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Miguel Soler. Director General for Professional Training. Ministry of Education.
- First of all, although this has already been said many times over the course of yesterday, we need to get all departments, and the management, involved.
Another fundamental aspect is that we must work, obviously, with different texts, and in different subject areas.
It is not the same to understand a maths problem as it is to understand a scientific explanation, a chemistry experiment, a philosophical argument, or a poem.
There are aspects of comprehension which are common to all of these, but there are also others which are specific to each different “language”,
meaning that these specific training programmes cannot be drawn up just by – they can coordinate and manage-,
but not be left alone - specialists in the fields of linguistics. They need to include specialists from other areas
so that the training covers this kind of situation from the outset.
Who is the best person to convince a maths teacher? A maths advisor. I mean persuade him to work on reading.
One of the characteristics I think an advisor from any subject area must have:
because certain skills are indispensible for the entire population,
is for them to be included as central aspects in the very development of the subject.
What is maths for? For learning to resolve problems.
In order to do this, we have to understand, comprehend the text of the problem. If a maths teacher spends the whole year
solving equations, derivatives, integrals…and posing a problems once every three months, is is unlikely the students will learn how to solve problems.
And it is very unlikely that they will understand maths texts, if the maths teacher does not look at them in class with them.
Another matter: the school library. We also need more people who are specialised in the use of documentation, organisation...
who allow the library to truly be a place for school teaching and learning resources.
Obviously there need to be not just literary resources, but also resources on all aspects of knowledge,
and there must be technological resources. Today, when we talk about libraries, we must also talk about the internet. The use of the internet.
But we must also search for the way for get families and society in general more involved.
Education is not just the job of the education system.
I think it is a grave mistake to think that issues will be resolved just because they have been formally included in the education system.
Even if we were to do a marvellous job, all that is meant by education in values,
goes far beyond what we do or do not do in a school.
What can’t happen is for us to be talking about all this content relating to education in values,
all about respect for others, solidarity and the values of a democratically advanced society,
for all this to be worked on properly at schools and then the same television station which has just given that information on the news,
shows the following programme full of insults, disrespect for others, and quite the opposite e values which we're trying to promote through our Education System.
If based on this we offer formats, tools, suggestions…
we also offer training activities for families…, there will be more possibilities for, in a setting like that,
getting families involved in reading, with what it means and with the different concepts.
To conclude, perhaps we should draw up one more plan; a plan of plans.
This would be to remove all plans, because I believe that plans have virtuality – highlighting at a particular moment
something which we really want to place in the spotlight as a major point of interest and it is addressed for a reason.
This might be called school education project, or whatever each of us wants to call it
but, in any case, we need to reflect on all these issues, and what we truly need is
not just for them to be written by an expert in doing so or by the management team- as said in some cases-,
but for them to truly form part of the process of the school adopting collective values
which goes far beyond what each teacher does in his or her specific field, in a particular subject.
- That is a good plan – doing away with all plans.