We always make literature: when we order a coffee, we recount our ailments to a doctor, we write an email, we insult (by the way: the low quality of insults nowadays is striking), we make the shopping list, we offer condolences, we declare our eternal or circumstantial love, we scold our child or argue with our partner.Those who wrote electoral messages on the walls in Pompeii ("Vote X") were making literature; those who hastily and eagerly wrote crude poems ("We have peed in bed; truly / we are a disaster. / Do you want the reasons, innkeeper? There was no / chamber pot!"); the romantics ("How I would like to hold your dear arms around my neck and kiss your lips") and the pragmatic merchants of their own bodies ("Hope, yes to everything, nine aces"). Those who confessed their existential concerns ("Once dead, we are nothing") and the composers of meta-graffiti ("It surprises me, oh wall, that you have not yet collapsed under the weight of the foolishness of so many writers").We find literature on the walls of Bilbao ("Violent gays seek revenge. Gay Intifada") or Cordoba ("Hating is for weaklings") or on the Roman wall of Lugo ("Romani ite domum", that is to say, "Romans go home").These graffiti or, if you prefer, these murals are a literary exercise (although not very civic), because they aim to shape an idea to give it the form of an aphorism.It seems that the first graphic representation of Jesus Christ was a graffiti from 200 AD found in the Pedagogium of the Palatine Hill in Rome. With the intention of ridiculing Christianity, it shows Jesus with a huge donkey's head and nailed to the cross. One inscription says: “Alexamenos worships God”. Not far away, in the same building, another inscription says: "Alexamenos is faithful". Perhaps this person is literarily claiming their faith in front of those who have mocked them?When we meet a friend and they ask us how we are doing, we immediately set about artistically modeling our memory to give it the shape of a narrative. In speaking – forgive the expression – we literary. Don't we perhaps spend the day explaining (supposedly) interesting things about ourselves? And isn't a biography the result of our insistence on imposing narratives on the chaos of our existence?Then, and here is where I wanted to get, the understanding we have of ourselves cannot be more accurate than the rigor of the words we use to understand ourselves. Beyond words, there is only darkness and, perhaps, sentimental jam. In the case – highly improbable – that there were a genuine self, a true self, without words it would be mute.

Last Wednesday, Joan Coscubiela published in ARA the article “Teacher Malaise and Unionism”. An alternative title could have been “70,000 strikers are wrong; I am right!”, but the paternalism would be too obvious.Questioning the 50,000 education workers who have signed the manifesto Let's Dignify or the 40,000 teachers who have voted against the agreement between CCOO, UGT, and the Government is a rather pathetic role. That is why the author chose to attack USTEC. Not their specific actions in the current conflict, but the model of “malestar unionism” – opposed to a supposed “responsible” unionism – and its “tone”. With this, he tried to shift the conflict to the ground of moral delegitimization in order not to address either the content of the agreement – manifestly insufficient – or the gestation of its signing, outside the legitimate space of negotiation, in which CCOO and UGT do not reach 25% of the representation. Coscubiela speaks with an argumentation in hand. Therefore, the best response is to go to the things themselves.Without conflict, there is nothing to agree on. Fortunately, the usual strategy of concertation unionism of picking fruits sown by others when they are still green and presenting them as their own victories has ended in bankruptcy. What caused the formula to fail this time? Two years of organization in which the campaign Let's Dignify the Profession has contributed significantly. How did we approach it?Defining demands collectively. To politicize malaise, diagnosis is first needed. Therefore, we conducted the study of educational malaise with 12,000 surveys followed by 6,000 interviews to determine the real demands of educational staff and incorporate them into the manifesto: recover purchasing power, reduce ratios, create resources for inclusive education, and eliminate bureaucracy.Achieving the majority. We collected 50,000 signatures to build legitimacy for transversal and clear demands, promoting assemblies in each center and mapping grassroots organization. Also planning: nine months in advance, the massive educational strike of February 11 was on the calendar within a structured plan, with tests of strength like the massive demonstration on November 15.Negotiating until the end. For six months and over thirty hours, we have not left the table and have led the negotiation, contributing a large part of the measures included in the agreement. And we have done so with transparency, broadcasting the meetings live to the Dignifiquemos Forum, which has over 4,000 followers.This has been our task until the department has given up convincing and has abruptly cut off dialogue to close the agreement with the leadership of CCOO and UGT in a political operation to save the Government and pressure for budget approval. A crude demobilization maneuver on the eve of the March strikes.At the March 9 meeting, everything was already cooked: news about the signing of the agreement published while we were still “negotiating”, videos selling its virtues within a minute, signing ceremony at Palau in the afternoon. Amateur theater. That is why it is especially cynical to claim that there are unions that “never sign”, when CCOO's tactic involves delaying so that signing cannot happen at the optimal point. Otherwise, victories would be collective and could not be sold as “useful unionism”.

Nick Gibb, the English politician who has reflected most on education, has written one of the most pedagogically stimulating books of this century so far. Reforming lessonsThe book, which bears the subtitle "Why English schools have improved since 2010 and how it was achieved," was published by Gibb. Gibb served as Shadow Education Minister in 2005 and as Education Minister from 2010 to 2012, from 2014 to September 2021, and again from October 2022 to November 2023.