It was November 1990, already in full democracy, it is approved unanimously in a plenary session of the City Council of Arrecife de Lanzarote, that the school of the still young Barrio de Tinasoria, would bear the name of a woman, of an exemplary worker who knew a lot about the sacrifices that had to be made to be able to study, because she, despite the hardships of the time in which she was born, breaking barriers that as a woman were put in front of her, studied with longing getting to become a Teacher, but not just any Teacher... Mrs. Mercedes Medina Díaz (1914-2002). She stood out from a very young age for her eagerness to take all her students at least to high school, and worked from those dilapidated classrooms of the first decades of the 20th century, so that studying would no longer be a privilege only for the most economically favored. She was interested in the family situation of the boys and girls who attended her class and influenced the parents of the more affluent so that the goal was not only to work, but to send their children to study outside the Island, the only way she always considered as the ideal one, to achieve the development of more open, honest and responsible minds and that with their subsequent return to the Island would contribute to sow more culturally elevated aspirations, to be autonomous and supportive people who would not be manipulated.
Today in 2021, almost 30 years later, and despite humanity in general and Lanzarote in particular going through such a complicated stage, in which problems of all kinds have multiplied, this City Council of Arrecife that honored her, has had plenty of time to decide that this center that stopped being CEIP, to be reconverted into IES, stop being called MERCEDES MEDINA DÍAZ, and thus, in the 21st century, such a crazy idea prospers before the indifference of the rest of the institutions of the Island. What a pity! As Miret Magdalena, E. (The return to values, 2007) stated: It is bad that haste that leaves us no space or time to look back and know the good that we have left in the ditch.
That so disloyal decision leads me to ask myself: If it had carried a male name, would the decision have been the same? What other reason could there have been to remove the name of a woman, of a Teacher, from one of the few island educational institutions that in full democracy was proposed by that City Council that today rejects her, despite having been accepted by the entire educational community that decision of the Consistory? In whose head, male or female, was the idea conceived to forget the name of a Primary School Teacher, who was born, lived, worked for more than 40 years as a distinguished teacher and died in the same town where she was born?
We are dismayed to have verified through the various manifestations that have been appearing in the media that the change has not favored anyone, however, it has sown concern, impotence and unease in many people who knew her, especially in numerous students, even some very old who remember her as that Teacher who helped them to study, training in different jobs that would allow them to find solutions to the personal and professional problems that were presented to them.
Perhaps, because I was one of those students who had the privilege of continuing to learn from her until a few hours before her death, in which I could hear her last great lesson (2002), I feel that the injustice that has been done to her has no justification, because no one should deny that she was a great person and a great Teacher, with defects? yes, and who doesn't have them? As Rita Levi-Montalcini (In Praise of Imperfection, 2011) rightly stated: Imperfection and not perfection is the basis of human action.
When Albert Camus (1913-1960), novelist, essayist, playwright, journalist, philosopher, awarded the most prestigious of the prizes that a novelist can receive, the Nobel Prize for Literature (1957), upon receiving the news, his first thought was for his mother, but the second of his thoughts was to remember his Primary School teacher to whom he communicates in writing that although It is not that I give too much importance to an honor of this type... but it offers at least the opportunity to tell you what you have been and continue to be for me, and corroborate that your efforts, your work and the generous heart that you put into it continue to be alive in one of your little school children, who despite the years, has not stopped being your grateful student.
In imitation of Camus, although for very different reasons, I have also felt the need, despite the years of her death, to publicly thank my Teacher, Mrs. Mercedes, for her help, her influence and involvement in the search for a scholarship for me to continue studying and become a Primary School teacher... without the capacity of the Nobel Camus, I reached the highest level in my academic training, Doctor in Philosophy and Sciences of Education, with Extraordinary Prize of the Faculty, with effort, perseverance, will..., as she constantly repeated to me... I got it... That is why I will also continue to be her grateful student. THANK YOU Mrs. Mercedes!
Irene Betancort Cabrera. Teacher and Doctor in Philosophy and Sciences of Education. Director of the Associated Center of the UNED of Lanzarote 2008-2015