Where Learning is Against the Law

“What did you do today at school?”

“Nothing…”

“Come on! You always say that. Now tell me, what did you do today?”

“I am serious! We did nothing…well…at least for one hour.”

And while Jr. can be a bit of a hormone-driven pain in the neck these days, at least this time, he is telling the truth…and for that matter, so is every student in the entire Spanish public school system. Or to be more exact, those who choose not to take as truth tales where freak storms and perfumed mists are caused by petrified foreskins found in quaint Italian villages.

Because for two hours every week, those kids who are somewhat sceptical about tales of a man finding gravity a nuisance in Jerusalem and shooting into the air on a flying horse or others moonwalking on the sea of Galilee, sit in class and do…nothing.

Welcome to the clase de nada, an educational black hole where learning is forbidden by law, one that was passed by the PSOE in 2006. Since then, for two hours a week, those who aren’t so sure of the infallibility of an elderly German living in the centre of Rome are taken from their classrooms and thrown into limbo, and we’re not talking about Hawaiian shirts balancing under a pole, nor the one where unbaptized children float above bubbling lakes of burning sulphur.

In this limbo, their teachers are meant to monitor but in no way are to reinforce core subjects and thus exercise the verb form of their calling. For this would give the limboers an unfair advantage over those who do choose to remain in the classroom to learn about legal land deeds given to a ‘chosen’ people several millennia ago.

As there is no defined curriculum for this particular dance class, each school becomes a sort of free zone where it’s up to the Director of Studies to choose what to do over the hundred or so hours that the students will lose over the academic year. Classes can range from homework time and extensive reading to chess and most frequently, Jr’s aforementioned nothing.

In schools where there are few abstainers, the unchosen infidels are left to color at the back of the classroom while the teacher presents as truth a book that finds stoning an adequate response to things like adultery. Perhaps worse yet, the little ones are sometimes bundled in with special needs classes (when they themselves need no extra support) and often mistakenly feel that they are being punished for the simple fact of not believing that women were created from Adam’s rib.

This situation might be conceivable in a modern democracy if the demand for religion were overwhelming throughout the ages of obligatory education. However statistics show that, while the majority of parents of very young learners choose religion classes for their children, the numbers sharply drop off after that special age here in Spain when kids receive Playstations, mobile phones and trips to Disneyland in return for taking the first communion. In fact, once they reach secondary education, less than half choose to sit through sermons about the evils of pork products and masturbation.

A closer look at the misleadingly named Religion class shows that it also discriminates among believers. To date, only the Catholic Church, Evangelical Christians, Muslims and Jews have been given the right to assign teachers to impart their beliefs in the public school system, leaving the children of Buddhists, Hindus, Scientologists and followers of Odin and Baal in the same situation as non-believers, back in the clase de la na’.

But even though these few faiths have been given the right on paper, according to the United Islamic Community (UCIDE), 90% of Islamic students do not have access to classes on Islam. Other religious communities have even less representation. The socialists’ weak attempt to obviate the Catholic Church’s privileged position falls completely flat when you leave the bigger cities in the country.

This burning bush situation can only be explained by referring back to the infamous concordat that was signed with the Vatican just months after the current constitution became law. A treaty that has since saddled its Iron Age commandments on this relatively young democracy. A legal agreement in which the Spanish government agrees to offer religious education in its public school system and to allow the Catholic Church to appoint its own teachers. Educators who don’t have to go through the ordeal of public examinations that other teachers do yet are paid by the tax payer.

Richard Dawkins has said it on many occasions, there is no such thing as Muslim, Catholic, Hindu, Zoroastrian or Jewish children. Just as there is no such thing as Fascist, IU or PP kids. These are ideas that their parents are free to hold in an open and just society, but ones that have absolutely no place in public schools. A place where learning and instilling curiosity should be paramount, where classes teaching children to be happy with nonanswers are relegated to history books and where invincible concordats and fairy tales of Adam and Eve riding on dinosaurs are saved for Sundays.

 

 

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