Presentation issue 18º

Nothing more appropriate in the month of May than to address the issue of schooling of students in schools. In this issue of the journal AVANCES in Educational Supervision, this topic is analyzed from many perspectives: historical, legal, economic, social, educational, cultural, voluntary non-schooling and absenteeism are also addressed. The transition from one stage to another when it involves change of center and especially at the time when the true start of schooling occurs after three years is an important concern for many families. It is a proven fact the influence that the chosen center or rather the awarded center, since they do not always coincide, exerts on the future of the students, indisputable influence although variable depending on the rest of social conditions in which the child develops. The popularity, rejection, colleagues, friends, the center itself and the importance given to one or other values, to one or other subjects, the coincidence of a committed team of teachers able to awaken in students the illusion of learn are, among many other variables, factors that will determine a habitat that will influence the student the rest of his life.

A good part of the Society understands schooling as a source of knowledge, maturity and socialization. Each time children are enrolled at a younger age, almost from birth, although we must not forget the social constraints imposed by the work of both parents, often incompatible with school hours that are increasingly wide and full of activities to occupy the time of permanence of the students in the centers.

Far is the traditional schooling, without haste, without hassles, without dining rooms as a social resource, without extended schedules ... Today the ideal model is a bilingual center in which two or three languages ​​are taught besides the maternal one, with good academic results in external evaluations, which manages to impose order and discipline -especially in Secondary Education- and with extended hours capable of meeting the needs of food storage and permanence of the student until the end of the working day of the parents.

Julio Mateos Montero in his article Schooling from a historical and critical perspective analyzes the complexity and general interest of the subject, the significant features of the genesis of the school in the Modern Age and an interpretation of the history of schooling in Spain. It addresses a critical study of schooling within the social sciences as a whole, such as religion, the state, the family, the social construction of childhood, the mechanisms of reproduction of the social structure, the forms of domination, the confrontations between groups and social classes. Without ignoring the battles raised around the character, functions and scope of the school.

Lorenzo Capellán de Toro, F. Javier Garcia Castaño, Antonia Olmos Alcaraz and María Rubio Gómez of the Institute of Migrations, University of Granada, raise the unequal presence of foreign students in the Spanish education system according to the type of center. After clarifying conceptual terms such as concentration, segregation and ghettoization, they analyze discontinuous growth in recent decades, their unequal distribution in Spanish territory, even between provinces of the same autonomous community. But, above all, they analyze the evolution of their distribution in public and private concerted education. Mention is made of social, economic, ethnic, demographic or relational factors that make up a complex network whose result is the lower presence of students of foreign nationality in the private schools.

Carlos Vázquez González, Professor of Criminal Law and Criminology UNED School of Law links absenteeism and / or dropping out of school with social exclusion, marginalization and delinquency, since criminological research has shown how school failure or an early abandonment of studies operates as a facilitator of juvenile delinquency. Affirms that if absenteeism or school dropout occurs due to an unjustified breach by parents of the duty to educate their children, legal duty of assistance inherent to parental authority, the State must intervene to guarantee the right to education of minors, even resorting to criminal law, through the application of the crime of abandonment of family art. 226.1 CP.

David Reyero, from the Complutense University of Madrid, analyzes the problems of schooling although he says that understanding them is impossible if one does not understand the particular Spanish history of recent times. It highlights two debates with a primordial character, one about the direction of centers and the other about financing them. These debates in addition to being indicated in the Constitution are outlined in a concrete way in two organic laws, the LOECE and the LODE.

Madalen Goiria, Professor of Civil Law at the EHU-UPV, in her article A reflection on school obligations, homeschool and school absenteeism discusses the compulsory attendance of minors to the regulated school system in person. Some parents object to the presence of minors under their care in the school system in order to be educated. The objection to compulsory schooling is not recognized in our legal system and therefore is considered a civil disobedience that incurs in behaviors classified as illicit. This objection to schooling is analyzed in the article, which does not mean abandoning the obligation that parents assume when they educate at home with their own means.

Teresa Aguado Odina, Belén Ballesteros Velázquez and Patricia Mata Benito, from the Faculty of Education of the UNED, in their article The meaning of compulsory schooling: equality of opportunities versus selection and competitiveness offer a reflection on compulsory schooling as a guarantee of equality opportunities for all students. They affirm, however, that educational policies are more concerned with boosting competitiveness as a stimulus to achieve quality and effectiveness in schools. Under the supposed freedom of the parents to choose centers, there is an elaborate mechanism confronting the principle of equality and educational equity.

Finally, Ana María Redondo García, professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Valladolid, author of the book Defense of the Constitution and compulsory basic education, in a brief interview defends homeschooling when it occurs as an option to provide children the integral formation that the Constitution gathers and not as an unjustified breach of the duty to educate that parents have.

The editorial board.