A few weeks ago, the students of the Baldiri i Reixac School in Barcelona went on a school trip. The children in I5, second, and fourth grade did. Until last year, all grades went, but the teaching staff decided to reserve them only for the end of the cycle because it was becoming increasingly difficult to find teachers willing to go each year. They thought that the fact that not everyone had to go each year would lead to greater availability on the part of the teachers. Years ago, the opposite decision was made. The trips were held at the end of the cycle, and it was agreed to extend them to all grades. “We teachers attached great importance to the trips, but little by little we have been getting worn out,” comments a teacher from the center.

Salt is known today as the municipality with the lowest per capita income in Catalonia. Also one of the towns with the highest concentration of migrant population: nearly 40% of residents are of foreign nationality. But what headlines have overlooked in recent years is that almost half of this town's surface is still orchards and pastures. The Monar canal, parallel to the Ter river, marks the border between the built-up Salt and the agricultural zone. Few facilities surpass it, except for a large institute built on fertile land. Located on the border with Girona, surrounded by greenery and with magnificent views of the Mare de Déu del Mont, lies Vallvera. A secondary and vocational training center with more than 1,200 students, inaugurated in 2008, which contrasts with its surroundings by being a large gray sheet metal center with a concrete-filled courtyard. "In winter it's a refrigerator and in summer an oven, there's no in-between!", laments the director, Ferran Maimir, who started this academic year with a direction very focused on working for the renaturalization of the courtyard, but with a different method: that the students themselves build the shade with their hands.

The bell rings at 3 p.m., you leave school, chat about the day with your friends, go home—walking or on the school bus—drop your things, make yourself lunch—or heat it up if your parents have left it unattended—and sit down in front of the TV at 4 p.m. This is the reality for thousands of teenagers who attend public high schools in Catalonia, where only 35% of secondary schools offer a cafeteria service. This also means that only a third of students in public high schools can access a lunch grant.

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools is becoming increasingly common in both professional and personal settings. According to the 2024 study byEmpantallados.com And according to GDA3, 82% of teenagers use AI for schoolwork, and 91% of families have not established rules for its use. This new reality poses new challenges for the educational community because currently there is no technological tool that can 100% guarantee that a job done with AITherefore, teachers must resort to other strategies to assess work.

I've always thought that if we focused more on teaching in high schools and students were already educated at home, we would see exponential improvements in results. If we look ridiculous in the PISA reports, it's because learning the content is no longer prioritized. This is unthinkable at university. I have a relative who is a university professor, and I asked him how he handled the issue of cell phones, now that we've banned them in secondary school because they're distracting. He confessed to me that many of his students don't even know their names. He teaches classes without taking attendance, and sometimes they take notes, sometimes they fall asleep, and sometimes he sees how they waste time on their phones. The red line is not to interrupt the teacher's concentration. Therefore, the priority is "teaching."

As a parent and teacher, the start of the new school year raises questions to which I have no clear answers. For example, will students remember anything they learned when they return from vacation? Will we be able to make classes more than just fun? Will they want to learn when everything is just a click away? Will we be able to instill in them a culture of effort and the need to interpret, memorize, and acquire new concepts? Will we have families on our side, or will they be suspicious when we demand our rights? Will we be able to ensure that bureaucracy doesn't drain teachers' energy and that they can focus on student progress?

The school year begins with a new measure that has been long demanded by many families in recent years: a complete ban on cell phones and smartwatches throughout all stages of compulsory education, even when used for educational purposes. It was announced by the Minister of Education, Esther Niubó, at the end of last year.. Likewise, the use of digital tablets is also expected to be gradually limited in early childhood education (ages three to five), although "sufficient availability" of these devices will be guaranteed for specific uses in the other educational stages. Niubó also announced a "progressive restriction" on the use of digital whiteboards in preschool classrooms, while these would remain in place in the upper stages. This restriction, however, would not apply to the laptops given to secondary school students. But how does the educational community view this?

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.

Technology is modernity, the future, and prosperity. Everyone has bought into this premise, including the educational world. Everyone from gurus to politicians has promoted it in recent decades. We had to forget the methodologies of the past. We had to leave behind the way our grandparents or parents learned to write with the inkwell on their desk (and what magnificent handwriting they did!). Or how I thrived in school with tracing paper and a typewriter (I tried not to make mistakes so I wouldn't have to repeat the entire page!). As a teacher, over the last twenty years I've seen paper books forgotten and replaced by laptops. How computer labs became obsolete and were repurposed for other needs. How we took attendance on various electronic devices and how whiteboards and projectors gave way to giant, touch-screen, interactive television screens. How, little by little, we left all the documents we generated in the immateriality of the cloud. Or how online meetings during the pandemic helped us stay on track. All of these have been tools that have given us new options and conveniences, but they have also exponentially multiplied bureaucracy and hours of dedication. Every Monday, early in the morning, the emails you must urgently and urgently answer fall onto your screen like a green waterfall. Matrix.

The education system is suffering a long and profound crisis, but only those who work in it are aware of it and seem to be concerned about it. At every level, whether primary, secondary, or university, professionals are shocked by the low level and scarce motivation with which students arrive and leave. Teachers' lounges, places where discouragement has become a disease, whether in the form of burnout or depression. You must be very cynical not to experience the effects of the imposter symptom. The concept teach It has become so devalued that it forces us to maintain a ritual whose results are disappointing and almost useless. Few of the students in the classroom deserve the title of students, given that it is no longer what they do, not so much because of their responsibility as because prevailing methodologies establish that the function of educational centers is different. Knowledge has become secondary; memory, effort, and learning have been banished in favor of emotional well-being and so-called competenciesTeachers, stripped of their role and leadership, must act as facilitators of esoteric group dynamics.

"I hadn't seen him well for a long time. Until one day he told me: «Mom, I just want to die...»". Told through tears by his mother, Joel's story is a case –one more– of bullying. A chapter of suffering that it ends With the help of a psychologist and a change of center, which will be forever marked. There is much work to be done –one in four children are bullied– But awareness of bullying is also growing. The Department of Education and Vocational Training's case count increases each academic year: 347 in the 21-22 academic year; double that, 684, in the 22-23 academic year; and 52% more, 1,042, in the 23-24 academic year. May 2nd is, in fact, the International Day Against Bullying and Harassment at School.

In ancient Greece, a shepherd named Narcissus, who had rejected the love of the nymph Echo, fell in love with his reflection, which he saw every day in a stream. One day, he jumped into the water to find the person who had stolen his heart and amazed him, but his obsession led him to drown. "Oysters, professor," then, the word narcissism "It comes from here, right?" the students ask Meritxell Blay, a secondary school Latin and Greek teacher and author of the book Greek myths (Inuk Books, 2024). Since mythology as such does not exist as a subject, Blay explains it to his students in the Latin and Greek classes he teaches.

"You will hang the notes in the classroom"Això ho trobarem al campus virtual?". sporadically with the company on the coast, "recognizes Martina, a university student. 80% of her professors have the contingut to the virtual classroom, and therefore, approximately the most important thing is the material that is explained to the classroom. La Ioana, 22 years old, is also a university student and, in her home, 70% of the contingut that is The virtual classroom is the one the teacher gives. "You can pass without joining the class because you repeat the material," he admits. At Batxillerat, he recalls, there were more notes because it couldn't be used as a study technique. "It's changed because studying the capitals of Europe isn't the material, it's giving a reflective class."

If it's February, it's more of an open house. During this month, we must make one of the key decisions as parents: choosing the school where our sons and daughters will spend at least nine years, if they start in the first year of primary school (I3) and it's a public school. If they begin the first year of secondary school or high school (Bachillerato), their time there won't be as long, but it will be equally significant. During childhood and adolescence, children not only acquire knowledge and skills, but also values ​​and lessons that will help them become self-reliant in the not-too-distant future. Doing so in a school with a cohesive educational project and a management and teaching team committed to their work and to educational quality is fundamental to ensuring a successful transition from childhood to adulthood in every sense.

When she was little, Maria Recasens, now 26, had many hobbies: in addition to school, she participated in the Lego robotics league, went to the hideout, went climbing and really liked reading and painting. She wanted to be an astronaut then and that's why she got into astronomy until a physics book fell into her hands. She found it so interesting that she set her mind to studying something that would allow her to understand it. Years later she graduated in physics at the University of Barcelona, ​​​​she has completed an interuniversity master's degree in quantum science and technology and has started a doctorate at the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO). This career and everything she remembers thinking about science when she was little is what she shares this Tuesday in a talk at the Menéndez Pelayo Institute in Barcelona, ​​​​in front of 1st year ESO students. For the first time she has joined the #científicas program, which for seven years has brought science and research to schoolchildren.