A new social movement on behalf of humanity and against neoliberalism is growing in the south. The Guerrero Popular Movement is rising as a wave of hope in the face of an enormous thirst for justice shown by Mexico society. Its just, universal demands might push parallel movements, such as the Movement for Peace, #YoSoy132 and Morena, to show the humility and generosity needed to add rather than subtract, to support rather than compete.
The best example is the teachers' struggle in Guerrero. Their demands are not motivated by private interests, but for high ideals. In Mexico, basic education teachers do not earn decent wages--salaries equivalent to the enormous importance of their social labor. Their seven or eight thousand pesos [$580-663 USD] a month is not enough to support their families and invest the time needed to teach as they would like, and not in classrooms with serious maintenance problems and overcrowding, which include classes of more than thirty children. But instead of demanding the salary they deserve, the teachers have decided to put aside their personal needs and strive to improve the quality of public education.
The chief demand of the State Coordinating Committee of Education Workers of Guerrero (CETEG) is to establish by law six percent of gross domestic product (GDP) of the State for
"the construction, maintenance, equipment, furniture, teaching materials, basic services and other necessities of the educational service."
The list does not mention wages or employment benefits, but refers exclusively to improving educational conditions.
This request is perfectly reasonable and within international guidelines. All Mexico should join in the request that this just demand be included not only in the Guerrero legislation, but also in the new General Education Law (GEL) at the federal level.
According to the OECD [Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development], Mexico spends only 5.3 percent of its GDP on public education, and only 3.3 percent goes to primary and secondary education. According to official sources, many other countries, including Ghana, Bolivia, Norway, Sweden and Jamaica, spend a much higher percentage. Botswana invests 7.8 percent of GDP on public education, Denmark 8.7 percent, and Cuba 12.9 percent.
Since 2002, Article 25 of the General Education Law has included the requirement that the State spend at least eight percent of GDP "on expenditures for public education and educational services". However, this provision includes teacher salaries and is slyly subject to "the provisions of income and public expenditure that may apply". Moreover, the law does not guarantee specific percentages for particular states. The result is that each year the standard is violated, and states like Guerrero fall further into neglect.
Another of the CETEG's key demands is to include in state law the obligation to
Another of the CETEG's key demands is to include in state law the obligation to
"increase the number of positions that will be assigned to graduates of public normal [teacher] schools."
Clearly, the best people to educate our children are precisely those who successfully complete the normal school teacher training curriculum ....
Young people who generously choose to dedicate their lives to primary education deserve an opportunity to serve their communities rather than being forced to risk their lives crossing the border in search of work. Mexico needs its normalistas [recently graduated teachers] to be training and educating children in its country, not washing dishes or tending the gardens of more privileged Americans.
Mexico should expand, not reduce, these kinds of job opportunities that simultaneously facilitate social mobility and strengthen economic development. A policy such as that demanded by CETEG is also the best protection against the spread of crime and drug trafficking in the country's most humble communities. A teacher is much more useful than a soldier for promoting social development.
All of this country's youth should be guaranteed the right to a decent job in their field of specialization. The current situation could be a golden opportunity for #YoSoy132 to re-articulate its objective based on this universal demand. There is no need to resort to foreign authors or to exaggerated utopias to support this demand, but only to demand compliance with our revolutionary Constitution, so despised by the neoliberals. [Our Constitution] whose Article 123 bluntly states that "everyone has the right to decent and socially useful work".
Finally, it is a vicious lie that the teachers reject universal evaluation. Like any other professional, they ask only that there be no arbitrary dismissals, something that is otherwise a constitutional right, and they propose an evaluation that is
"democratic, process-based, ongoing, developmental, systematic and comprehensive".
The journalists, politicians and businessmen, who are today lynching the teachers in the media in a classist and racist way, would hardly approve a rigorous evaluation process of this nature in their respective fields.
Instead of falsely distinguishing between "good" teachers, who meekly accept the imposition of the predatory neoliberal logic; and "bad" teachers, who demand participation in improving their schools, it is necessary to defend the teachers and support them in the national articulation of their just demands for compliance with the Constitution and the country's laws. Spanish original
*John M. Ackerman, U.S. born and trained scholar (Ph.D. in political sociology, University of California, Santa Cruz), is also a Mexican citizen. He is a researcher in the Institute of Judicial Research of the National Autonomous University of Mexico [UNAM] and editorial director of the Mexican Law Review. A columnist for La Jornada newspaper and Proceso magazine, Dr. Ackerman maintains a blog of his articles in Spanish, as well as some in English. Twitter: @JohnMAckerman
*John M. Ackerman, U.S. born and trained scholar (Ph.D. in political sociology, University of California, Santa Cruz), is also a Mexican citizen. He is a researcher in the Institute of Judicial Research of the National Autonomous University of Mexico [UNAM] and editorial director of the Mexican Law Review. A columnist for La Jornada newspaper and Proceso magazine, Dr. Ackerman maintains a blog of his articles in Spanish, as well as some in English. Twitter: @JohnMAckerman