- The members of the dynamic Gora Ikasle Borroka have made protests against the return of classes at different points in the Basque Country. In the Education delegation of Pamplona, in the Ribera de Navarra, in the institutes of Aiaraldea, in the Toki ona Institute of Five Villas and in the delegation of Bilbao have placed banners, paintings and dolls "at the center of the lives of the students!" to proclaim it. The organisers have made it clear that all actions have been carried out with the necessary security measures.
Top The members of the struggle dynamics of the students say that they will not return to class because there are no conditions or needs for it. In the field of health, the distribution and management of the safety equipment, the means of cleaning and disinfection of the areas, will not respect the spaces to ensure the safety distances. They ask where others would be if in each class there are going to be 15 peers.
"Those who have proposed are not thinking about the conditions that have to be fulfilled to do things right, less about preparing to adapt the situation; no exercise has been done along with the educational omunity. We cannot put the health of students and workers at risk and take a step backwards in overcoming the pandemic," they have denounced.
Next is a full reading of "The Lives of Students at the Center".
We have been in an emergency situation in Euskal Herria about two months ago and our students have been particularly affected. At a time when the care crisis has emerged with the health crisis, the French and Spanish and local governments have refused to take into account the real needs of students and to adapt to the context. As the only variable that has influenced our daily lives, they have interpreted that, instead of being in class, we are at home, all in the same conditions. And that is not the case, do you really believe that the moment has asked and demanded that the curriculum pattern remain blind? With the usual pedagogical models and methodologies? Where are the care tasks that students should perform at home? Where are our experiences, emotions and social needs?
Do you think we all have private material resources, computers, connections, books, notebooks, etc. at our fingertips?
The measures taken to “adapt” to the situation were taken by Madrid and Paris from the logic of the market, from the centralizing state approach and with the intention of generating a social scale, and applied by the local authorities in the same line. These measures have placed capital above life when they consider that education is a circle that cannot be stopped and that must continue to produce: they have driven the rigid and memorable work of curricular contents without questioning the pedagogical model and the usual methodologies, such as not putting students in the center. And within the elaboration of the contents, there has been an increase of segregation between those who have and do not have computer supports, those who dominate the language and those who do not, those who need less and more attention, in short, have treated the students as a homogeneous group when it is not. Therefore, it is clear that these measures intend to reproduce submissive, uncritical and passive students.
The concern that has arisen has been very clear. It is clear that the management carried out has been deficient and so have many agents of the educational community. In our view, however, the problem is not limited to mismanagement. In our view, this shows that the French and Spanish educational systems imposed on us today have hit the ceiling. These educational systems do not put us at the center and take us into account, they do not respond to our real needs and less to those of Euskal Herria.
And what have state and local governments done about this widespread denunciation? Nothing can be used to improve the situation. What is worse, in the case of the CAV, the Basque Government initially proposed on 18 May the return to class of all teaching and second year high school staff, a week later the DBH4 and the smaller ones were incorporated. The proposal has been criticised by the educational agents, so the Basque Government has left the centres with the responsibility it deserves, and each centre will have to decide whether or not to return to class. And finally, yesterday we received the news that the opening of the centres will be delayed to 25. Be that as it may, we say aloud: NO, WE WILL NOT RETURN TO CLASS!
We will not return to class because there are no conditions or needs for return. There are no conditions if we look from the health field: distribution and management of the safety material, means for cleaning and disinfection of the areas, spaces to guarantee the safety distances (in short, ratios management: in each class there will be 15 colleagues, the rest...) and a long etc. The proponents are not thinking about the conditions that have to be fulfilled to do things right, less about preparing to adapt to the new situation; the exercise has not been done along with the educational omunity. We cannot put the health of students and workers at risk and take a step backwards in overcoming the pandemic.
But we say even more, the course does not need to be in class and the curricular contents are maintained and the Lives of Students TO THE CENTER!
15 May 2020
But we say even more, we do not need to finish the course in the classroom and the curricular contents as such and without adaptations. We do not need to recover the “lost time” and less to withstand the pressure or anxiety that this entails for students. What we need today is for the lives of the students to be as if nothing had happened, and therefore we demand that the course be finished now, leaving aside the selectivity of Hego Euskal Herria; it is time to manage the needs that has touched us what has happened. Put surveillance in the center.
We're very angry. Because at the heart of the learning process, we're not the students, because we haven't been asked, because the educational community has been ignored, because decisions have been made without taking our needs and realities into account. Without having a good situation and in the name of production, safety measures have been relaxed and wrong decisions have been made, risking the health of the students. We cannot accept any other mandate that disregards the real needs of our people and the students, because we support the students in this country. For us, education is an instrument to educate critical, active, participatory and free people. The learning process must always respond to the real needs of students, who are at the center of the process.
That is why we demand aloud that it is time for us to meet. Let us decide here and here, here and now what are the tools to respond to our needs. Let's think about how we would do it and how we're going to do the next courses. Let's rethink tomorrow's return to life, care and students.