Last week there was a huge educational protest in Madrid. Thousands of students, teachers, and parents marched the streets of Madrid to oppose the new Wert educational law that was supposed to go into effect. There are several things that come with this bill including higher fees for universities, allocating more funds to the private/public schools (they are a result of not having enough public schools for the population so the government now pays the salaries of some private school teachers who teach public school kids), even more harsh budget cuts for public schools, and making religion a bigger part of public education (right now students have the option of taking Catholic religion classes or opting for the alternative class, this new law would make it mandatory to take the religion class and it would count for a grade).
Being a foreigner in the protest, I felt a little guilty. I'm here in Spain teaching and being paid by the education department. The same department that has laid off a huge amount of teachers and cut the salaries of the teachers that remain. Since I was a little confused on everything that was being protested, I asked a professor, Ana, at my school about the strike. During our discussion, which helped me understand so much, Ana told me that last year (the education reforms have been going on since the recession) three teachers were let go but they gained an auxiliar (my job). After this Ana said something along these lines "so the government obviously has funds, they just aren't always allocating them to where most people think they should." This is largely where my guilt stemmed from. I know she wasn't saying that she thought there shouldn't be auxiliares, but it's also hard to look at the facts and see that I, a foreigner, am here while some actual Spanish citizens no longer have their teaching positions. However, I think that our positions as auxiliares are important considering many adults are trying to learn/improve their English to secure better jobs. These kids will already be a step ahead of the game if they successfully master English before their job search. And since I'm teaching such young children, I hope by the time they grow up there will no longer be the 25% unemployment rate and they will have a much brighter future. One can hope!
Participating in the protest was quite fun. At one point we were mixed with a huge group from a university who was shouting several chants, a few of which I eventually deciphered what they were saying. We also managed to walk next to a drum circle for a while. That was quite interesting and incredibly fun to sway along to. I heard rumors that there was a little violence eventually. But the whole time I was walking along, everyone was calm and barely seemed to acknowledge the police presence. I was glad I went. I've never participated in a protest that big. The streets were literally full from near my house all the way to the center of the city. One news source even had the title of "Thousands of teachers, and millions of students protest in Madrid." I'm not quite sure if the millions was a bad translation or if there really were millions (that seems highly unlikely considering Madrid's population is 3 million). But it sure felt like millions of people were marching!
The week after the education strike, there was a transportation strike. It wasn't all of the public transportation in Madrid (thank god), just the renfe employees. Renfe is a company that operates the longer distance trains in Madrid. So for me, that meant the train I take to school would be affected. The employees were demanding better wages and hours, I believe. The last three days of October were all day strikes and then when November began I believe they moved the strike to only the commuting hours with some fridays being full day strikes. I literally understand nothing about what's going on or how my train's schedule is being affected. All I know is that I need to be at the train station by 7:45 because sometimes the train leaves at 7:50 and sometimes it leaves as late as 8:05. So thankfully the strike hasn't really affected me. But who knows, next week it could change times again because the strike is no longer a whole day strike! I was also surprised to look at the renfe website where they announced the days and hours of the strike, to see that the strike would last the entire month of November! We shall see how my commute ends up going!
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