The degradation of education in Spain due to socialist laws designed to encourage idleness

On May 28, 1948, during a speech delivered in the city of Perth (Scotland), Winston Churchill made a very apt statement.

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The then-opposition leader and former British Prime Minister uttered these words, which many should have heeded as a warning: "Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy." This quote could be illustrated with many historical examples, but in the case of Spain, one need not even look to distant tales from the past to verify it.

The OECD's PISA 2025 report was published yesterday. The full report can be downloaded here (PDF). As various national media outlets highlighted yesterday, Spain has recorded its worst-ever result in this report, even despite efforts by secessionist regional governments to conceal their results (Catalonia's results, for instance, are not included in the study).

As has become the norm, Pedro Sánchez's government does not consider itself responsible for these results, despite having been in power for eight years. Spaniards are already accustomed to the socialist-communist coalition government always blaming others for the consequences of its mismanagement. The problem for the Left is that many Spaniards still have good memories.

On October 16, 2020, I warned here about the Sánchez government's plans to award secondary and high school diplomas regardless of the number of failed subjects under the education law passed by the Left that same year, the LOMLOE. I pointed out at the time that the LOMLOE would be the fifth socialist education law of our democracy—following the LODE (1985), LOGSE (1990), LOPEG (1995), and LOE (2006)—regulations characterized by the progressive devaluation of teaching and the lowering of educational standards to alarming levels, thereby destroying one of the fundamental pillars of education: the pursuit of excellence. I also denounced at the time that the LOMLOE was intended to encourage idleness.

I also pointed out at the time that, for the first time in our democracy, the government excluded the educational community from the debate on a law that directly affected it. The PSOE Socialists and their then-governing partners—the Communists of Podemos—were in a great rush to push that law through and, above all, to impose restrictions on educational freedom, attacking special education centers, private schools, and single-sex education.

The PSOE and Podemos sought an education system of mediocre quality that would serve to indoctrinate children and young people in their ideology, with an eye on future elections—perhaps hoping to garner the goodwill of students who had been handed diplomas regardless of how many subjects they had failed. The left had no qualms about trampling on Article 27 of the Constitution, which recognizes the freedom of education and guarantees "the right of parents to ensure their children receive religious and moral instruction in accordance with their own convictions." Now we see the result, and, as always, the Left believes that others are to blame for its actions.

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Image: Grok.