thebajarunner
Ultra Nomad
Posts: 3718
Registered: 9-8-2003
Location: Arizona....."Free at last from crumbling Cali
Member Is Offline
Mood: muy amable
|
|
Sad Status of Mexico's public schools
Today's LATimes has a very sobering article about public education in Mexico, and Tijuana in specifics.
This could turn into a real national disaster if the trend continues.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexed21s...
|
|
|
jrbaja
Ultra Nomad
Posts: 4863
Registered: 2-2-2003
Member Is Offline
|
|
Although I don't want to join
to read the article, I have personally observed here in Rosarito as well as in the back country schools in south Baja, an incredible amount of
respect, orderlyness, planned schedules, and field trips to museums, etc. with the kids actually being interested in what they are being taught. And
the kids graduate from the secondarios speaking Spanish and English as well as having become respectable individuals.
What they are lacking is money for supplies and school equipment.
As far as the education goes, it seems to be a lot more effective in the long run than the public education available in s. california where the
article was written.
And there are very few crime or drug problems as with the north of the border schools.
School supplies are badly needed down here and it has been one of the most popular of the many things I take down to these people. Please if you
are able, send down some pencils, erasers, chalk and boards, anything education like. Even childrens books in english help them learn the language.
You can either drop it off here, I can maybe have it picked up, or if you know someone coming down here or you are yourselves, please bring your too
short pencils for the schools. They can use everything.
Muchas gracias.
|
|
|
jrbaja
Ultra Nomad
Posts: 4863
Registered: 2-2-2003
Member Is Offline
|
|
On the pencil note,
I took a bunch to Aaron and his Mom made him write his name on each one of them and was only allowed one a week.
Perhaps I was somewhat mistaken about the crime problem 
|
|
|
Bajabus
Senior Nomad
Posts: 892
Registered: 8-30-2002
Location: Elias Calles B.C.S. or NC USA
Member Is Offline
Mood: My friends..it's good.
|
|
in Elias Calles there is a one room school house with no electricity or flush toilet.
it is a marvel to behold.
Every year Mexico holds a national competition for school kids and the winner get an all expense paid trip for them and their family to meet the pres
in Mexico city.
The proffe at this school managed to have one of his kids win it two years in a row.
The whole town pitched in to buy new clothes and get spending money for the family.
for me this is what Baja is all about and what makes this little place on earth so special
[Edited on 21-9-2004 by Bajabus]
"Preventive war was an invention of Hitler. Frankly I would not even listen to anyone seriously that came and talked of such a thing."
Dwight David Eisenhower
|
|
|
elgatoloco
Ultra Nomad
Posts: 4332
Registered: 11-19-2002
Location: Yes
Member Is Offline
|
|
Mexico's Schools Can't Keep Up
A dire lack of facilities sometimes means that impoverished parents end up building them.
By Chris Kraul
Times Staff Writer
September 21, 2004
TIJUANA ? Jorge Alvarado's two-mile walk to middle school takes him through the Dumping Ground of the Dead. The ravine on the city's eastern fringes
is named for the 15 bodies, mostly victims of this town's drug wars, that have turned up there in recent years.
His parents are terrified that he'll stumble across a corpse on his way to school or, worse, witness a killing. But he goes anyway ? except during
rainy season, when the ravine's unpaved paths can become an impassable bog.
The 14-year-old runs the gantlet because he has no choice. The government cannot afford to build a middle school near his home in Colonia Planicie,
one of the poorest slums of a city growing so fast it is said to be spreading five acres a day.
"I tried to get into another school that is closer and has a library and a playing field, but there was no room," Jorge said as he and friends played
soccer in the smelly, garbage-strewn ravine one day last month as the new term was starting.
Jorge's neighborhood is at ground zero of an educational crisis that is tearing at Mexico's social fabric and economy. Dire shortages of schools,
teachers and government funds, especially acute in Tijuana and other fast-growing border cities, have left Mexico lagging behind much of the developed
world in learning and are contributing to plagues such as drug addiction and crime.
The crisis also has implications for Southern California and the rest of the United States; illegal immigration is at least partly driven by parents'
desire to give their children better educational opportunities.
Mexico's educational problems have several ugly facets, none more alarming than the high dropout rate at grade levels such as Jorge's. Roughly 10% of
those who finish elementary school never complete middle school, either because their parents can't afford to send them, they drop out to take jobs,
or there is simply no place for them.
"There is a bottleneck in the system," said Eduardo Velez Bustillo, education section manager for Latin America for the World Bank in Washington.
"Quality is bad at every level, but middle school is a crisis point because that's where the demand is highest."
Although Mexico has made significant strides in recent years in increasing overall enrollment and public investment in education, the country still
trails other developed nations in most educational proficiency standards.
In a standardized global evaluation test called the PISA, Mexican ninth-graders placed 34th among the 41 nations participating in the exam and last
among the 28 member nations in the Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation. The multinational agency monitors economic policy among the
world's most developed nations.
Other measures, including student hours in class, show Mexico as an underachiever.
The country is paying a price. Its dysfunctional educational system, along with corruption, lack of innovation and weak rule of law, has helped make
it increasingly less competitive on the global stage, meaning it is likely to attract less foreign investment and generate less trade in the future,
said Eduardo Andere Martinez, a Mexico City researcher and author.
"I see a significant deterioration in competitiveness in Mexico's future," said Andere, a professor of international studies at Mexico City's
Autonomous Technological Institute. "In social terms, that means more poverty, more insecurity and more inequality."
Some say the social costs of a poor educational system are already obvious in Tijuana. Drug addiction rates, especially among women, are higher in
Tijuana than any other city in Mexico, said Jorge Ramos, a former Tijuana city councilman and unsuccessful mayoral candidate in last month's election.
The rate of violent crime per capita here is also the highest of any Mexican city, partly because of a shortage of high schools. Colonia Mariano
Matamoros, which borders Planicie, is short four high schools to educate the 6,000 youths who must either travel to neighboring districts or cram into
existing schools. Some have dropped out of the system altogether. "That makes teenage youths susceptible to mischief," Ramos said.
Parents in Colonia Planicie and Ciudad Juarez, another border city, are painfully aware that the country's educational shortcomings threaten their
children's future. Many moved north for jobs at maquiladoras, the low-paying manufacturing plants that have sprung up in Mexican border towns, to
escape grinding poverty and secure better futures for their families.
"We want better lives for our children, not the conditions of backwardness, poverty and ignorance that we live in now. Education is the basis of
progress," Colonia Planicie parent Narcisco Velasco said.
He has sent his two teenagers to live with their grandparents in Mexico City, where public middle schools are better.
Other parents in Colonia Planicie have assumed what in many countries would be the government's responsibility ? building their own schools and
maintaining them. The neighborhood built and paid for its own elementary school five years ago and got the government to send the teachers.
Some parents are standing up to the government ? and paying the price. This month, police arrested 18 parents in the neighborhood's latest protest
over inadequate schools.
But government officials responsible for public infrastructure can't cope with Tijuana's population growth ? estimated at 70,000 new residents, or
5.9%, a year, three times the growth of the rest of Mexico. The country is stretched, but especially in Tijuana, making demands for new schools and
other public services nearly impossible to fill.
In Ciudad Juarez, where high population growth has also overwhelmed the educational system, 40 schools are under construction to meet mushrooming
demand, said Alfredo Aguirre Carrete, Chihuahua state's director of basic education for the northern region. But they aren't enough. Subdivisions are
being built so fast, the state can't supply enough teachers, he said.
"A good example is a subdivision called Los Arcos, where 1,200 houses have been built since February. People bought houses seeing a school on the
subdivision plan, but encountered a different reality," Aguirre said. "The houses went up so fast there wasn't time to present a list of students,
which is a requirement for any new school to be built."
"So there wasn't time to get a school approved before the new year, and so for the time being children are walking two miles to another school ?
something parents aren't happy about in this time of insecurity," Aguirre said.
As in Tijuana, parents in even the poorest neighborhoods of Ciudad Juarez typically raise their own funds for all public school improvements and
maintenance. Parents at Escuela Manuel Ramos Arispe somehow manage to raise $10,000 a year to keep it maintained and equipped in a neighborhood riven
by vandalism and gang violence, principal Andres Hernandez said.
In Ciudad Juarez's Anapra suburb, a colonia of 25,000 people that has materialized in the high desert almost overnight, parents built an elementary
school using two abandoned buses for classrooms.
Elaine Hampton, a University of Texas-El Paso professor who studies cross-border education, said that in the absence of Mexican government resources,
the foreign-owned maquiladora factories should help finance schools in the areas where their workers live.
"Maquiladoras are causing these population shifts, and so are contributing to the lack of educational infrastructure. But I only found minimal
contributions" by the factories' management, Hampton said. Some factory managers counter that they make it possible for workers to complete course
work for their high school degrees or further their technical education while on the job.
In Colonia Planicie, neighbors are prepared to build a new middle school themselves if the state of Baja California will promise to staff it with
teachers. But the government has refused, saying the neighborhood's population is too small.
The government has countered with an offer to build a telesecondaria, something typically built in isolated, often indigenous communities in southern
Mexico or in mountainous areas where teacher access is slight. Satellite programming airs on video monitors. Forty minutes of on-air instruction is
followed by 20 minutes of discussion led by a docent.
The Mexican government ? backed up by World Bank studies ? insists that the telesecondarias are as effective as traditional schools.
But the parents of Colonia Planicie are having none of it.
"All we ask is that the government send us certified teachers," said Soledad Perez, a mother of three elementary school students. "We will do the
rest."
Perez was interviewed before the parental protest this month as she took her turn standing vigil in front of the site where the state proposes
building the telesecondaria.
The parents formed a human chain to keep construction crews out in July and have also demonstrated in front of the state government building in
Tijuana for a new middle school.
But the state's patience ended Sept. 6, when parents again blocked a construction crew. Club-wielding police arrived and carted 18 parents off to jail
for impeding construction. They were released two days later.
"People are in pain," parent Velasco said of his neighbors, many of whom were nursing wounds they said were caused by police rough-handling. "But we
are not giving up."
MAGA
Making Attorneys Get Attorneys
|
|
|
Jack Swords
Super Nomad
Posts: 1095
Registered: 8-30-2002
Location: Nipomo, CA/La Paz, BCS
Member Is Offline
|
|
Mexican Public Schools
Having taught junior high in CA for 30 years it has been observed that some schools, like their communities, have problems with crime. Others, in
rather crime-free areas, lack this problem. We should not generalize school discipline problems as most come to the schools from home. As to Mexico,
we have had exchange students from Guadalajara private schools and their success in school varied with the individual. I spent last winter teaching
English in the poorest colonia in La Paz. I taught in a tent, providing the needed materials. These children were as motivated and interested as any
I taught up here in CA. They were well dressed and groomed and treated each other and me with respect. Yet, at the end of the day, many returned to
homes with dirt floors, this on the road to the municipal dump. I observed kids sweeping floors before class, and a classroom for 5 days without a
teacher or any other supervision as they could not afford subs. The kids stayed and worked on their notebooks etc. (in my time I would have run
away!!) They respect their teachers and need for an education. What did they need the most in materials? Paper! They coveted any notebook paper I
gave them. When we go down each year I bring curriculum materials for teachers, audio-visual aids, and lots of paper and pencils, scissors, crayons,
etc. These are given to teachers for their use. It is amazing how we throw away so much that others need. In fact, my students won't use a
basketball with the nubs worn down, but kids in Baja really appreciate a basketball. (We've put up many a backboard and net, replacing the bicycle
rim basket usually used.) Give some of the aforementioned to a teacher in the back country and you'll be smiling for a week!
|
|
|
jrbaja
Ultra Nomad
Posts: 4863
Registered: 2-2-2003
Member Is Offline
|
|
This is who I would have interviewed
"said Jorge Ramos, a former Tijuana city councilman and unsuccessful mayoral candidate in last month's election. "
If I wanted to get to the "bottom" of things
Tijuana would be considered an exception as Mexico is a fairly large country. To base anything on what goes on there in respect to the rest of Mexico
is ridiculous. wunna dem der publik edeekation jounalists trying to prove an invalid point.
As usual when they are discussing their southern neighbors.
|
|
|
JESSE
Ultra Nomad
Posts: 3370
Registered: 11-5-2002
Member Is Offline
|
|
| Quote: | Originally posted by thebajarunner
This could turn into a real national disaster if the trend continues.
|
It already is, we are the shameful owners of the tittle of "worst public education" in perhaps all of the developing nations on the Pacific rim.
We Suck! 
|
|
|
thebajarunner
Ultra Nomad
Posts: 3718
Registered: 9-8-2003
Location: Arizona....."Free at last from crumbling Cali
Member Is Offline
Mood: muy amable
|
|
LATimes subscription
note to JR and others.
The LATimes offers daily headlines free (that is a very nice word) and access to each article that is headlined, usually 20 or more.
You just have to register for the service, only a few lines.
Then you can download articles like the one that I referenced.
Excellent service, free, unfortunately the politics of the Times tip sharply left.
Baja Arriba!!
|
|
|
MrBillM
Platinum Nomad
Posts: 21656
Registered: 8-20-2003
Location: Out and About
Member Is Offline
Mood: It's a Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah Day
|
|
I have a few Mexican friends in Baja, ranging from one who is financially OK to
a couple who are barely making way and living with his mother. The one thing they have
in common is that they somehow find enough money to avoid sending their kids to a "free
school".
|
|
|
Mike Humfreville
Super Nomad
Posts: 1148
Registered: 8-26-2003
Member Is Offline
|
|
I read the L.A. Times article earlier today and what impressed me, what I have seen over many years to be true is that the children want the education
and their families, more often than not, want it for their kids. In some ways, to me, it's a simple example of the citizenry driving the system. I
just wish they had more weight in the system they were born into.
|
|
|
jrbaja
Ultra Nomad
Posts: 4863
Registered: 2-2-2003
Member Is Offline
|
|
I've never heard of a "free school"
in Mexico.
And from what I've heard, it costs a lot of money to go to any of them.
Which is why we should help in any way we can, No???
And although, I only know Rosarito and the mountain/coastal communities of south Baja, I have never seen a school in Baja that is in that
ramshackle state.
|
|
|
jrbaja
Ultra Nomad
Posts: 4863
Registered: 2-2-2003
Member Is Offline
|
|
Not disagreeing or saying she's lieing.
I just personally haven't seen any schools like that. Especially in the back country where they are getting pretty sophisticated and up to date
buildings.
I kinda figured that the improvements to the education system were happening everywhere and not just where I go.
|
|
|
MrBillM
Platinum Nomad
Posts: 21656
Registered: 8-20-2003
Location: Out and About
Member Is Offline
Mood: It's a Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah Day
|
|
The Mexican Constitution guarantees a free education. Unlike the U.S.,
there are obviously no guarantees for that system to be adequately funded.
|
|
|
wilderone
Ultra Nomad
Posts: 3824
Registered: 2-9-2004
Member Is Offline
|
|
On a brighter note, there are some successes in Mexican schools, despite the government's lack of support. The Zapatista Autonomous communities have
started their own schools, some boarding schools, and are a huge success. In only five years, several new secondary schools have been constructed, as
well as a library and computer center. Their success was dependent on the donations of non-governmental organizations to make it happen (since they
have established themselves autonomous), but the results have been outstanding. You can help: schoolsforchiapas.org is one of the leading (and
seminal) NGO's focused on schools for the indigenous of Chiapas.
|
|
|
Dave
Elite Nomad
Posts: 6005
Registered: 11-5-2002
Member Is Offline
|
|
| Quote: | Originally posted by MrBillM
The Mexican Constitution guarantees a free education. Unlike the U.S.,
there are obviously no guarantees for that system to be adequately funded. |
Well, the thought is there. These are 2002 stats: (world bank)
Mexico ranks 10th in GDP.
It supposedly allocates 4.9% for education, more than Germany, Japan and Great Britian.
I suspect that by the time the money filters down to the students, there is very little left.
One disturbing statistic:
While Mexico ranks 10th in total GDP it ranks #53 in per capita GDP. 50% of it's population is below world poverty levels ($2 per day), 27% under $1.
[Edited on 9-22-2004 by Dave]
|
|
|
|
![[*]](images/xmbforum/default_icon.gif){kind=icon}
