It should be said that the defense of the Public School does not harm the Ikastolas or the Christian Schools, nor does it demand more financial, personal and material resources for the Public School. In the event of a counterposition, it does so to the Basque Government for the neoliberal distribution of resources. This coincidence does not make the Spanish and French educational systems legitimate; let us not forget that with the exception of these systems there is hardly anyone – I would say that the exercise of disobedience is only done today by SEASKA and some small local projects – because we comply with the curriculum imposed and the evaluation criteria in centers of different nature, filling them with impositions. We have been far removed from the practices outside the system, which emerged in the underground in the homes of our grandmothers.

Having said that, I think it is time for each of us and us, together, to respond to some of the most powerful questions. Fortunately, I have had the opportunity to release some of them in the collective debates that have taken place within the LAB trade union:

What do we want?

Construction of the educational system of the Basque Country. Among others, sovereign, emancipatory, feminist, plural, inclusive, antiracist, critical, free, secular, citizen, universal and integral.

The basis of this educational system is the existence of a single school network that exceeds the system of the two educational networks. What we have called the Basque Community Public School in the LAB syndicate is a self-managed school of diverse neighborhoods and villages.

A model of popular advertising, self-managed, Community and financed entirely with public money for all Basque citizens.

Aware that on the road to building a proper educational system and a single School Network, we will have to reach agreements and take the streets with many comrades and comrades, I propose to ask an interesting question:

Where do we want to get to all of this?

If we want to build something else, it is clear that we will have to move from our current positions, that we will have discomforts and that the contradictions will not be lacking.

Education has also been the starting point of the political-armed conflict experienced by Euskal Herria, the main instrument for a process of assimilation. The memory and recognition of what happened in the educational field are essential; the recognition of the work of the ikastolas movement and the recognition of the people who from the Public Schools have worked for another model.

Mine is the generation of those of us who were students in the conflict that was a process of concrete imposed advertising; without forgetting the past, it is up to us to value the achievements and propose new paths. Self-fortification only takes us away from the goal of building another educational system and its own model.

Although there have been many resistance and achievements, especially with regard to language literacy and the transmission of Basque culture, the responses of the middle of last century do not serve us to answer the current questions. Today, the models of citizenship and the segregation generated by the system cross us into cities, towns, neighborhoods and schools, and we want to transform it!

How do you do it?

Those of us who want to explore new paths in favor of another educational model and our own system, leaving strengths and power quotas, have to open a path full of contradictions and difficulties, how do we do it? "That's what I want to say," said Miguel Strogoff. In this way, there can be no lack of struggles and initiatives for the acquisition of educational competences in the three administrations that we are divided. Being an active part of the sovereign process of the Basque Country, building its own practices, acquiring spaces of power and organizing critical communities. Is it possible to make progress in this transition?

Disobedience over the imposed educational systems! When they wanted to apply the LOMCE, we were able to respond as a village and plant ourselves in front of the revalid ones. As well as responding to the aggressions, we have to work on the construction of this model of our own. Set aside the evaluation criteria, the tests, create an own curriculum to educate the diverse Basque citizenship of the 21st century and apply it locally.

Prevention of segregation

We must promote and demand effective measures to tackle segregations. We must overcome the neo-liberal patriarchal-racist citizenship model from local realities. Our educational communities must be a space for reception, plural and inclusive; we do not want ghettos.

We do not want a system that differentiates by language, origin, race, class, gender or religion. For this reason, we must demand concrete measures from networks and schools financed with public money, in addition to requiring the administration of other policies: the obligation for places of living to have centres of a different nature, the requirement for territorial delegations to have another organisation, for local institutions to draw up school maps and complete educational tables, for local communities and institutions to acquire more powers to organise education and for quotas to be abolished in the concerted centres.

School communities must be involved. Schools must be integrated into neighborhoods and villages, without management models, with stable staff and with solid projects. Promoting popular cohesion, reflecting the diversity existing in society. Whiteness should become uncomfortable. Today we find it anachronistic and unacceptable the school that previously distinguished by gender. When will the school that distinguishes by race, class or language – concerted or public – become anachronistic? Let us make the Basque language a welcome language, we demand that literacy in Basque and also in schools be free of charge, so let us act with the specific reception plans that the resource requires.

Let us also bring to the educational sphere the reflections that from the feminist movement of the Basque Country we try to develop from a decolonial perspective. We have to get out of this comfort situation, there is no progress in comfort. We have to make a critical analysis of power, placing it in the system of multiple oppressions; we have to open a common agenda, assuming that we are the oppressors of the spoils; we have to take responsibility for privileges. The system does not strike a migrant woman or impoverished Abertzale in the same way.