Incorporate the debate on education in the electoral agenda

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The economic crisis eclipses the pedagogical issues of education. The urgency of this crisis clouds the importance of education, which is essential, even for economic growth. Developed countries have invested heavily in education systems, multiplying their budgets, and continue to do so today.

Education is essential to improve our quality of life. But not just any education. That is why it is necessary to debate what education we need according to the challenges of the 21st century.

The future is today. Beyond the current boom, artificial intelligence has been with us for several years. It is essential to implement a New Pedagogy that trains students for these new challenges. And it is clear that if we live in the so-called “knowledge society”, we cannot continue with a school structure whose main guidelines were thought of in the 19th century. We need to overcome cloistered contents, enclosed by isolated subjects and unrelated to each other. The chair (which comes from the cathedral of the Middle Ages) must be replaced by work on educational projects, with interdisciplinary axes, where different teachers interact. In this sense, it is necessary a training that trains the teachers, so that they themselves are also protagonists of the changes. Professionalize them and rank them so that they are the main actors. It is not possible to improve the quality of education without improving teacher training, which requires our greatest effort and willingness to give rise to the New Pedagogy.

It is necessary to teach how to navigate the new networks of knowledge, so that students learn to learn and undertake. Metapedagogy and metacognition are essential at this stage, so that they promote an integral, active and creative education, so that models of democratic participation are developed from the cultures of each institution.

If the quality of education is not improved, our country will be further marginalized from the processes of change that are taking place in the world. At this time in the 21st century, those who join these development processes will be able to improve their quality of life. While those who remain marginalized will face their future extinction.

Election season is a unique moment in our country. It is important that these problems enter the agenda of this electoral debate. The timing is uncertain for education. The educational system no longer resists more patches. It is necessary to launch a national pedagogical project that assumes these new challenges.

Beginning with the debate of this new pedagogical project already implies an attitude of change, if the problem of the quality of education is placed at the center. It is entering into a discussion process about what and how we should teach, it is basically talking about the present and the future of our country.

* Founding Rector of the New Juan Mantovani School.