If we compare the life of current schools with that of just a couple of decades ago, we will see many practices that were not done before or were not very widespread. Despite the fact that these new actions have not been imposed on teachers, they have been permeating to the point of occupying a significant part of school life. Among others, festivals, graduations, anniversaries have increased, the sending or publication on social networks of photos and chronicles of what happens in the classrooms have multiplied, open days have become general and badges, labels and quality seals of public and private educational institutions. Faced with this phenomenon, families find themselves on a continuum that goes from implicit demand, through apathy, to overload linked to demands for participation and the amount of information coming from the centers.
All these proposals have one thing in common: they transmit -consciously or unconsciously, falsely or truthfully- ideas about what and how work is done in a center, so that families form an opinion about it. They configure their brand image in this way, in a similar way to what private companies do. The objective, explicit or implicit, is to differentiate itself in the educational market in order to achieve greater demand. A very limited vision of educational freedom comes into play here, understood as the possibility of choosing among a limited series of preconfigured products. Thus, certain rites with dubious pedagogical use, such as graduations, have practically become mandatory because of what they mean for many families and for the image of the center.
This phenomenon is not alien to the general dynamics of society, where the brand image is of vital importance for the survival of any organization. These marketing and self-promotion practices, traditionally developed by private centers that need to justify their work and attract clients, are also adopted by public centers in what is called endogenous educational privatization, which occurs when the public sector acquires ideas, techniques, and practices. owned by the private sector. To the extent that centers must compete for enrollment, reputation becomes fundamental, since it is decisive for the choice of families. In a context characterized by a sharp demographic drop, the existence of a heterogeneous educational market and by a design of the offer of places that rests -supposedly- on the demand of families, the school war is open and “anything goes” to attract to the student body
The question is: Do these practices improve the quality of education? Defenders of educational markets believe that competition between schools fosters a virtuous circle that leads centers to implement improvement strategies. However, empirical evidence has not confirmed this idea. Quite the contrary: this competitiveness generates, in addition to other negative effects such as greater socioeconomic and sociocultural school segregation, a high pressure for the administrations and the cloisters to worry about issues that lose sight of the student body as the ultimate recipient of school action. . Obviously, the need to record educational processes and disseminate them does not affect all activities or all centers in the same way.
At this point, educational marketing comes into play, understood not as the dissemination of good practices, but as a process close to marketing. Many of these activities are carried out not for their educational purpose, but for their fundamentally commercial function and are thought from the adult-centric vision of other agents. The prioritization of the search for differentiation not only affects specific events, but can also impact the didactic proposals themselves. This influence of the image on the educational processes leads to the fact that, on occasions, some tasks are designed prioritizing offering a good image or obtaining some type of distinction rather than the achievement that all students will achieve. In other words, sometimes it seems that the classdojo (tool to provide information to families) is prioritized over pedagogical use, in a kind of educational posturing.
Similarly, some innovation proposals, quality seals or the use of certain methodologies are adopted uncritically, pursuing the label rather than a deep and effective transformation of school practices. The hegemony of the image and accountability leads actions that generate an observable and documentable result to gain prominence, to the detriment of others that, although they could have a greater educational meaning, do not lead to measurable products. It is the Campbell effect applied to the choice of school: the more an indicator influences the future of schools, in this case their image, the more possibilities there are for it to be artificially altered. In this regard, it would be necessary to consider to what extent the information that reaches families reflects the reality of the center and how it influences the decision-making process about schooling. Obviously, the need for innovation and promotion of good practices is not questioned, but rather the approach with which these are designed on some occasions. An approach that has led many teachers to question innovation per se or to be skeptical, accustomed to seeing the use of innovative methodologies practically as commercial slogans.
This new paradigm, where image plays a vital role, has reached the educational context and implies that documenting and disseminating activities that offer a positive vision of the center joins the long list of teaching attributions. This strong pressure to document educational processes is coupled with a growing assumption that families have the right to receive detailed information about what happens in the classroom. This generates a kind of educational existentialism in which what is not shown – what is not disseminated and publicized – does not happen. It is not enough for students to acquire certain skills and knowledge, but the process must also be recorded in documents, products or images that families receive or are disseminated on networks. The problem appears when the priorities are inverted and theatricality appropriates the educational fact.
Added to this urgency to distinguish oneself is the need to meet the growing social expectations placed in formal education, which imposes a rhythm that makes it difficult to consolidate learning and encourages a superficial treatment of multiple topics. It is necessary, on the one hand, to receive these expectations with caution and reflection, and on the other, to renounce breadth in favor of depth. Awareness campaigns, events, contests, etc. They can be extremely valuable activities from an educational point of view, but they must be inserted into the teaching and learning processes in a natural way, which entails the dedication of specific time. The solution does not necessarily involve the elimination of these activities, but rather proper planning that prioritizes some topics over others and gives them the necessary time, since it is impossible to take on all the topics at all levels.
Nothing seems to indicate that this phenomenon is going to decrease, but reducing competition between centers and guaranteeing the existence of quality processes in all schools seems like a desirable future. The opening and closing of lines from one course to the next cannot depend exclusively on the social demand of families (many times not demonstrated by the administration), nor should the suppression of units fall solely on public centers, unless want to unleash a school war for enrollment that harms educational improvement and the educational system as a whole. To do this, it is necessary to eliminate competition between centers that generates counterproductive stress, does not improve pedagogical practices, and entails a high opportunity cost in terms of time and effort. Therefore, it is urgent to reduce the influence of marketing in educational practice to put it at the service of the right to education. The difficulty lies in finding the middle ground between the dissemination of the processes carried out in the centers and the extreme of designing the proposals thinking about their publicity. Schools must be transparent, open to the community and work together with it, but always assuming that all efforts must have students as the center of their daily work.
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