The current crisis in the rural sector has led the vast majority of rural producers, including indigenous groups, to live at the expense of new government structures. This sector, excluded from the globalization process, finds itself in the need to maintain its productivity in terms of subsistence.
Faced with this harsh reality, the peasants have sought other types of opportunities that allow them to generate sufficient resources, such as migration to the United States or illicit activities such as drug trafficking, or in the worst of defects to urban areas.
Thus, the rural sector gradually weakens due to neoliberal policies that have neglected its importance and have been unable to frame its development.
David Barkin said in this regard that the countryside has been deliberately denied the possibility of continuing to cultivate the land and harvest basic products that the people so much require; that is, the Mexican countryside suffered unfair competition from imported products with official financing, which took away the market.
It is in this context that the structures of a large majority of rural communities are in total disorganization, consequently leading to social disorganization in much of the social sector.
In addition to the above, the crisis in the countryside is accentuated, incorporating into it the adverse effects of climate change.
The areas affected by drought, floods and land deterioration prevail due to its abandonment, uncertainty and fear due to the lack of regionalized technique and technology, the low prices of their crops or the high costs of agricultural inputs. This is a cause of imports that, in turn, lead to an economic imbalance.
Given this, it is necessary to strengthen the Mexican countryside and recognize the importance of rural towns, since the development of the country largely depends on this sector, to which 87.4% of the population refers (INEGI, 2010).
The new generations must value the importance of rural society and recognize that the promotion of this sector could promote greater productivity and social benefit.
For this purpose, the education factor is basic to promote its development, since education is essential as a process of awareness; that is, the educational process in rural areas must account for the needs of each locality. The "wisdom" of peoples regarding their relationship with nature must be harnessed.
So in the next section we reflect on the institutionalization of rural education in Mexico.
Objectively, rural education has been used to reproduce obsolete schemes, still far from achieving sustainability. On the other hand, the management of education in the rural sector has been welfare for political purposes; which means that the abandonment of the rural does not only respond to economic issues, but to the crisis of education in rural areas, it is totally out of phase with the country's growth.
«Background of the educational paradigm as a means of development of society»
Since the Revolution, education has taken a leading role on the national agenda as a result of the formation of the Secretary of Public Education in 1921, the conception that education will be a public service that will illustrate the entire population - and that it will be the in charge of spreading a generous culture - it is institutionalized.
As Álvaro Obregón is in power, he appoints José Vasconcelos as Secretary of Education and organizes, according to different regions, the educational services that give the people the right to participate in the development of a new education; hence the rural school begins to develop in this context.
Education is oriented as a cultural agency of social coexistence and moves away from the formal and rigid curricula of teaching, and is based on the principle of individual differences, this situation collided with the idea of technological and scientific training promoted by Porfirio Díaz (1888-1908), where the school was conceived as a luxury and as a factor that would help the industrialization of the country, for which reason technological and scientific education was taught in schools, and due to its costly nature, the illiteracy index supposed 78% of the population.
This situation led to the marginalization of peasant and indigenous communities that were conceived as incapacitated to learn, not to speak Spanish, which reflected that education was unattainable for the rural sector.
By 1915 Salvador Alvarado recognized the importance that the Indian had in the destiny of the country as a nation and that therefore there was a need to educate him, but it was not enough just to teach him to read and write, but to provide him with a comprehensive education that meant treating him as a citizen, and at the same time, it will improve your physical, intellectual and moral life.
For the first time Alvarado mentioned that the education of the Indian should not be based on the rigid system with a positivist approach; that is to say, there was no point in preparing the Indian to be a talking machine of all human knowledge, making him read a lot of books; but that his education was to consist of his real life, of the knowledge of the environment of which he is a part, so that he is able to develop all his potentialities and thereby transform his reality.
However, these advances at the level of popular education, to which Freire will later refer, were truncated with the 1917 Constitution that federalizes education throughout the country, introducing a specific curriculum to all schools, thus creating in Obregon's time the Rural Schools Work Plan that had a still popular focus.
This Plan had as its fundamental principles:
- School is a medium where the child is educated with what he sees and does surrounded by the people who work. There are no oral lessons, but disarticulated and rigid programs predominate, with little or no regulation. The education that it promotes derives from the relations of the child and man with nature and society through cooperative work. Dynamic programs that explain their environment Natural and social. Educate freely and spontaneously. Establish the government of the students through the committees that they themselves elect (democracy itself).
This is how the Rural School was born to serve the marginal sector and is conceived as a promoter of its own development, focusing its action on the community for the integration of its collective life for the benefit of its components. (SEP, 1981: 202-204)
However, said Plan was stalled when Vasconcelos resigned from the Secretary and Calles rose to power, he realizes that Vasconcelos's educational policies did not have the expected results and cut the budget and again promoted schools of a technological nature, to boost the country's growth.
Since then the motto of all governments is "education for all". The Cardenista period once again boosted education, which was cut short afterwards by the traditionalist policies of the subsequent six-year periods and which have resulted in serious stagnation.
By interacting with the exposed approaches, the importance of education in the rural sector is essential to face the future in all its dimensions.
It is time to return to the fundamental principles of the Work Plan for Rural Schools, but adapting it to the new conditions of the environment, for a higher quality of teaching-learning and a better way of operating popular education, understood as Freire conceives it, “The humanization of man, a liberating and at the same time transforming act”; In other words, the mistake that is made is wanting to decontextualize education from their environment.
For example, the "technical" agricultural educator, says Freire, has a naive vision of reality and has a clear sense of superiority, of domination, and wants to insert peasants into a traditional agrarian structure (Freire, 1984: 10), transforming the peasant into one thing, with fixed objectives, that prohibit him from thinking about the needs that are generated from his environment and therefore his knowledge is embedded in a reality alien to him and it is impossible for him to help the transformation of the world.
However, at present it is thought that the peasant needs a “technical” training to be “modern”, nevertheless, it will be necessary to reflect that although “all development is modernization, (…) not all modernization is development”. (Freire, 1984: 12).
In conclusion, and as a consequence of Freire's thinking, learning is true when the subject is capable of appropriating what has been learned, applies it and reinvents it, and acquires the critical capacity that he needs to transform his reality, since if he acquires knowledge outside his In reality, it breaks with the totality of its culture.
It follows, therefore, that the agronomist-educator cannot change the peasant's attitudes, in relation to any aspect, without knowing his vision of the world, and without confronting it in its entirety. It is a “natural invasion”, an attitude contrary to dialogue that is a true education (Freire, 1984: 12).
Therefore, the current education that is taught in schools with the same specific curriculum, simulating an equality of knowledge, enslaves man and makes him not function as a transforming subject of his reality and therefore of society itself.
The importance of the rural sector must be recovered by giving an essential role to education, but channeled - as Alvarado mentions - to the particularities of the environment, so that the subject can identify with their problems, find a solution and apply it. Thus each environment would transform and together they would transform society.
You still have a great job ahead of you. The reforms to the General Education Law allow us to glimpse the rescue of education, but it is far from being a reality; even while the conjunctural problems that have led to its stagnation are not resolved.
In conclusion:
- What is the use of everyone knowing how to read and write? The authors think that the important thing is not to make knowledge machines, but rather the invention and reinvention of it.What is the use of 50.1% of the localities in the rural sector from 2,500 to 1,4999 inhabitants attending a school (INEGI, 2010) ? If this sector acts as a passive element.
The recognition of difference is the sum of experiences that enriches our formation as individuals, and the formation of enriched individuals traces the transformation of our social reality.
Bibliography
- Bolaños Raúl, Cardiel Reyes Raúl, Solana Fernando (coordinators). 1981. "History of public education". Commemorative editions of the LX Anniversary of the creation of the Secretary of Public Education. Mexico. Editorial Fondo de Cultura Económica, SEP.Calva José Luis (general coord.), Gómez Cruz A. and Schwentesius Rita (modular coord.). 1997. “The Mexican Countryside: Neoliberal Adjustment and Alternatives. Alternatives for the Mexican economy ”. First edition. Mexico. Editorial Juan Pablos.Freire Paulo. 1984. "Extension or communication ?, awareness in rural areas". Thirteenth edition. Mexico. Editorial Siglo Veintiuno Editores XXI. National Institute of Statistics and Geography, Population and Housing Census 2010. http://www.censo2010.org.mx/. Date of consultation: 05/10/11.
