LA ESCUELA EN LA ENCRUCIJADA
SUMMARIE

Spanish Education: Future challenges and suggestions for improvement
CARMEN MAESTRO MARTÍN

The State’s School council is the highest advisory and participation body at non-university educational levels. One of its most important responsibilities is the analysis of the state and situation of the educational system and, once it has developed the diagnosis, proposing the government educational measures for improvement which, at present, have the ambition to achieve, among other goals, the goals that EU countries were set for 2010.

Misery of the privatization - Public confiscation
LUIS GÓMEZ LLORENTE

The author evokes the state school as an institution created by the liberal revolution, referring to its most essential characteristics: Being universal, free of charge, secular, and its civil servant teachers. Then he examines the socialist criticism of the bourgeois education, emphasizing the contribution made by social democracy to the educational system.He finally maintains that the current neoliberal tendency to privatise the schools implies the destruction of all those venerable characteristics, and he mainly criticises the policy that entrusts the state school to the private management.

Globalization, education and competence
GABRIEL CENTENO SANTOS

In the uncertainty and confusion caused by the various demands of roles that are required for teachers by the continuing education reforms in this globalized world, the author claims the transforming function of the school, beyond mere subordination to market needs, for training of people capable to read and interpret today’s society for themselves, turning the school into a common area of democratic practices, while advocating the need for developing such change in complicity with teachers, the principal actor in this transformation.

The emotions and values of the teachers
ÁLVARO MARCHESI ULLASTRES

The author stresses that the emotions of teachers are an expression of the interaction with students and colleagues, and also depend on the demands and requirements of the education system. If the job of the teachers is full of emotions and plays a decisive role in the teachers’ work satisfaction, we need to worry about their emotional well-being and consider the work of teachers as a moral profession which from this perspective acquires full motivating force, because forgetfulness or lack of care of this dimension leads to the “demoralization” of teachers, especially when the traditional models are confronted.

For a secular teaching of religion
ANTONIO GARCÍA SANTESMASES

The author advocates a secular teaching of religion in public schools to cope with the challenges from a religious pluralism in multicultural societies. It advocates a strong concept of citizenship, which being based on an inclusive secularism, avoids the dangers of individualism and communitarianism.

Education and gender equality. The role of the school before women’s new social reality
LUZ MARTÍNEZ TEN

The article presents a brief tour that starts with the adoption of mixed schools in Spain, which lead to education challenges from the perspective of equality, and finishes with the input from the law for equal treatment of women and men adopted in March 2007. We have selected three parallel readings: time management, curriculum and school management.

ICT in education: a complex process
ANTONIO RODRÍGUEZ DE LAS HERAS

Information and communication technology have also placed education in the crossroads. What transformation role do they have? Why isn’t the integration level achieved not satisfactory yet and neither are the results? Is the effort being done in this regard worth? There is a tendency to consider that the educational system is the reason for this degree of disorientation, because it does not go forward at the same pace as technology does and, therefore, comes the mismatch between what technology offers and what education can use of it. This paper argues that it is technology, which has not reached the level of development enough for education to incorporate the effects that are sought. But the process is unstoppable and changes are beginning to appear.

European keys for the Spanish education
LUIS ENRIQUE GARCÍA-RIESTRA GÓMEZ

The educative public service is today in the Western society the only body that holds universal standarized and mandatory benefits: a basic education that every child and adolescent should receive within the school. In a society and an economy where volatility, insecurity, inequality and social exclusion go hand in hand with creativity, innovation, productivity and wealth creation, the challenge for teachers and public service education, before socio-cultural and socio-economic changes, is building a educational
response based on innovation in the school and built with European keys.

Americas Latin: globalization, Millennium Goals and educates
MARTA SCARPATO

The complex phenomenon of globalization not only has not brought to Latin America effective development model but has seriously hampered fair and equal distribution of goods, resources and knowledge. Hence the urgent need to adopt development models that combine the building of dynamic and competitive economies with respect to human capital, the existence of a democratic order with full exercise of citizenship, a welfare based on justice and social cohesion, political stability based on the free participation of all social agents, and finally, a growing distribution of assets and better economic, social and cultural rights.Although Latin American history shows that the region has made tremendous efforts to improve the level and quality of their education, it has entered the twenty-first century with subjects of outstanding importance.
That’s why it must be stressed that the defense of public school quality for all occupies a central space in the demands of organizations representing education workers and not in vain, since that is the only one that in societies heavily marked by poverty, can ensure a genuine democratization of education.

The school in United States, facing the same problems?
BELÉN ÁLVAREZ IGLESIAS

The article deals with the inequity of the educational system of the United States of America. This situation is caused, in part, by the Law No Child Left Behind. There has been a lot of controversy around this Law since it was passed in 2002. There is also an analysis of the Bilingual Education in the United States. There is a description of the bilingual programs used in different schools and the arguments of those who are in favor and against them.

The school before the new social demands
CARLOS LÓPEZ CORTIÑAS

The traditional complaints from parents and teachers (Families / School) with mutual recriminations are also altered and implemented by the significant changes we are living, so that the author finds it important to improve family-school relationships and considers it essential to bring together positions of mutual support, to narrow and clarify what roles are designed for parents and teachers, and to arbitrate operating ways towards the implement of a coordinated action, always knowing the views from teachers and parents about the educational functions that are assigned to both. He also presents some of the initiatives and proposals related to this issue that his federation is claiming before the society as a whole and the educational administrations in particular.

Families and schools in the Twenty First Century
PEDRO RASCÓN MACÍAS

The article develops the principles of APEC, which advocates for a democratic school, free, secular, scientific and ready to compensate individual and collective inequalities considering that public school is the only one that can guarantee equality of opportunity and success for every school student.

Private schools before new social demands
JESÚS NÚÑEZ VELÁZQUEZ

The article contains proposals from ACADE, the standardizing of educational service with other services and means of production, abiding, of course, with the constitutional principles of universality, freedom, fairness and gratuity. The entirely private education moves in an environment of competition in terms of inequality that forces them to continuously improve and innovate. It is governed by the laws of market where only the best schools, the ones that are capable to evolve and that are appropriate and meet the market demands, namely the families, are the ones that will register more students.