Sources from the Ministry of Education have communicated a response to the report prepared by the Royal Spanish Academy that denounces the loss of linguistic, expressive and argumentative skills of Spanish adolescents, the deterioration in education in language and literature in the Secondary and Baccalaureate cycle. and the frustration of the teachers of these subjects, forced to do their work in a framework in which skills are more important than knowledge but in which they do not have an intellectual guide that gives meaning to their work.
The Government’s argument is developed in six points. In the first, the Ministry headed by Pilar Alegría affirms that it “respects the concern of an institution like the RAE for the situation of Spanish Language and Literature in the educational system”; but considers “that making a report based on 15 reports from collaborators shows an opinion, with an absence of data, which, in any case, is partial.” In the presentation of the text, the academics explained that its main source came from the experience of 15 teachers, currently active in the classrooms, who had expressed their experiences to the RAE. The Academy also compared this qualitative information with already known studies on teaching quality.
The Government’s second point maintains that “the Lomloe regulatory change has a clear motivation: the improvement of academic results, educational quality and equity, reducing the repetition rate and is based on the recommendations of the Council of Europe, the DUA or the SDGs. All the measures that develop the standard are aimed at these ends.” “Questioning a rule that is being implemented now,” the Government continues, “since all changes are progressive and gradual, it separates itself from the reality principle of any structural change.
The Ministry of Education also defends that its policy, in reality, is in continuity with previous regulations. “The lack of motivation in the teaching of literature is questioned when the Royal Decrees and the Autonomous Communities maintain a similar number of teaching periods and when the promotion of literary reading and the updating of the classics from the texts themselves are given priority over the eminently theoretical”.
In the last two points of its argument, the Government maintains that “the competency approach to the study of language puts the use of the language from a communicative point of view first, focuses, above all, on the understanding of oral and written texts, and allows delve into the ultimate purpose of a language. It is committed to developing media literacy and a critical approach to discourse.” And he denies that the competency approach despises the contents: “It is committed to them integrated into a teaching-learning process that also seeks the practical application of them in everyday life.”
