachers. In the middle of the parish where my husband grew up, there are two buildings with two classrooms each, together. Practically all these small schoolhouses around here were built in the 1940's and 1950's, to bring a certain order to education. My mother-in-law went to school in a private house where the teacher was boardi...

Poverty. Despair. Hatred. That is how extremism comes into existence. From poverty to despair to hatred. And, ultimately, action upon that hatred. It has come to light that one of the idiot terrorists that commited those acts of hatred in Paris was born in Paris 29 years ago. He had been accused of many petty crimes but never jailed. He grew up in one of the banlieues of Paris, where poverty amongst immigrants is the norm. He had left France to return to Algiers, the origin of his family, and was assumed to have fallen into the trap of radicalized hatred. Hatred toward a system that had created his poverty and from thence despair. The one thing that might have mitigated it was missing - a good education. It's the usual problem. Every child should have access to a good, free public education which teaches him to think and learn, and eventually to find the learning necessary to acquire a decent job somewhere. But, during times of economic downturns, one of the first budgets cut is ...

August is almost over and the recuperation exams are nearly here. This is the last week of studying for those who want to recuperate the subjects they failed in June. Some have it more difficult than others. There are those who, after doing nothing all year, expect in two months to learn enough to pass maybe five or six subjects at the beginning of September. And who also think they will enjoy summer at the same time. The Spanish system of education is different. (What isn't, in Spain?) To be promoted from one grade to another, you cannot have failed more than two subjects. If, at the end of June, you have failed anything, you can recuperate that subject at the beginning of September in a species of final exam. If you have failed up to two subjects and don't recuperate them in September, you can recuperate them in January. So, if you fail math in June and September, you go on to the next grade, where you will study that grade's math. The year you failed you study on your ...

My daughter was waiting for me to pick her up at the beach. Next to her were a couple of girls whom she didn't know, also waiting. They were about a couple of years younger than her and talking about subjects they would have to study next year in school. One of them was philosophy. One of the girls asked the other, "What do you study in philosophy?" "What they said years ago, the philosophers and stuff they thought about. And I don't know why, because it just doesn't interest me at all." My daughter, who is studying philosophy at college, was doing a jaw-drop in her mind. That's the way it generally is. Teenagers usually develop an allergy to thinking about anything other than the here and now. Most kids have never been taught that today is a step to tomorrow, not just a day to lie about, do nothing, and get drunk as a skunk. While that has happened in every generation, it seems to be reaching epidemic proportions now. Where does the fault lie? ...