Repeating a year in Norway, a method that stigmatizes the student. There, as in other Scandinavian countries, compulsory schooling is seen as a unique structure, very different from the usual structure in Spain.
There is something that I find very repulsive, and that is that many, without ever having set foot in a classroom, allow themselves to happily express their opinions and even believe they have the right to tell teachers how to teach a class. They are always questioning teachers, who do not know how to apply those pedagogical feats they boast about.
(There is nothing that annoys a farmer who is in a greenhouse at 40 degrees more than a person sticking their nose into their workplace and giving them advice on how to put the pepper they are watering, with an authority and impudence, making their theory a master's degree).
There are many people who studied at the time and now, from their sofa, give their opinion on students they have never seen, and who have not even taught classes. I am not saying that experts should stop researching, and even less, against all that, but I know architects who have been trained by architects, or doctors who train doctors.
And now I wonder, why can't we as teachers be those trainers of those future teachers? Our experience is not valid.
I learn more from my colleagues than from demagogic speeches. The issue I want to allude to today is making children repeat courses, for that "FOR THEIR OWN GOOD". Of course, there are cases that require it, with certain circumstances, but they should be something exceptional, and I will explain my opinion. There are children who cannot reach certain objectives, and they will not achieve them even by repeating. Those children with difficulties may never be able to pursue university degrees, but they will surely be good professionals in other areas of the professional field.
I am not speaking for the sake of speaking, because in my private life, and as a mother, I have experienced it firsthand. For years, I saw and heard thousands of theories about how and what to do with my son, who had difficulties. Diagnoses such as ADHD, he needs to be referred to mental health, he needs to be prescribed medication... And endless advice that terrified me. I went to someone very close to me who helped me and made me follow guidelines for years to avoid labeling him and making him feel like a failure with all the history he already had.
It was a rather complicated case and a very arduous task, but I set it as a challenge. What did it matter if he didn't know all the rivers in Spain? Would that make him more or less accepted in society or academically? Was it so important if he had trouble finishing a two-digit multiplication? Or is it more important that he knows the mechanism and it doesn't matter if he fails in the addition? And of course he repeated, because the system demanded it, but it was useless.
When I taught adult classes, among all my students, I could see the frustrations they had because they were not given a minimum opportunity at the time and chose to drop out; parents and workers who came to finish a Graduado Escolar, exhausted from their jobs, came to class with the shame of being 40 years old and learning the simple words and the sums that their own children were studying.
The work with my son, and the pilgrimage from school to school, with my heart in my mouth, without anyone coming close to understanding what he needed, difficulties with the language. "We don't understand him, he is a disruptive child, take him home." It was very important to keep the school in a good position without anyone disturbing it, tied hand and foot, but I knew I would succeed. I read, I informed myself, and I let myself be helped by someone who bet on me. Little by little, my son, despite feeling excluded, raised his self-esteem and was able to finish without being medicated and without therapies. Today he is a great professional and a happy person. I am not questioning that the specialists and all those who diagnosed him were not good professionals, but it was not the right path, and I have been able to verify that as a teacher. It is a reflection aloud, and as a humble mother and teacher, I wanted to make a call to this system, where not everything is valid, not a form where an endless number of Xs are marked can decide the future of a child.
Repeating, failing, stigmatizing, labeling, normal words that may not allow a future plumber or electrician to have a decent future. There are doctors, but there are also nurses, and no one is better or worse. We should all have a hand that allows us to get ahead.
Whether it is the system or not, let's try to ensure that there is not so much failure, and not school failure, but personal failure.
