Last Thursday, May 2, the National Coordinating Committee of Education Workers (CNTE), delivered to the Secretary of the Government Affairs [SEGOB] a document titled "Toward the education that we Mexicans need" (http://cnteseccion9.wordpress.com). In six tight pages, they summarize both their reasons for opposing the ongoing education reform and their pedagogical approach.
The democratic teachers'alternative proposal expresses the shared sense of hundreds of thousands of teachers across the country, especially those from states with more poverty, marginalization and violence. [It also expresses] the sense of those who work in the outskirts of large urban centers, far from the enclaves of prosperity. These teachers serve a very important part of the population that does not have Spanish as its first language. They serve children of families split by migration and small rural populations far removed from any material well-being.
"Toward the education that the Mexicans need" is an educational program developed from the deep social roots of democratic teachers and from their commitment to the country. A text emerged based on their presence as teachers--and often as civic and social leaders--in communities (many of them indigenous), towns and cities across the country. Better than any government authority, they know many of the most problematic parts of the nation. They are direct witnesses of the State's inability to provide a decent education for children and youth. For decades, in truly difficult conditions with very few resources and great deficiencies, they have been charged with teaching students who often arrive in the classrooms without eating and who are pressured to leave school at the earliest time.
Their educational proposal sprang from a multitude of forums, workshops, meetings, seminars and pedagogical meetings conducted over more than three decades. It is a synthesis of a diversity of practical experiences consciously ignored or unknown by education officials. Such proposals as the Alternative Plan for the Transformation of Education in Oaxaca (PTEO), the José María Morelos y Pavón Pedagogical Movement of Michoacán, the Altamiranista Schools of Guerrero and many other more elaborate state projects in various schools or school regions are summarized.
The document confirms the teachers' rejection of the educational reform, because the only thing it offers is that there will be more standardized tests and a whole apparatus of supervision and monitoring of children, teachers and schools. Because it is not a reform that might pick up on the huge deficiencies and offer an answer beyond measuring, monitoring, encouraging and punishing. On the contrary, it is a persecutory law that threatens to lay off thousands of teachers and to continue discrediting millions of children as failures. It is a centralized legislation, an attack on the nation's multiculturalism and multiethnicity. This is a reform agreed upon vertically and authoritatively, without a national discussion, and excluding those who should carry it out: the teachers.
"Toward the education that we Mexicans need" proposes a true transformation of teaching based on a humanist education that replaces market values with the practice of universal values; that retrieves and places in the foreground respect and extension of the human right to education, the strengthening of public education and an educational process firmly rooted in the developmental needs of people, their communities and regions.
It warns of the serious problem of educational inequality that exists in the country. To confront this inequality, it proposes approving an education expenditure of 12 percent of GDP to ensure the expansion of education infrastructure, equipment and number of teachers. In 2013 education was allocated barely 567 billion 379 million pesos [about $47 billion USD], equivalent to 3.78 percent of GDP.
"Toward the education that we Mexicans need" proposes a true transformation of teaching based on a humanist education that replaces market values with the practice of universal values; that retrieves and places in the foreground respect and extension of the human right to education, the strengthening of public education and an educational process firmly rooted in the developmental needs of people, their communities and regions.
It warns of the serious problem of educational inequality that exists in the country. To confront this inequality, it proposes approving an education expenditure of 12 percent of GDP to ensure the expansion of education infrastructure, equipment and number of teachers. In 2013 education was allocated barely 567 billion 379 million pesos [about $47 billion USD], equivalent to 3.78 percent of GDP.
The democratic teachers demand that all schools in the country have the best materials and infrastructure conditions.... They also demand professional development of teachers at all levels. They argue for a national system of physical and virtual libraries and an end to illiteracy.
The CNTE does not oppose evaluation, but it offers a different, bottom-up approach. It proposes a horizontal evaluation undertaken from the schools themselves and the communities, developed as a conversational exercise (based on dialogue and reasoning) at the level of each area, region and state. An assessment that while describing the problems, also analyzes the factors that cause them, the remedies that can be offered and that builds on the successful experiences of teachers and schools in improving education.
It proposes that an evaluation council, elected by the community, be formed in each school to consider various elements, such as the school's physical conditions, teacher work, administrative performance, regular attendance of students, academic achievement and performance of educational authorities. This model should be replicated at the state level.
The democratic teachers argue that it is necessary to re-cast the normal schools [teacher training colleges] in order to reinforce their historic mission. The normal school, they say, must be defended and strengthened. They demand automatic placement for all graduates of public normal schools, who have been accredited by an officially recognized training institution, and they count on ... the corresponding right.
The CNTE members demand constitutional and legal changes while establishing the great aims of education and its minimum requirements. They create a framework within which the country's regions can express and satisfy their needs within the federal environment of one nation; and they also create a single, but diverse, education system. Their proposal is born from the depths of a very broad segment of México profundo [MV Note: Reference to Guillermo Bonfil Batalla's landmark study of the same name of Mexico's indigenous peoples]. Spanish original