Spain's Education Minister touts 'curiosity' after PISA failure

Touting 'curiosity' after the PISA failure: the minister's narrative

After the poor PISA results, Spain's Education Minister Milagros Tolon has argued that students score well in areas such as "curiosity to learn", "sense of belonging to the school" or "ability to persevere". The claim has drawn a critical reaction: with basic knowledge in free fall, the government would seem more interested in highlighting emotional qualities than in teaching.

The emotional turn as a smokescreen

The strategy can be read as an attempt to divert attention. The central fact is that results in reading, mathematics and science remain poor. Against that, the minister highlights less measurable dimensions, which in her narrative would become the "core" of the education system. Some see a deliberate intent in this move: for the state, an ideal population would be "as intellectually weak as possible, with the greatest herd mentality that can be achieved". The quote sums up an analysis that is gaining traction: forming autonomous individuals with critical thinking is a danger to the established order.

Back to the old-school senior secondary teacher?

The reaction also returns to a classic debate: pedagogy versus knowledge. In the past, Spain's catedráticos de instituto (senior state secondary school teachers) were considered an intellectual elite, able to explain quantum physics as fluently as geography. An anecdote illustrates the difference: a History teacher would answer the question of how he knew the Coriolis acceleration with a "by geography". The contrast with today's "social pedagogy" is evident to many critics, who call for the return of subject knowledge over soft skills.

The contradiction is plain to see: if education teaches "belonging" and "perseverance" without getting students to understand a text, the future will face adults who feel integrated but cannot calculate a discount. The ministry, meanwhile, sticks to its narrative.