It is a commonplace to say that the fate of the constitutional reform in education will be what is conferred by the applicable laws yet to be approved by Congress. It has been reported that the initiatives are completed, ready for discussion. But the fact remains that while extending the teachers' dispute, the government refrains from informing, which does not help either to focus the debate or to rationally defuse the climate of confrontation that today accompanies the reform.
It is inexplicable that the Secretariat of Public Education does not come out to defend the reasoning behind the government project or, at least, to reject what it sees as misconceptions surrounding not only the free, public nature of the school but the punitive vision of teacher evaluation that feeds the fear of vast contingents of teachers whose work is undertaken precisely in regions where insecurity and helplessness are ominous and tangible realities.
There, as throughout the country, the authority has a responsibility to inform and persuade, no less than the political parties that claim to represent the citizenry. But it is obvious that this concern, if it even exists, has failed. The mere fact that it is the Secretariat of Government Relations [SEGOB]--rather than the Secretariat of Education--that takes the lead in "negotiations" with the dissident teachers, I repeat, spotlights the anomalous origin of this delicate matter.
By calculation, gross incompetence or bureaucratic disdain, once again, as in so many other problems, the situation is left to run until it reaches the point of confrontation. Apparently, it is confrontation that moves a society increasingly accustomed to observing life from the perspective of televised Manichaeism and to judging social movements less for their causes and goals than for their (fatal?) negative impacts on daily life.
However, the authority does not lift a finger until things require them to intervene "with the full force of the State", according to the usual phrase, which, in turn, reinforces the tactic of violating the rules in order to make oneself heard, revealing that democratic mechanisms, legality and dialogue are fictitious instruments in these latitudes. Far from addressing the origin of the protest when it is real and document-able ... [it] opens the space to the conspiratorial imagination, to all sorts of authoritarian prejudices (nor do dissidents escape them) and leaves the field in the hands of provocateurs who magnify the differences out of proportion.
However, it is a fact that education is one of the national issues that most concerns the citizenry, and its treatment should arouse attention, responsibility and respect. One just has to appreciate the kind of efforts made by poor families to have their children receive at least the first few grades, but then the system recycles them as functional illiterates. For all the talk of pedagogical aspirations, what is certain is that teaching cannot escape the social environment and, therefore, should be judged with comprehensive criteria for giving appropriate responses to specific situations.
According to data from the National Institute for Educational Evaluation (INEE) and obtained by this newspaper,
Clearly, national education is in crisis and reform is necessary, regardless of whether or not millions of computers and other de-contextualized supplies are purchased. But it is impossible to assume that after the pedagogical disputes on this point the ideological differences will be resolved, since much of what is offered as wisdom in the subject [involves competing] interests, worldviews and values that also are at play here.
Just because these contradictions are real and not outdated inventions is what encourages us toward a fundamental agreement in order to know what education we want, and what kind of teachers we need in order to get out of this crisis and move toward the future. It's not enough that the parties and their representatives sign a pact or add lines to the Constitution. It is still necessary to listen to the voices of society, above all to the teachers and the young people, before they lose hope. And to put what they want and need into law. Spanish original
By calculation, gross incompetence or bureaucratic disdain, once again, as in so many other problems, the situation is left to run until it reaches the point of confrontation. Apparently, it is confrontation that moves a society increasingly accustomed to observing life from the perspective of televised Manichaeism and to judging social movements less for their causes and goals than for their (fatal?) negative impacts on daily life.
However, the authority does not lift a finger until things require them to intervene "with the full force of the State", according to the usual phrase, which, in turn, reinforces the tactic of violating the rules in order to make oneself heard, revealing that democratic mechanisms, legality and dialogue are fictitious instruments in these latitudes. Far from addressing the origin of the protest when it is real and document-able ... [it] opens the space to the conspiratorial imagination, to all sorts of authoritarian prejudices (nor do dissidents escape them) and leaves the field in the hands of provocateurs who magnify the differences out of proportion.
However, it is a fact that education is one of the national issues that most concerns the citizenry, and its treatment should arouse attention, responsibility and respect. One just has to appreciate the kind of efforts made by poor families to have their children receive at least the first few grades, but then the system recycles them as functional illiterates. For all the talk of pedagogical aspirations, what is certain is that teaching cannot escape the social environment and, therefore, should be judged with comprehensive criteria for giving appropriate responses to specific situations.
According to data from the National Institute for Educational Evaluation (INEE) and obtained by this newspaper,
"conditions of poverty affect at least 8.5 million students in preschool, primary and secondary schools, who live in communities of high and very high marginalization in the country."Some 124,000 students attend schools that face infrastructure and equipment shortages. But from the educational standpoint, the biggest problem lies in the life situations of children and young people who attend those schools. This situation is illustrated in the words of Daniel Hernández, a teacher who works in a community sixteen hours by car from the Oaxacan capital:
"Business as usual. Schools built of reeds. Students without shoes who arrive without eating. And their subsistence depends on the land, where they grow corn, chile, squash and green beans. There are no jobs. All their hope for feeding themselves is in the seasonal cornfield ...
"The children don't have any comforts. There are no beds or a stove in the house. And with those conditions, they arrive at school hungry. Many endure it, but we seek to give them something even a tortilla with salt, because our task is not only to educate. You also have to be committed to the community and address its shortcomings."The attempt to carry out education reform without considering these regional differences, and blaming the teacher for failures of the system, would be like enshrining for eternity the inequality that already characterizes the Mexican education model, with its great divisions between urban and rural, public and private teaching, but also between those who deliver quality learning and those who only seem to instruct in order to get paid ... or the ... private investment.
Clearly, national education is in crisis and reform is necessary, regardless of whether or not millions of computers and other de-contextualized supplies are purchased. But it is impossible to assume that after the pedagogical disputes on this point the ideological differences will be resolved, since much of what is offered as wisdom in the subject [involves competing] interests, worldviews and values that also are at play here.
Just because these contradictions are real and not outdated inventions is what encourages us toward a fundamental agreement in order to know what education we want, and what kind of teachers we need in order to get out of this crisis and move toward the future. It's not enough that the parties and their representatives sign a pact or add lines to the Constitution. It is still necessary to listen to the voices of society, above all to the teachers and the young people, before they lose hope. And to put what they want and need into law. Spanish original
*Adolfo Sánchez Rebolledo (b. 1942) has traveled the long road of democratic transition in Mexico as both activist and journalist. A delegate to the First Latin American Youth Congress in Havana (1960), he took part in the solidarity movement with Vietnam and other leftist causes. As a correspondent for InterPress Service he covered the 1968 student movement. A co-founder of the Institute for the Study of Democratic Transition (1989), he is a designated member of its governing board. Sánchez writes a weekly column for La Jornada.