Aristotle maintained that the ultimate goal of education was happiness and Plato advocated also training the soul as a way to build good citizens. It sounds like a fairy tale given what major institutions now expect from students. Education must be focused on productivity and students are seen as a kind of future resource to be exploited by the economic system of a country. This was revealed in the round table “Education as a lever for productivity”, held on the second day of the annual meeting of the Cercle d’Economia, which this year reaches its 39th edition in Barcelona.
The colloquium was led by Andreas Schleicher, director of Education at the OECD for several years now. This is the organization that organizes the PISA tests that the last editions have left Spain so badly and that in Catalonia have caused an earthquake given their terrible results in the last edition of these exams (one of the lowest among all the autonomous communities). It would not be so bloody if this deterioration identified by PISA did not coincide with what the Generalitat’s own internal evaluations show: a continuous decline in educational levels.
The fundamental question is: with what objective should we raise the educational level of students? For the speakers of this round table, to make them more competitive in a fast-paced world. “Spanish education also has a productivity problem,” agreed the speakers, composed, in addition to the representative of the OECD, by the rector of the UOC, Àngels Fitó, the vice president and general director of the HP campus in Barcelona and the former Director General of Education and Culture of the European Commission Xavier Prats, who served as moderator.
Schools today are the economy of tomorrow, Schleicher has said. And these educational centers should obtain better results given the Spanish context, with a level of well-being higher than countries that obtain a similar score in PISA. That is, being more productive given the resources they have.
There are no shortcuts to boost the level. The recipes that Schleicher has outlined are the same ones that he has defended for more than a decade (we listened to him often when we covered the Education area for this newspaper, fifteen years ago, and his ideas remain). These are to combine inclusion with the promotion of excellence, better teacher training, the introduction of applied education and for students to be protagonists, not mere receptacles of information… The investment, despite the fact that Spain is 20% below the OECD average, it is not so relevant to increase results, they have agreed.
So simple to define it and so complicated to put it into practice. “We need a holistic approach,” summarized the UOC rector. On the positive side and demonstrating once again that any time in the past was not always better, the HP manager has highlighted that the new professionals who join his company have better communication skills, the ability to work in groups and solve problems than their predecessors. predecessors. We do not know if they are happier or better citizens, but they have been trained for what the market requires.