schools could be fined for failing to teach kids to readANDALUCIA should look to other regions to improve its rock-bottom exam results.

That is the verdict of Íñigo Méndez de Vigo, the Junta’s Education Minister, who wants to ‘put more emphasis on education’ like in best performing regions ‘Castilla-León, Madrid and Navarra.’

His comments follow news that Andalucian 15-year-olds performed the worst in the country in the most recent set of science exams, and second to last in maths and science.

Mendez added that while there were good practices in some Andalucian schools, more cohesion between them was needed.

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6 COMMENTS

  1. Massive overhaul of teacher education philosophy, policy and teacher education is needed at national ministry and municipal school administration. Need to get rid of religious curriculum hidden in ‘philosophy’ courses in secondary Institutes. Most geared to memorization and politically correct thinking. Nothing much in creative thinking that benefits open minds need for science.

  2. ” Íñigo Méndez de Vigo, the Junta’s Education Minister” Someone has to go back to school. Religion and Philosophy are essential to know how the mind works, once established that, let´s the left brain learn in balance.

  3. Roman Catholic theology melded with Spanish authoritarianism teaches obedience to authority and a hierarchical thought structure. Both antithetical to ‘how the mind works. ‘The ‘left brain- right brain’ notion was discredited decades ago: my office was across the hallway from the person who first advanced that dichotomy, then repudiated it.
    To get caught up I would assign Philosophy of mind, enacted cognition, psychobiology and complex systems theory from evolutionary biology. See Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela ‘Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living’ and ‘The Systems View of Life’, Fritjof Capra and Pier Luigi Luisi as an excellent current review. But you would need an open inquisitive mind unlike the pretentious Moroccan born ‘baronet’ you cite – who would benefit by returning to university to learn something instead of serving as a minister of propaganda.

  4. Right left brain concept can´t be descredited because it always has been a theory either you follow it or don´t, the same as with Enstein´s relativity even with this last atomic bombs were developed. Capra happens to be one of my favorites and says religion (hindu) is behind matter
    that is to say first religion to get the notion, then creativity to design the experiment, then the prove. With the personal allusion I ment, he wasn´t in charge of any department in the “junta” but in the ministry in Madrid.

  5. As an aside, I should like to add that catholicism as teached in primary and secondary schools is very swallow and teaches ethics mostly, as is common in other religions up to that period. If you really want to know the field then you have to be introduced to specialty divinity schools. Putting the blame on this religion or teachings is unfair and there is no sunday school as in other protestant branches and pretty simmilar in content.

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