Accessibility

Human beings live on a planet built to facilitate their life and they model the world to better accommodate their needs and that way makes their life easier. Taking this into account, all humans  should feel comfortable and should not experience any sort of trouble performing daily tasks. Accessing a building, watching TV, having a drink at a bar, or going to the toilet. for example, should not represent an enormous effort. Despite this, for people with some kind of disability access to simple things can become very difficult, very long, and even very risky.

There are several possible causes of this situation. For instance, people's selfishness and lack of education seem to be at the core of the problem. Not caring about others' problems is not uncommon these days and this attitude produces complications like the lack of accessibility. The lack of education is always a problem and when it comes to accessibility it means that the ones who design the world do not take into account some people's needs. Sometimes, this is because they are not aware of the distress people with disabilities suffer every day of their lives just because of the additional obstacles they find in their ways. Other times, the cost of doing things the right way is just not worth it according to their standards. However, if it is considered that every person will suffer from some disability sooner or later, this idea does not make much sense.

As possible solutions to tackle this situation are to modify and enforce laws to contemplate most vulnerable people's needs. In addition, schools should show students by example how people with some type of disability struggle on a daily basis. As an example, kids should drive a wheelchair for several days to suffer the inconveniences that people with mobility problems have every day of their lives. Thus, people will have knowledge of this circumstance during their entire lives.

If humanity hopes for being equal and inclusive some action is required because right now it is not. Fortunately, there are a lot of thorough people fighting to achieve a better world where everyone is an important part. 

Complaint letter

 Dear Minister of Education,

I am sending you this letter to share with you my concern about the current situation of the education system in general, and the schools in particular in our country. I will try to remain objective and explain in a clear way my worries. I am not a part of the system, but I have enough information to give a fairly valid opinion about the subject.

The news about the Spanish education system are not good as long as I remember. For example, results on PISA tests are below the average year after year. Furthermore, students in Spain spend many more hours in the classroom than others from countries that obtain better results in the tests. Hence, it is pretty obvious that more time does not mean better learning. 

One of the main causes of this disastrous performance of our students is the importance given to memorization in the exams. Instead of fostering the learning of new skills, and using practical examples to better acquire new concepts, we keep memorizing a lot of data for the exams, and then, a few days later most of this knowledge is mainly forgotten. This explains why Spanish students perform badly in math and science subjects. Mastering these subjects implies to really understand them, it is not a matter of ability to memorize.

Another cause of the bad results is the lack of motivation of many teachers who are not vocational and just applied for the job because it is a job for life, with a good salary and good working hours. Besides, performance assessment is something personal because there is not a real system to evaluate their work. Then, we can compare the teacher's situation with a car with no obligation to pass the ITV (Vehicle Technical Inspection) every year. If the car's owner considers that it is in good condition, roads could be full of potential weapons if the owners are a little bit too optimistic.

Something curious about our schools is that the number of hours of class time in Spain is higher than the average, however, this is not reflected in performance. This is possibly due to the lack of motivation of an elevated number of educators.

There are some key points that authorities should rethink and try to improve. First of all, they should develop a good assessment system to review teachers' motivation and performance. Secondly, if a teacher does not fulfill the requirements of their position he or she should be dismissed. Finally, the way different subjects are explained in the classrooms should be reviewed and changed to avoid excessive and useless memorization. 

I would like to thank you for taking the time to read my opinions. I encourage you to take some action in order to make some improvements to our education system because the future of our country depends on it.

Sincerely yours,  Justme.