18:45. My friends have been quoted by 7 p.m., but the mobile alarm has caught me far from being ready. Dressed in a pajamas with drawings of sandie and looking only at the Google document of the computer, I have admitted that today I will not arrive in time either. However, this time the excuse has no price: I was writing a column for ARGIA. I have imagined the open mouths of friends while the Galicia Stars of hands slide slowly over the earth.

The excuse has no price, the excuse has no price… Well, this can cost a little. Why am I writing a column? Why am I in a literary band? Why do I like writing to myself? Apart from the utopia of its own merit, I am led by the diagnostic evaluation we were given in the ESO 2.mailan or, in other words, “the process that helps centers improve their educational procedures”. After long tests measuring several competencies, one last insignificance: a questionnaire to look for the factors that justify the good (or low) performance of the students.

From that soup of questions, I only had one: Do you have Gero de Axular at home? A thick and outdated book, located in the center of the bookshelf of the living room, adjacent to the Bible. Yes, I have. And what else? I also have a house full of books. And a father who, besides being a reader, is also a reader. And what else? At Ikastola I also had an excellent teacher, who at the end of the exercises encouraged us to read, instead of sending more exercises. A lecturer, one of those who highlights the shortcomings of others.

If you start doing the math, the approximate price that I'm writing right now is that of a house, the license plate of the ikastola and the Gero book of Axular. If the cheapest copies of the latter cost around EUR 20, please note. So far from chance, this has a cost, and like everything we label with a price, we can't all afford it.

Returning to the diagnostic evaluation, I represent the questionnaires made to thousands and thousands of students, the questionnaires that represent a brute reality, placed in boxes with stickers that put “confidential information”, on the way to the Department of Education of the Basque Government.

I imagine the adults reading the papers of the boxes with the goggles down to the nose. After an hour, a beard man will say that this year too there have been poor results and another will say that it is not surprising, that young people are coming worse and worse. A woman with her lips painted in red says that every child should have a library at home, that the fault is for parents who don't have enough money. Her friend will comment that the blame is on the laziest teenagers, that even if they have everything at hand, they do nothing, and another person who thinks that the children of immigrants who are late are responsible, but will not say anything in case.

The responsible and the guilty party unanimously decreed from the next year that all the students of the 2nd year of the ESO must read in Axular Gero, and they will take a cappuccino with the feeling that they have fixed the world. Those who have just cut the budget for the Urruzuno literary contest will be joined in the adjoining room, and they will all celebrate how fast they are. Reform without addressing the basic contradictions is, in the end, a capacity.

I admit that I have not read in Axular Gero either, but I would say that the message has been understood.