Why are teachers who have done free colonies for decades now saying enough?

TaradellThese past few weeks, the media have been filled with headlines referring to the reactions and consequences of the announcement made by some groups of teachers, who have expressed their refusal to go on camps as a measure of pressure to improve the conditions of the educational system.Here are a few as an example: “Going on school trips is not our obligation”, “Teachers against children: school trips are a right”, “Students from Valls refuse to attend class due to the cancellation of school trips [...]”, "The end of the educational contract", “Unease among families due to the threat from teachers”, “Families believe that stopping school trips is breaking the rules of the game”, “School trip centers fear the teachers' strike”, “Warning from school trip centers about teachers' protest: we are in COVID numbers”...It is very interesting to be able to interpret the nuances of these reactions: from the article published in this same newspaper by the director of relations at Fundesplai, to Ricard Ustrell's apron on Catalunya Ràdio, you can dip bread everywhere. But what I find truly extraordinary is the ease with which these headlines are twisting the issue. Let's get this straight: the teaching teams are the group that has most believed in the importance of organizing the colony experience for the children in our schools. We have been doing it for decades without receiving any kind of compensation beyond the gratitude of the families and the children themselves. We have done it selflessly with the conviction that this experience is fundamental for many educational aspects.

It is evident that this generosity of ours has created fertile ground for the creation of a business that, with the threat of a strike, is trembling. A multitude of colony houses and leisure companies, particularly two large foundations, now that they see the business in danger, argue the virtues of this experience even appealing to the rights of children. But, ladies and gentlemen: who, if not us, teachers, has believed in these arguments from the outset? I think it is only fair to recognize that it is we, the teachers, who have maintained the legacy of other figures like Artur Martorell, Pere Vergés, of the Vilamar colonies, the Republic of Children, and of so many other women and men who, from the beginning of the 20th century, started this experience of school colonies, an innovative and transformative pedagogical idea that is explained extraordinarily well in the documentary L'hora dels infants, and also in the book Colònies de Vilamar, coordinated by Carme Ortoll.What is now at stake is not the educational and pedagogical value of the camps but the fact that the collective of teachers assumes their management on a voluntary basis. Conditioning this protest to the rest of the demands for the improvement of the educational system reinforces its pedagogical value.A turning point

Perhaps this jolt can represent a turning point to slow down this inertia and also reflect on the meaning of going on camps today. The school camps of the Republic responded to a specific context, motivated by the health conditions of children in the industrialized metropolis of the city of Barcelona at the beginning of the 20th century. Today we have a diverse country, with public schools in also very diverse environments and with a range of families with unequal economic and social resources. In this context, I don't think it makes sense to imagine homogeneous and equal school camps for all schools, but rather that each team of teachers, in agreement with the families who are ultimately the ones who finance the project, should think about what meaning they can give to the camps, which educational opportunities are prioritized, whether they are for group cohesion or for knowledge and discovery of contexts different from those of the school, in a real immersion experience.And while there is this crossfire that absurdly distances us teachers, families, young people and leisure educators, there are those who watch it from the other side with an indignant passivity that is not proper of their responsibility. It would be good for those responsible for today's educational administration to take note of the determination and political commitment of their predecessors in the city of Barcelona, in the Mancomunitat and during the Second Republic, in favor of education and childhood.