A few years ago, it seemed that Catalonia's aspiration was to become a country linked to research and innovation. The idea, they said, was to be a kind of European Massachusetts. And while it's true that good things were once done in more scientific disciplines, Catalan researchers graduating from the faculties of Philosophy and Humanities face a very hostile or even impractical terrain. Neither the educational nor the cultural system have sufficient mechanisms or resources to allow them to continue developing, not just normally, but minimally.
Although social organization and the future of humanity depend on our stories and our capacity for critical analysis, in recent decades it has seemed to us that we could entrust everything to the unstoppable pairing of science and technology. Leaving aside this widespread trend in societies of the Global North, let's pay attention for a moment to our local cultural destiny. Lately, we've been talking more than ever about saving Catalan culture, but most researchers and thinkers who have studied the unique features of our language, the creations of our most imaginative minds, our artistic talents, or our historical specificities can't find a suitable outlet. But it's not just that they don't find reward for their academic excellence and years of research; it's that these merits often end up penalizing them.
As the Faculties of Philosophy and Humanities are becoming increasingly thinner, there's less room for researchers in these unfortunate faculties than before. There are also those who don't even consider staying, because the extreme financial hardship of the years as an associate professor is often incompatible with a good handful of life circumstances (such as, for example, having children). Many of these thinkers, therefore, will end up in secondary school, which should be good news for the education system. The problem is that the system hasn't provided a pathway within secondary school for those brilliant and highly educated people who no longer have a place at university. We've praised Finland's education system to the point of caricature, but one of its key features is that its teacher training programs are selective and rigorous.
On the contrary, in Catalonia, it can happen that despite having one of the best academic records in the state, having a doctorate, having taught at foreign universities, or having published a number of publications, you end up directly in the queue for interim or civil service positions. Because the scoring system used to award positions primarily favors having spent many years in teaching. And, be careful, I don't want to be misunderstood, this isn't about becoming elitist; we should have teachers with all possible skills and backgrounds, and it's fair to reward years of service in the teaching profession and continuing education courses. But the criteria are very unbalanced and perhaps should be recalibrated: we can't penalize those who follow a different path, which is also very necessary for our social health and cultural survival. We need these experts in our idiosyncrasies (and in the rest of the disciplines as well, of course). It's good for secondary school students that a percentage of teachers have doctoral training. Furthermore, shouldn't high schools have a minimum of a research center spirit?
There have always been secondary school teachers who have been writers or thinkers, but, as is the case everywhere, the "servitude of protocols" of our times—as Ingrid Guardiola puts it—causes the mental space for thought to be progressively and drastically reduced. The ever-increasing bureaucracy, curricular changes, the fact that books are often unavailable and materials have to be created (without having lightened the teaching load), or the inherent instability of teachers without tenure, among other obstacles, mean that research teachers are given the upper hand without the opportunity to conduct research or attend events. If society invests so much money in these people earning doctorates and studying or teaching abroad, wouldn't it be logical that there would be an interest in ensuring that their learning has the greatest possible social impact? Wouldn't it be nice if your search could have some continuity?
We all remember high school teachers who left their mark on us. Most of the time, they were passionate teachers who instilled a hunger for knowledge and a sense of rigor in the learning process. In my case, that teacher was Gregorio Luri (Goyo, we called him in class), a philosopher who would later dazzle many people outside the classroom. Now, perhaps he would have a harder time combining teaching with the profession of thinking.
Since we've been in the era of anti-intellectualism for some time now, I'll be cautious once again: having done a lot of research, of course, doesn't translate into being a good teacher. Fortunately for us, the education system is full of excellent teachers without doctorates. But that's not the question I'm addressing here. The question is: can we afford to look down on the specialists in our culture? And above all: now that students are beginning to rely too many mental processes on language models, isn't that when we most need those who have been exhaustively trained in the art of thinking?
