One battle after anothermovie, is on its way to becoming one of the movies of the year. I saw it recently and I admit that it did not leave me indifferent: it presents a protagonist with whom many will identify, who barely has time to get up from the ground before the next blow hits him. No matter how much you run, hide, or try to negotiate, a new ambush always appears.
The film works as a painful metaphor not only for our time, but also for what public schools and universities are experiencing today. Not because education has decided to become a battlefield threatened by the permanent shadow of fascism (as we see throughout the film), but because it has been placed there, in the middle of an unshielded crossfire, and with the only weapon it has always had: educating.
A new report from a teaching union was recently presented, which once again uncovers a feeling of wear and tear that is no longer anecdotal in our teaching staff. We see it on networks, and there is no sign that it will change with the new year: when it seems that one debate dies down, another one explodes with more noise, more urgency and more confusion. And, as in the movie, each withdrawal has a price. Every artificial controversy, every improvised reform or every suspicion sown from any medium leaves a mark.
The cultural battle cannot be allowed to become a permanent spectacle
Public education is not like other spheres of life: it cannot desert because teaching is, inevitably (and fortunately), intervening in culture. But it cannot allow the cultural battle to become a permanent spectacle that distracts it from its essential mission: guaranteeing equity, cohesion and the future.
The most disturbing thing is that education has become a mirror where each social sector projects fears and certainties. For some, it is a threatened refuge; for others, a space that must be opened to new sensibilities; Many also understand it as one more piece of a neoliberal machine that must be efficient, competitive, and measurable. They call that quality. Our public school, meanwhile, tries to continue being in everyday life what it has always been: a place where we learn to think, to live together, to make mistakes, to investigate. But it is not easy to do so when each gesture or each decision becomes ammunition for debates that rarely have to do with what happens in a real classroom.
And there is something that almost never makes the headlines: the cultural battle that saturates our public conversations covers up other, much more concrete battles. Saturated classrooms in highly complex centers, lack of resources, precariousness on the part of the teaching staff, segregation, bureaucratic pressure, inequality between centers or lack of financing. Problems that do not generate trending topicsbut they condition much more the daily lives of those who work and learn in public schools. It is difficult to wage symbolic wars when there is a lack of hands, time and means to attend to what is essential. It is difficult to talk about great principles when a tutor has thirty teenagers in the classroom and just minutes for each one. It is difficult to sustain epic speeches when an educational center functions thanks to the good will of those who inhabit it, rather than the planning of those who should support it.
Meanwhile, the social majority—families, students, teachers—watch the film without having purchased the ticket. Citizens do not experience school as a battlefield, but as a public service that should function with the desirable normality. However, she finds herself dragged into debates that she did not ask for, controversies that she does not understand, and speeches that do not resolve her real problems. The metaphor is clear: too many battles in the form of obligations and little clarity about the value of what is defended. And, in the midst of that noise, something essential is lost: confidence that public education is a safe, stable space; a place where our young people can learn to be citizens without becoming pawns in other people’s wars.
In One battle after anotherthe protagonist discovers that not fighting is also a way of losing. The public is at that same crossroads. It cannot renounce its cultural role, because teaching is always taking a position regarding the world in which we live. But neither should it be allowed to be turned into a decoration for symbolic wear and tear that has little to do with the real life of any center.
School and university are not ideological spoils, but rather spaces where entire generations risk their lives.
In that sense, I think the key is to choose well how to position ourselves: for example, bogging down weeks of debate for a textbook change is not the same as mobilizing in the face of a new guideline that increases segregation, cuts resources or allows . It is about distinguishing what is noise from what is background, from the public as a common good. And that is also learned.
Choosing well involves protecting what matters: equal opportunities, democratic coexistence, inclusion, the dignity of teaching work, the stability necessary for . School and university are not ideological spoils, but rather spaces where entire generations risk their lives. It involves demanding that educational decisions be made with rigor, data, listening and responsibility, not at the pace of the latest occurrence.
It also goes through something simpler and more difficult at the same time: returning its humanity to the school. Or rather, not forget it, which we often do. Recognize that behind every classroom there are people who feel, who make mistakes; students who do make an effort and who carry personal backpacks that sometimes seem unsustainable. That the public school is not an abstraction, but a set of bodies that get up early, prepare classes, accompany grieving, celebrate achievements and contain anguish. Recognize our education, in short, as a space for possibility, to breathe that hope with which it also ends One battle after anotheralways attentive to taking up the witness of the responsibility that is left to us.
If the public school falls, there will be no final assembly capable of rebuilding it, capable of seeking a glimpse of that necessary humanity.
If the public school falls, there will be no final assembly capable of rebuilding it, capable of seeking a glimpse of that necessary humanity.
The movie ends, but public education can’t afford the end credits. There are no special effects or stunt doubles here: what is at stake are real people, real opportunities, futures that have not yet been written. And if it teaches something One battle after anotherwhether we thought it was a brilliant film or not, is that, although the fatigue is great, there are paths that cannot be abandoned.
has acknowledged in interviews that the film represents the search for that humanity in the midst of a chaotic world. Because if the public school falls, there will be no final assembly capable of rebuilding it, capable of seeking a glimpse of that necessary humanity. Because, unlike the protagonist of the film, we, in the midst of the fire of the cultural front, can choose which battles deserve to be fought.
