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The truth is, I must be getting older, and I find it increasingly difficult to align myself with one side or the other. And I know this goes against the grain of a society that’s becoming ever more polarized.
If you’re a football fan, the rival team is always worse and always gets extra help. If you belong to a political party, you can’t say anything about your own party’s corruption, and instead you must always criticize the other one, even when it makes coherent and reasonable proposals.
If you’re a teacher, you don’t escape it, either. Even without belonging to any group, factions seem to form, and people pigeonhole you without even asking. I remember not so long ago, someone labeled me as being “from the Bofill” (a Catalan foundation that works on education). And they didn’t say it because of any contractual relationship, which I’ve never had, but as if it were an ideological thing. And, as I want to assert in this modest article, I rebel against those factions. The Bofill Foundation has studies I find very insightful and worth reading, and it also has initiatives that make me feel somewhat embarrassed, feeding into this polarization. And it’s normal that many people could say the same about me. And that’s good. I recall a tweet from someone who said they had mixed feelings about me: they were grateful that I had created CoRubrics, but completely disagreed with my opinions on competency-based assessment (he didn’t say it like that, but I’m sure he also felt some second-hand embarrassment). And with that respect, it’s very good and very healthy.
I look back at my blog and, if anyone wants to place me in a camp, they’ll find nothing but contradictions. And thanks to that, I can have conversations with many people who think differently, and they enrich me.
I defend, without a doubt, the need for memory in education. We could discuss how to ensure that students learn certain concepts by heart, but there’s no question in my mind that it’s very necessary. However, basing everything on rote memorization and regurgitating it in an exam, there’s an abyss there. I talked about that here.
Likewise, I have defended and continue to defend project-based learning. I believe that, in addition to the specific competences of the subjects directly involved, it provides students with essential transversal skills (which are usually not assessed in international tests): teamwork, autonomy, communication, etc.
But again, organizing everything around projects, that’s another abyss. I have defended and continue to defend the use of diverse methodologies. I think it’s a bad sign when a school defines itself primarily by the use of a single methodology. Likewise, I talked about that here.
Experience tells me that the restorative approach helps a lot in creating a good classroom climate and in fostering student responsibility. But just a year ago, as part of a teaching team for 1st year of secondary school, I was the one who asked management to expel a student for a week. Contradictory actions?
I call all of this the middle path. It’s true that it’s a somewhat uncomfortable position, since you always have disagreements (big or small). But it’s tremendously enriching. Thinking for yourself, reading and listening a lot, contrasting ideas with your own experience, reviewing what you’ve done to improve, and, above all, making lots of mistakes.
The middle path doesn’t allow you to have your own “club,” and it means that sometimes, those with whom you often agree suddenly don’t understand your position, because it doesn’t align with what the “club” preaches. But if we’re to understand each other and all row in the same direction to improve education, we must be willing to take the middle path.
A path that, in truth, isn’t really in the middle. In fact, at least in my case, it zigzags. In some aspects it leans more to one side, and in others, more to the opposite.
This means that there are people today who are references for me, or at least who provoke reflection, with whom I often disagree and sometimes agree. Certainly, with some I agree more often, and with others less. But with all of them, I find points of connection. I’ll mention a few names, among the many I could, to show the diversity: Jaume Cela, Coral Regí, Gregorio Luri, Boris Mir, Jordi Martí, Héctor Ruiz, Juan Fernández, Sergio del Moral, Elena Ferro, Roger Fusté… Some could easily be placed in very different camps. If a certain person says something, and they seem aligned with one group or another, we already listen with suspicion.
I believe that this middle path is probably the key to moving forward. It allows you, one day, to firmly defend positions alongside one of those factions, which I’m not even sure who defined and the next day, on another issue, to be right alongside the supposed opposite faction. But always with a degree of separation that allows you to seek empathy and understanding with those who think differently, however different they may be.
I can already imagine someone thinking: “All this talk about the middle path, but when it comes to grading and assessment, I don’t see you much in the middle.” And they’re probably absolutely right. But taking the middle path is more about an attitude, about refusing to form sides and conflicts, than about holding a specific position on an educational issue.
And that’s it, after venting a bit here on the blog (which, basically, is what it’s for), after almost a year without posting anything (and not for lack of topics), we return to temporary hibernation.
