Desolation

I have some memories from my high school days that would be unthinkable today. They didn't harm my education precisely because school prepared us to judge the behavior of adults like adults. Does that mean we were already educated at home? In part, yes, but it wouldn't have been enough if high school hadn't also held us accountable for our judgments. These memories are of behaviors as scandalous as they were humanly excusable, precisely because they taught us to distinguish between what was serious and what wasn't. Teacher behavior is an essential part of education, which in my case was always in the public system.

I fondly remember a teacher who would fall asleep in class early in the afternoon. We would remain silent, look at each other, and laugh, until the woman abruptly left the head of the class, relocated, and continued the lesson. I remember a young substitute teacher who didn't fall asleep in class, but in bed. He rented an apartment on the same street as the school, and sometimes they left class to go look for him at his house because he had fallen asleep. If this seems unbelievable, it will seem even more so that, one very hot June day, another teacher made us go get him a beer from the bar to drink in class. This same teacher, when we were taking an exam, played music for us. I remember hearing theConcert of Aranjuezperformed by Miles Davis. Another day, he played us Leonard Cohen's latest album. After the exam, I asked him if I could record the album on a cassette. A few days later, he brought me not one, but two recorded albums. Forty years later, Cohen still keeps me company, and he never lets me down. Perhaps I idealize him out of the nostalgia of my youth, but I have very fond memories of the master classes and the respect we had for the good teachers. We were able to go to the bar after class with some of them, and one night a friend of mine, a classmate, hooked up with a teacher.

Not even my friend's adventure seems as serious to me as the mistakes that those in charge of the entrance exams are now making year after year. Last year, there were serious errors in the Spanish literature and design tests. This year, Catalan language and literature students found two poorly transcribed verses from one of the most famous poems in our literature,Desolation, which any Catalan teacher should know by heart. What should students think? Mistakes like these only serve to further turn the education system into a learning experience of hypocrisy and irresponsibility.