On August 25, Ole von Beust was replaced as mayor of the city and president of the Land of Hamburg. He was considered the most popular and beloved mayor in the city's recent history, but he had no choice after the people rejected his government's education policy in a referendum on July 18.

This educational reform, which was the core of the agreement of the first coalition between Christian Democrats and Greens at the head of a German Land, proposed to extend by one year the teaching primary school, basically maintaining the previous contents. The civil service examination, made up of socialists and leftists, was in favor of agreement . Initially, the citizens, immersed in their proverbial passivity, did not seem to accuse receipt of this initiative, until the lawyer Walter Scheuerl took it upon himself to mobilize the potentially dissatisfied. Many parents turned out to be against this lowering of the requirements professor, which would result in a worse preparation of their children, and under the slogan "we want to learn" a growing mobilization was set in motion. From entrance, the political class did not give importance to this movement, which it regarded with disdain, until it was literally overwhelmed.

Curiously, the Greens had imposed shortly before that the Senate should recognize the binding nature of popular referendums, and the hamburgers dissatisfied with this reform resorted to a enquiry of this nature. The government, apparently so friendly to direct democracy, began to panic and tried to put all subject of obstacles, some even illegal, to the development of the campaign prior to the vote. The date was set in July, in the middle of the school vacations. As is typical of this subject of consultations, the percentage of voters was not high - 39% - but the popular initiative was clearly imposed. A government crisis was on the cards: the president reacted gallantly, but not Education, the Green Christa Goetsch, who in her first statements described the workshop election as "a day of shit" and has refused to resign.

We can draw some useful conclusions from this episode. For example, that a pact educational between all the political forces present in a parliament does not ensure the quality of the teaching, but can lead to its deterioration. A broader social pact, including parents and teachers, is needed first. Parents, the owners of their children's Education , should not abdicate their responsibility and leave such an important issue in the opportunistic hands of the parties. In Hamburg they were able to react in time, thanks to the commitment and tenacity of the aforementioned Walter Scheuerl: a single person can do a lot if he or she defends a reasonable cause and is committed to the end. The political class - and also some of the most influential media - tried to disqualify the protest as a maneuver by the wealthy to defend their educational privileges, but subsequent analyses have shown that it was a genuinely cross-cutting movement: concern for the Education of children is not the exclusive preserve of the rich.

I look with some envy at what happened in Hamburg, and I am not only happy about this triumph of the common people over the reviled class political . The German Education is undoubtedly in a crisis, as the various comparative reports between countries show, and this status has given rise to intense discussion, both at regional and federal level.

In Spain we find ourselves in even more dire conditions, according to these same reports and as is evident to anyone who knows the circumstances of both countries, but here genuine dialogue is conspicuous by its absence. At particularly important moments, such as the debates on the state of the nation, the government and civil service examination routinely invoke the need for a State Pact, which is then forgotten until the next time. But not even an all-party agreement will guarantee the best for our schoolchildren, as the Hamburg case shows. In the meantime, where are the Walter Scheuerls capable of mobilizing our citizens?