International Contacts Part 2

This week I did some major reading and talking to my oversea friend that is currently in Spain. I learned so much about education in Spain this week that really tweaked my interest.

The way that the “politics” of school in Spain is very different than what I am use to. This is what my friend and I talked about mostly this week. There were three things that I found very interesting. The first thing was that in Spain, parents can pick what school to send their children to, even if it is public. This means that some children are transported 30 minutes to an hour each day to get to school. Schools are also rated on their preference. Most popular schools are very hard to get into and a lottery system can be used or a donation to the school to get a child into the system. Another thing I found very interesting was the classes that the students must take. All students must take an advanced art class when they get to “high school” which would include: volume, technical drawing, design, and audiovisual communication just to name a few. They also must take a foreign language which is not unheard of. The last requirement that I found radical was a class in tourism. This class is a requirement for graduation and offers topics on how to create tourism and tourism of other countries. The reasoning behind this is to create a greater appreciation of other cultures and people within the world. The last thing that I found out about the “politics” of school in Spain is that I want to touch on again is their school hours. They go to school 7-1 Monday-Saturday. I am still shocked that this is possible. I do not know how all the curriculum fits in this day, but I would love to see it work. I am just shocked at these hours and somewhat jealous of them as well, even though I think school on Saturday would be hard for the United States now with all the stigmas of the weekend and how weekends have become so busy for many families.

The article I read this week was titled, Current Issues in Comparative Education. I was reading this article and trying to relate it to all the information about education in Spain that I have learned so far. I found that in the article they state, “many developed countries have begun to turn their attention to “very early” education of children from birth to pre-primary age” (2009). This is true of Spain as well because they have the option for parents to send their children to school at the early ages of 3-6. It was a very good comparison that Spain and the United States both value early childhood education. The article also talked a lot about African Education and what the issues are with their system. I am glad to say that in Spain and in the U.S. we are not in such educational debt as they are. Textbooks go missing and get ruined, there are not enough supplies to give every student materials, some students do not show up for days, and there can be over 70 students per class (2009). This made me thankful for our education system and for Spain’s as well.

Although no education system is 100% fool proof, I feel that countries that put emphasis on education and have money to support education are well on their way to making sure that every child has a proper education. I hope in the future, I get to see changes to other developing countries in the educational world as well.

Teachers College, Columbia University. (2009). Early childhood care and education: Worldwide challenges and progress. Current Issues in Comparative Education, 11, 1–44. Retrieved fromhttp://www.tc.columbia.edu/cice/Issues/11.00/PDFs/11_Complete_Issue.pdf