SCHOOL EDUCATION: THE PUBLIC SCHOOL 
seems to be a general consensus within the secular movement, the demand for a secular public school. This consensus is diluted as the role we intend to ask it.
In fact, the controversy (with the dichotomy training / education) goes back to the origins of their own public school and still lives on, without finding satisfactory solutions.
As is well known, the first ambitious, state-wide public school goes back to Condorcet in 1792 and, though never carried out accurately, contains the germ of what the late nineteenth century will be the public school in France, a process that is completed by the Law on the Separation of Church and State, 1905.
A similar process has never taken place in Spain, except for the brief years of the Second Republic.
In developing his writings on public education, Condorcet part of almost exclusive monopoly, until the French Revolution, the Catholic Church has on education, whether the university, colleges or religious schools. Not to mention the challenge posed by the fact that over eighty percent of the French population is in those moments, thanks to the absolute monarchy and the Church, completely illiterate. Condorcet
has no doubt: what free human beings, making them emancipated and free, is knowing.
"Parents, whatever their beliefs, whatever their views on the need of this or that religion, without reservations can then send their children to national schools. And the government will not have usurped all the rights of conscience under the pretext of light it and drive it. "
The controversy was already served. It is true that since then, many texts have been used as synonyms terms such as training, education, training, education ... But if we focus on the role of public school, with the dichotomy instruction / education that accompanies the various policy options are clearly distinct meanings:
In the words of Salvador López Arnal:
"The contrast between education and instruction usually points to the difference between conveying information, knowledge, skills, describe situations, explain or prove theorems laws, which would instruct (sometimes synonymous with teaching) and, on the other hand, form the individual, helping to build their personality, their moral, ethical values, aesthetic, social forms of behavior, the basis of their political perspective (no dogmatic indoctrination), ... all of which would educate or train. The contrast is sometimes presented in a exclusive or nearly exclusive, when instructed, taught and not educated, if education is not intended to instruct. "
The truth is that the controversy has never been raised thus excluding at least not in a frank and open. The Church has always tried to be (and has done and continues to dogmatic indoctrination), but could not exclude the teaching (the Jesuits and Opus Dei takes the cake as to religious universities in Spain is concerned). By using and abusing the term "training", many of the current pedagogical talk about "training the whole person" without the slightest blush tracing the old language of the Catholic Church.
Who, on the other hand, argue that the role of the school is educating (teaching), provide insights that facilitate the empowerment and emancipation of future adult citizens, not ignore that sound transmission and acquisition of knowledge are also included educational aspects.
Because education is, indeed, encultured, ie introduced into the culture, in the sense ethnological term. And this process of enculturation is produced, intentionally or not, in all areas of reality where you will find a child or adolescent. Public schools, even if politically assigned as part of statement, it remains an area of \u200b\u200benculturation and, therefore, education.
But this educational task is well defined by the scope of its own: the process of transmission and acquisition of knowledge, values, from our common sense and from the critical use of reason, are inherent to it.
The opposite, however, does not occur. When the decision policy is attributed to the school's role to educate in all areas of personality, knowledge is something that can be ignored, restricted or manipulated in terms of interests.
I refer to the words of Juan Antonio Planas Domingo, President of the Confederation of Counseling Psychology, Spain, in a Letter to the Editor published by "El Pais" on 17 January 2009:
"We must advise teachers in terms of previously unknown problems, such as disruptive students, motivation, attention deficit, hyperactivity, anorexia, bullying, or cyberaddiction. They also need training materials for topics such as diversity, flexible groups, new technologies applied to education, evaluation, improvement of mentoring, measures to improve relationships and so on. The future teachers need direct experiences and examples of the task of teaching, rather than knowledge of their own discipline which soon become obsolete. "
think more clearly could not express the intention of this army of" teachers "and "educational experts", manufactured and enlarged from the LOGSE, as mercenaries in the service of political decision (shared with different nuances, the government and opposition) to deprive the public school of their purpose and, therefore, to destroy it.
is true that mathematics or physics today, or a part thereof, will become obsolete in a hundred years. What therefore study math or physics today? If you also know that stupidity and ignorance will always be a day, especially if encouraged.
should also bear in mind that when it comes to public school is talking about all the pre-tertiary education, not just early childhood or elementary education. The brilliant solution of "Educators" is to infantilize adolescents and adults (students may stay in school until 18 in the SCS and to 20 in schools). Everything becomes a class unit, with the English teacher (and for what this teacher should know English, if a language in a thousand or two thousand years will have changed completely?) Treating anorexia in the classroom. In the future, young "educated" today will be eternal nursing toddlers, even in their graves.
The result is obvious: parents leaving public school, constantly tripping by the army of "teachers" mercenaries, and divert their children to private school, hoping to find in it a serious teaching. Such teaching, of course, is always accompanied by religious moral indoctrination, and that ninety percent of aided schools are denominational. In the community of Madrid, students enrolled in these centers and exceeds that of state schools, with the indulgent smile of Mrs. Esperanza Aguirre, who had never expected to find as faithful allies in the ranks of those who consider themselves "progressive."
Because there is also an aspect that seems to escape the attentions of those who in good faith, defended from the ranks of secularism that the essential role of the school is public education, leaving the teaching of knowledge in an anecdotal level, and even, as in the text of the "teacher" said, completely negligible. Education from the perspective of human rights (which supposedly defend), is something primarily attributable to the parents or legal guardians of minors. A conservative right gives it, therefore, all arguments against a public school "indoctrinating" to defend an indoctrination freely chosen private school and agreed: that of a religious nature. That's something that Mariano Rajoy has seized on them in their campaigns, because of the "education citizenship "with a cynical smile, satisfied that he deserves the applause to cunning, off the Pamphylia, ignorance or bad faith of both interested pseudoprogresista.
Indeed, if the function of schools is to educate, encultured, instilling values, it becomes or is liable to become an extension of the family and immediate social environment: that is, is doomed to privatization because morality is something familiar, tribal, ethnic, and, therefore, something belonging to the private sphere. And maintain a public education is meaningless, and, economically, it is much more expensive than simple school vouchers and the continuing trend towards privatization. There mommy and daddy can decide what is taught to their eternal suckers who teach and how they teach. For Prince of Wales, sixties and is still the Queen's son as the only profession known, the solution may be worth. What do parents know our children need to know math, language, history, languages \u200b\u200b... to become consenting adults? Do we fold it the religious indoctrination of the private school or let them waste their time with teachers who "do not need to know your discipline," but must treat anorexia or disruption in French class?
Fortunately, the public school situation is still not, but it is the path that leads inevitably to the new education.
In subsequent articles we will try to issues such as "corporatism" that seeks to blame the teachers who teach in addition to the personal disqualification and ad hominem attacks as a single argument, from the ranks of the mercenary pedagogy. Also concepts like "inclusive school" and "democratic school."
Until then.
