What "freedom" does the concerted school demand

                                  “Education is the key that unlocks the golden door to freedom.”—G. W. Carver                                 What "freedom" does the concerted school demand  

When the leaders of the charter school shout "Freedom!" What they are asking is that the State continue to grant them in a growing spiral the freedom to segregate the students
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Rafael Silva: A few days ago the new LOMLOE (better known as "Celáa Law") was approved in the first process, and both in the Congress of Deputies and in the streets surrounding it, the detractors of said Law proclaimed in unison: " Freedom!". Any external observer, without more data, could think that the new legal text is authoritarian in nature, that it cuts down the freedoms of the educational community (parents, students and teachers), and that therefore it is criticizable from the perspective of a society democratic. Nothing is further from reality. What happens, as we are going to explain below, is that the political, social and media right wing of this country has been falsely appropriating this term, impregnating it with a meaning and stringing it into a context that does not correspond to it at all (saving distances, Deniers of the coronavirus pandemic also claim “Freedom!” in the streets of cities, but as we are saying, they are completely biased, erroneous and self-interested conceptual appropriations of the term). When last Sunday thousands of vehicles went in a caravan through many cities of our country, in protest against the so-called Celáa Law, and journalists approached to ask them why they were there, the answers were similar, namely: “Because we demand freedom to to be able to educate our children according to our principles ”,“ Because we want to continue to have the freedom to take our children to the center we want ”,“ Because this law restricts the right of parents to impart the education they want to their children ”, and thousands more than variants.

Deep down, all the answers lead us to the same one, which is itself a fallacy, as we will explain below. To begin with, the concept of "freedom" that the adherents of the concerted school possess is a very particular concept. The question of consent, of the "politics of personal choice" rests on a western liberal vision of human rights that elevates individual will and choices above all other human rights and any notion of the common good. And thus, in their sacrosanct vision of individual "freedom" the higher good of society does not intervene, because deep down, under their unsupportive, selfish and individualistic prism, they do not believe in it. We think, on the other hand, that in the name of a certain conception of the human being and the common good, the community, throughout history, has often deemed it necessary to set limits to individual freedom (sale of organs, slavery, use drugs, etc.) to achieve a higher common good. This is exactly applicable to the case at hand, because in the face of the fundamental and universal human right to education (as we understand it), there is no individual freedom to grant privileges to certain sectors, groups or individuals, to undermine the objectives of the public school, which belong to everyone. Therefore, there is a supposed right of parents "to have their sons and daughters receive the education that their parents desire", but at the expense of the public purse, that is, at the expense of society as a whole. That is where the catch lies.

There is an incontestable fact: there is no growth of the concerted school without cuts in the public school, just as there are no rich without the existence of poor. Under conservative and neoliberal governments, always supported in this matter by the Episcopal Conference, the concerted school has been growing in our country in recent decades, which is directly proportional to the decrease in public school, measured in all its dimensions ( in teaching staff, in resources, in means, in number of centers, etc.). But even more fallacies are heard in the argumentation of the educational right: it is said that this Law (still very lukewarm and timid) will constitute a "state monopoly" for education, when it does not even contemplate the reduction of the concerted school (at most it is not to finance the schools that segregate by sex), nor is the public school a “state school”. In other words, those who want a private Catholic monopoly for schools are against a supposed “state monopoly” that does not and will not exist. Quite a mess.

Concerted school: a profitable business

 On the other hand, that the concerted school has business and entrepreneurial purposes, that is, corrupt purposes (in the sense that they are far from the primary objective, which is none other than to satisfy the universal and fundamental right to education) is attested by its powerful figures: its budget is more than 6,000 million euros a year, for a total of approximately 2 million students. According to data from the Ministry of Education itself, concerted education has increased its funding by 25% during the last decade (compared to 1.4% for public schools). To this should be added, where appropriate, the corresponding fees that the parents of the boys and girls who study in them must contribute. And another scandalous issue is the social segregation that the concerted school carries out: the children belonging to families with few resources cannot study in the concerted one, the concerted one always admits fewer immigrants than the public one, and ethnic students gypsy women also seem to be destined to study in public and not concerted. The students of lower economic class represent a third of the students of the public, compared to only 7% of the concerted school.

In general, only 13% of foreign students study in the concerted school. In addition to all this, the concerted school ends up expelling bad students, conflictive students, those with special needs and those of low social class to public school (as, for example, private hospitals do with the sick who They are not interested, that is, to send them to public hospitals. Basically, neoliberal policy is the same for all areas). Finally, the power of the Catholic Church in concerted education in our country is truly scandalous: "Catholic Schools", the network that brings together all the centers of the Church, represents 60% of the concerted school, hence the hierarchy ecclesiastical has also called for the rebellion against the Celáa Law, rather with a "preventive" character (because as we say, the LOMLOE does not directly attack its centers, neither in the medium nor in the long term).

This is called segregating: you can be for or against (we are committed to an inclusive public school), but that is its name. The problem is, therefore, in the great political permissiveness (which has also been growing in each budget) in the face of this entire segregation process, more than consented and sought, tolerated and well regarded, supported by public authorities, and while this is happening , the public school is being attacked, despised, neglected, underfunded, deprived of human and material resources, that is to say, residualized. In short, investment in public education has been systematically frozen or cut, while spending on concerted education has increased. In the end, this unjust and perverse model seeks to perpetuate a school for the rich and another for the poor, a school for the best students and another for the worst, a school financed and another looted, a school endowed with resources and support, and another discriminated against. an elitist and selective school, and another residual school. And all this is what they call "freedom."

In short, when the leaders of the concerted school shout "Freedom!" What they are asking is that the State continue to grant them in a growing spiral the freedom to segregate the students, the freedom to charge fees in their centers, the freedom to indoctrinate their sons and daughters in class, the freedom for the Catholic religion and Its multiple sects continue their power within the school, the freedom to separate by sex, the freedom to elitize the education of whoever can pay for it, and the freedom to ghettoize public education, leading it to a residual sector. These are the "freedoms" demanded by the concerted school. Whether the State grants them or not will be another song, but at least, we are already clear about what they mean when they fervently proclaim it in the streets. Their privileges are in it.

Rafael Silva. Blog "Political and Cultural News" http://rafaelsilva.over-blog.es