Let's give Del Pozo a chance

The other day I got hooked listening to an interview they were conducting with Dr. Joan Manuel del Pozo, president of the Education Council of Catalonia, who is to lead the debate on education.

It caught me because you no longer hear people speaking with such serenity. And it made me angry with myself, because my first reaction was to think that Del Pozo was being naive, instead of thinking that either they sit down to talk like people again or we will end up destroying everything, starting with education.

Del Pozo was clear enough to state that no more diagnoses are needed, because education is over-diagnosed; that the unions will not be the exclusive protagonists of the debate, as they have been during the time of labor confrontation, and that now it is necessary to listen to teachers, families, experts, and students.

But the most revolutionary things were the concepts he used. He spoke of the principle of good faith, of recognizing the good faith of the interlocutor, because “now there is a crisis of trust.” He nailed it (I hope): “We have to try. The citizenry is tired of pure confrontation, practiced with an unacceptable harshness.” Even more: “There are many teachers with a high sense of professional responsibility who are waiting for a change in the playing field, to move from the field of protest to the field of commitment, trust, and mutual aid.” He asked that the dialogue be practiced with “great deliberative elegance” to “discover the joy of speaking in an argued, non-disqualifying way, to try to find agreements.”

All this was said by Del Pozo to Òscar Fernández from Catalunya Ràdio, and I found myself asking, please, all parties involved, to give it a chance, like someone asking for a chance for peace.