And so we reach the present, where education in Spain has become a roller coaster of technological innovations and budget cuts. In theory, we should be in the twenty-first century with all the wonders we were promised: interactive whiteboards, laptops, teachers using apps to set exams, and even artificial intelligence to mark homework. Reality, however, is somewhat more complicated.
In many state schools, those famous 'interactive whiteboards' are really bits of scrap that have not worked properly since whichever technician was on duty looked at them six years ago. And let us not even discuss budgets. This is where the true art of teaching becomes a juggling act: teachers have to perform miracles with resources that are not only insufficient but arrive late as well. You can be the world's most innovative teacher, but if you do not even have enough chalk, your lessons will still look as though they came from the Middle Ages.
The problem is not only the tools, but also educational programs. Every time the government changes, the education law changes, as though children's futures depended on the political ideology of whoever happens to be in power. It is as if we were condemned to reinvent the wheel every four years. Today, teachers have to deal not only with pupils but also with bureaucracy, hypercritical parents, and a system seemingly designed to make their lives harder.
A typical day in a state school is like an episode of a sitcom where every character is constantly on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Pupil-to-teacher ratios are so high that the poor teacher feels more like an air traffic controller than an educator, trying to maintain order in a classroom where every student seems to inhabit a world of their own. In Spain, education seems more like an endurance race for teachers and pupils, where the aim is simply to survive the school year.