Reform of Articles 3 and 73 of the Constitution has provoked rebellion among the national teaching ranks. Starting with its huge demonstrations, the National Coordinating Committee of Education Workers (CNTE) and the Secretariat of Government Affairs [SEGOB] agreed in negotiating sessions to hold regional forums in order to open opportunities for discussion of the scope and effects of the so-called "education reform", culminating with a national forum to be held on July 11 in Mexico City.
As national rapporteur for forums in Oaxaca and Chiapas, I had the opportunity to listen principally to teachers, but also to legislators and representatives of state and federal governments, as well as to parents and members of various social organizations. The prevailing sentiment in these large and representative meetings was to repeal the reform based on the following arguments.
The reform breaks with the spirit and letter of the original Article 3 of the Constitution, embodied in the 1917 Constitution. Thus, it means a counter-reform, a decline that breaks with the social and political pact of the Mexican Revolution. As such, it is comparable to Salinas's [President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, 1988-1994; signed NAFTA] neoliberal counter-reform of Article 27 of the Constitution that permitted the sale of communal and ejido property [lands granted to indigenous people either by the Spanish king or at the end of the Mexican Revolution].
It is also about an authoritarian, restrictive action that finds fulfillment at society's expense and without taking into account those who support the national education system: teachers and parents. It did not seek the opinion either of experts in universities and research centers or in institutions in the field, such as the National Pedagogical University and the Normal School [Teacher Training] system. In short, it violates the right to free, prior and informed consent.
This initiative does not originate from the constituted powers: it does not arise from the ongoing Constitutional process or from the Executive branch. It is conceived by the entrepreneurial powers that seek the privatization and commercialization of teaching, and the ideological and political control of students. [These goals] are concealed in organizations like Mexicanos Primero. To achieve its purpose, these powers-that-be undertake a campaign of demonization and criminalization of the teachers and their democratic unions. Congressional lawmakers, meanwhile, act as employees of one-stop processing for these powers and the federal Executive, introducing concepts such as quality, efficiency, competence, continuous improvement, evaluation, etc., coming from the transnational corporate world.
By validating fees, the education counter-reform breaks with free education; and by supposedly granting powers of independence and school management, it aims to put the economic burden on parents and the society. At the same time that the State is extracting itself from its constitutional obligations, it is forcing the education system to rely on spurious external financing that could take control of the public schools, administered de facto by private and, even, religious organizations, all of which seek to end guarantees of free, secular public education.
The democratic teaching ranks do not intend to confront the reform without offering alternatives. Proof of this disposition is found in the forums themselves, in which proposals are offered for an education reform that would truly confront the education system's major and severe problems. A humanist education is proposed--one that is not classist, but instead creative, participatory and supportive. For this, it has opened the debate to the society, with a critical and self-critical sense, to take into account the attitudes of negligence, lack of commitment, corruption and the lack of professional ethics of many teachers, which stigmatizes the entire profession. It is becoming aware that an alternative education system also requires an alternative national project.
The CNTE has proposed three routes for repealing the counter-reform: the political, the legal and the pedagogical, with the active participation of rank and file education workers [teachers], parents and society as a whole. Spanish original
*Gilberto López y Rivas is an anthropologist and researcher for Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) in the state of Morelos. He holds the doctorate in anthropology from the University of Utah. Active in the 1968 student movement, he has also served in the federal Chamber of Deputies.
The reform breaks with the spirit and letter of the original Article 3 of the Constitution, embodied in the 1917 Constitution. Thus, it means a counter-reform, a decline that breaks with the social and political pact of the Mexican Revolution. As such, it is comparable to Salinas's [President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, 1988-1994; signed NAFTA] neoliberal counter-reform of Article 27 of the Constitution that permitted the sale of communal and ejido property [lands granted to indigenous people either by the Spanish king or at the end of the Mexican Revolution].
It is also about an authoritarian, restrictive action that finds fulfillment at society's expense and without taking into account those who support the national education system: teachers and parents. It did not seek the opinion either of experts in universities and research centers or in institutions in the field, such as the National Pedagogical University and the Normal School [Teacher Training] system. In short, it violates the right to free, prior and informed consent.
This initiative does not originate from the constituted powers: it does not arise from the ongoing Constitutional process or from the Executive branch. It is conceived by the entrepreneurial powers that seek the privatization and commercialization of teaching, and the ideological and political control of students. [These goals] are concealed in organizations like Mexicanos Primero. To achieve its purpose, these powers-that-be undertake a campaign of demonization and criminalization of the teachers and their democratic unions. Congressional lawmakers, meanwhile, act as employees of one-stop processing for these powers and the federal Executive, introducing concepts such as quality, efficiency, competence, continuous improvement, evaluation, etc., coming from the transnational corporate world.
In reality, this is about a labor-administrative reform that contradicts Article 123 of the Constitution and which aims to dismantle retroactively and unconstitutionally the rights acquired by the teachers' union for decades, affecting job security, wages, working conditions and retirement; and processes for hiring and promotion. The reform submits teachers to a regimen of exception and seeks to dismiss thousands of them, to introduce more uncertainty into the labor of teachers, break their union structures, especially the democratic ones; to introduce competition and social Darwinism among peers, put an end to mutual aid and solidarity, and increase job classification and discretionary management of staff at all levels and structures. Meanwhile, the problems of educational backwardness, illiteracy, lack of equity, multi-modal schools and severe lack of school infrastructure are left unresolved.
By validating fees, the education counter-reform breaks with free education; and by supposedly granting powers of independence and school management, it aims to put the economic burden on parents and the society. At the same time that the State is extracting itself from its constitutional obligations, it is forcing the education system to rely on spurious external financing that could take control of the public schools, administered de facto by private and, even, religious organizations, all of which seek to end guarantees of free, secular public education.
The reform largely rests on the fetish of permanent evaluation, which has a punitive character deriving from standardization and implementation of tests like the ENLACE [Mexico's student achievement test] and PISA [OECD-sponsored student achievement] tests. Evaluation distorts the multilingual, multicultural and multi-ethnic character of the Mexican nation, in addition to ignoring the social, economic and living conditions and familial environments of students and the teachers themselves. Consequently, the reform is profoundly discriminatory, racist and classist, which violates the International Convention for Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination, the Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization (ILO), and Articles 1 and 2 of the [Mexican] Constitution.
The democratic teaching ranks do not intend to confront the reform without offering alternatives. Proof of this disposition is found in the forums themselves, in which proposals are offered for an education reform that would truly confront the education system's major and severe problems. A humanist education is proposed--one that is not classist, but instead creative, participatory and supportive. For this, it has opened the debate to the society, with a critical and self-critical sense, to take into account the attitudes of negligence, lack of commitment, corruption and the lack of professional ethics of many teachers, which stigmatizes the entire profession. It is becoming aware that an alternative education system also requires an alternative national project.
The CNTE has proposed three routes for repealing the counter-reform: the political, the legal and the pedagogical, with the active participation of rank and file education workers [teachers], parents and society as a whole. Spanish original