Responsible for the validity of the right to learn is the state. In Latin America, studying: is it worth it? Is this education the way to fulfill the vocation of adolescents and young people? Is the adolescent's right to be educated respected?
Summary
What is middle school doing in that regard; Middle school does not mean that you are giving a know to be a qualified employee. There was more work, work for those with less education.
In former America it was good to have an education because one had a better job, however one had a guaranteed job, whether or not one had an education in nations that offered jobs for all groups.
I will say that the main part of the problem of exclusion from secondary school is not in secondary school: some of it is out, but much of it is in primary school.
If the School was very important before because it was very visible that the school was like a platform for the children because we accessed a higher level than that of our parents, what arises by analyzing the new data is that the school is more important than before. The problem with our schools is that it promises access to a non-existent world. Without middle school you cannot enter.
However, middle school resembles elementary school in many ways in terms of education percentage.
But he is close to the elementary school and very detached from the university. Even so, in this change of functions, the school remains the central element.
Why do communities have to participate in the educational debate?
A school that has fourteen subjects in the first year, where we mostly touch on topics that have little to do with the boy's problems, is a school that is aimed at banishing him. The vision of the State as a solver of all problems "the omnipotent State", proved to be wrong. The state must be closely coordinated with civil society.
Although, as UNESCO affirms, the growth and decline of intellectual functioning is strongly affected by permanent schooling, what are the particularities of the adolescent in this postmodern period? This adolescent, who due to her evolutionary characteristics in itself presents an overvaluation of the external psychic ego state, (and by the way in a state of contamination), is immersed in a stage in the history of humanity with a marked predominance of the image
These peculiarities were summarized by Sartori (1999) with the phrase, in itself correct: «Non vidi, ergo non est». How is our "learner" affected? Sartori (op. Cit.) Affirms, and not only referring to the age range that concerns us: «The dependent video has less critical sense than one who is still a symbolic animal trained in the use of abstract symbols. By losing the ability to meditate, we also lose the ability to distinguish between true and false. " Can we say, then, that we are facing a "disturbed" adolescent? Although it seems an extreme definition, probably yes.
We see the adolescent in a passive, practically catatonic attitude in front of the screen that subjects him with his images. This "homo ludens", as Sartori (1999) defined the man of the end of the century, is it only a product of postmodernity and the media? Quevedo (1998) says that the media should not be considered as a surplus phenomenon of modern culture, but rather that they should be given special attention in their role as producers of ideologies, knowledge, values and beliefs. Education actors, do we pay special attention to this phenomenon?
Is postmodernism responsible for the 'aligned' adolescent? Or is the education that did not adapt to reality responsible? Continuing with the idea of Laeng, cited by Stouvenel (1998), the postmodern stage marked the end of the extreme structuring of ideas, and the tendency to an “increasingly dense intersection of the different planes”. Isn't this an advance against the positivist claim of epistemological autonomies in force during modernism? So why is the product of postmodernism the 'aligned' adolescent we find ourselves with? The hypothesis is that education was not adapted to reality, and it is this idea that motivates the present work.
“The different socioeconomic strata of the countries reach very different records in years of schooling. Dropouts and repetition caused by the socioeconomic conditions of the home daily undermine the possibility of the poor sectors completing their studies. According to ECLAC (2005), in Brazil 52% of the children in the 30% with the lowest income of the population repeated the first two grades of primary school, and in contrast only 4.5% of the children in the 30% with the highest income.
Likewise, only 7% of the young people from the 25% lowest income had completed secondary school at age 20, and instead 54% from the 30% with the highest income. Whereas in Europe the schooling gap between the richest 10% and the poorest 10% is 2 to 4 years, in Latin America it is 8 years and in Mexico it is 11 years. Educational inequality is going to be a very important factor in the inequity in the possibility of finding work and in the salaries that are earned. The disadvantaged sectors are going to be in very bad conditions in this regard due to their weak educational load. The employed labor force in the region presents a marked stratification. According to ECLAC (2005), there is a higher level that is 2.5% of the employed population that has 15 years of schooling,an intermediate level that is 20% of the workforce that has between 9 and 12 years of schooling, and the remaining 80% has only 5 to 7 years of studies in cities and 2.6 in rural areas. A fifth and new figure of inequality is emerging from the totally different possibilities of access to the world of computing and the Internet. The vast majority of the population does not have the means or the education to connect with it. It thus forms part of a new category of illiteracy, “cyber illiteracy”. ”Quoted by Bernardo Kliksberg (IDB)”.The vast majority of the population does not have the means or the education to connect with it. It thus forms part of a new category of illiteracy, “cyber illiteracy”. ”Quoted by Bernardo Kliksberg (IDB)”.The vast majority of the population does not have the means or education to connect with it. It thus forms part of a new category of illiteracy, “cyber illiteracy”. ”Quoted by Bernardo Kliksberg (IDB)”.
The adolescent has the right to be educated, "to discover the vocation of his own being, and a meeting place for his commitments as a man" (Mounier, E., cited by Emile Planchard, 1986). Responsible for the validity of this right is the state. Can we affirm that this is the case? If we take into account the results we observe, we can say no.
In Latin America to study: is it worth it? Is this education the way to fulfill the vocation of adolescents and young people? Is the adolescent's right to be educated respected? If in a country half of the children do not finish school, one avoids being harassed by trying to access work by saying only "completed middle school."
What is middle school doing in that regard; Middle school does not mean that you are giving a know to be a qualified employee. The qualified employee who has a middle school is not better, but what is being done is guaranteeing that there is social discrimination for those who could not spend so many years in school, that they are ultimately left out.
If we can ask ourselves, we find a strong contradiction, for example that in Iberian America in 1980 unemployment was 4.6%, paradoxically unemployment was less among those with less education. There was more work, work for those with less education.
Today the situation has changed in such a way that while unemployment is multiplied by 20 in groups with less education, it is multiplied by 4 in those with more education.
In former America it was good to have an education because one had a better job, however, one had a guaranteed job, whether or not one had an education - in nations that offered work for all groups.
Today it is much more selective. The discrimination it posed in the case of the qualified employee is interesting because of the things that, I imagine you are not used to, because of the legitimacy of the educational system.
What does the educational system do? It is not the one that generates inequality. It is the one that legitimizes inequality. We are not guilty of reproducing a system, simply of legitimizing that reproduction; What I mean is the following: if instead of selecting the person who enters the dance venues by the appearance, they selected by the title, we would not protest, that is, this is a dance for university students, this is for middle school, in Instead of asking for a face, they would be asking for a title. Would we say "no!"? This is a bowling alley for geniuses! Those who are brutes dance there and couldn't get into school! What the educational system allows by excluding is to legitimize a mechanism of discrimination, it is not the one that generates it but it is the one that allows this background, and this is very aggressive.
At this point, I want to point out one more question regarding a topic that is provocative, I would say that the main part of the problem of exclusion from secondary school is not in secondary school: a part is out, but a good part is in school primary.
One could say do the demonstrations. Tell me which elementary school you went to and I will tell you how you are going to do in secondary school and tell me which secondary school you went to and I will tell you if you can access and which university you can access.
Sometimes elementary school is conditioning secondary school, the chances of success in secondary school. We investigated it a long time ago. As children from different social classes come together, the most disadvantaged are those who come from elementary schools that learned less, where the pedagogical model was more socializing and much less linked to illustration.
Something that a researcher raised a long time ago: Antonia Gallart. If the School was very important before because it was very visible that the school was like a platform for the children because we accessed a higher level than that of our parents, what arises by analyzing the new data is that the school is more important than before. However, now for children it is a parachute, that is, if the platform is what allowed us to rise in socioeconomic level compared to our parents, having more education is like having a bigger parachute, and at times like the numbers sing, where We are all falling a bit, those who have a bigger parachute are more resistant to the gravity of the situation we are going through, but it is less visible.
Why? What is the problem of the school in our countries? It is very well presented in the book Foresten's Economic Horror. The problem with our schools is that it promises access to a non-existent world. And children have the right to feel cheated because they are talking that if they study they are going to get a good job that is gone.
So that mistrust with regard to school is one of the central elements when one debates with adolescents. When one investigates, it is latent why study and our answer says that studying is worth it, and we have concrete data that without studying it is not possible, for example, to enter the job market. If we talk about citizen participation of organizations and entry into the job market, what actually happened is that the minimum platform to enter it increased. Without middle school you cannot enter.
However, middle school resembles elementary school in many ways in terms of education percentage. In basic school it is 20%, in middle school it is 17%.
But he is close to the elementary school and very detached from the university. The question is why do university students get jobs? And yes, they get a job: college job?
What is happening is that since there is an oversupply of university students, university students take the positions that those of middle school used to take. The doctor is a visitor, the architect is a draftsman, the lawyer helps another, etc., the sociologist is a pollster. So what there is is a "queue effect", what the school does is put first in the queue to work those who have more years in education. Even so, in this change of functions, the school remains the central element.
Two very specific questions to share and generate a debate.
Why do communities have to participate in the educational debate? Why can't communities be restricted to the participation of cooperative school associations?
In reality, the largest NGO is the school cooperator, it is the one with the longest tradition and the largest number, and it has played a role that in many moments, if that NGO -which is a school cooperator- had not been there, the school would not have survived. - Only the salaries came to the school, nothing came. That is to say, in many schools the possibilities of education existed through the cooperators. In this sense, I would say why not restrict yourself to that and talk about other topics.
In the first place, because the main subjects for which children do not study have to do with the socio-economic order. All the surveys, all the investigations show that the greatest announcer of school failure is the socioeconomic origin of the family. The element that research shows is that the one that is most limited to school failure and success is the mother's educational level, where she is talking not only about socio-economic issues but also about cultural capital and socialization with the goods of knowledge and culture that the school teaches. This seems to be the central element; then there is a set of elements that have to do with the participation of the cultural, social and economic community that the boy returns to school, in supporting the boy in volunteer programs,where the community can support and sustain the boy within the school, but I would encourage you to state that this is not the main impact that we are expecting with respect to community participation in NGOs.
What I am saying is that high school as we know it in many Latin countries can include children. I have stated in many of my presentations that "Middle school is the best place where children can be," there is no doubt If that is not the place, it must be said with all the letters, that the other place is the correctional facility, which certainly does not provide solutions.
This society that does not have other state agencies to serve this boy, then in that sense I say that the school reality or the pedagogical model must be changed. A school that has fourteen subjects in the first year, where we mostly touch on topics that have little to do with the boy's problems, is a school that is aimed at banishing him.
If he resists it is because he knows that middle school is very important.
That the way to generate equality is to be unequal and giving more to those who have less but not only more but different. The important thing is that what is taught has to do with the boy's daily life, that the school is capable of being permeated by the boy's cultural and social capital, that this enters the school transforming it into his daily behaviors.
Equality is a total fiction, because true equality did not exist because of having the same white coat or uniform. What must be done is a great effort of the State, but to give power to the community, so that it is the community that generates the conditions of a different pedagogical model.
And precisely our work as teachers, sometimes in the classroom and others in the directive places of education in our nations, is not to forget this problem and work for that different pedagogical system that is a resource to avoid discrimination.
In conventional economic thought, a methodical effort of vast proportions has been made to discredit state action. The idea of the State has been associated with corruption, with the inability to efficiently fulfill the most minimal functions, with large bureaucracies, with wasting resources. The vision is based on serious defects existing in the functioning of public administrations in many Latin American countries, but it went much further than that, and demonized the State as a whole.
It projected the image that any action taken in the public sphere would be negative for society, and instead the reduction to the minimum of public policies, and the delivery of its functions to the market would lead it to a realm of efficiency and the solution of the main existing economic-social problems.
It also created the conception that there was a fundamental opposition between the State and civil society, and it was necessary to choose between both.
As in other fields, today it is possible to hold a discussion on the subject beyond ideologies. The methodological instruments of the current social sciences provide very concrete evidence that allows us to establish how reality works. The vision of the State as a solver of all problems "the omnipotent State", proved to be wrong. The State alone cannot do development, and in Latin America state action has presented acute problems of bureaucratization, inefficiency, and corruption.
The state alone cannot solve problems, but minimizing them aggravates them. That is the conclusion, among many other voices, of the World Bank, in its special report dedicated to the role of the State (1998), highlights as a central idea that without an efficient State development is not viable, and proposes a series of guidelines aimed at to "rebuild the State's capacity for action."
Today there is an active return to the search for a more balanced vision in the cutting-edge international debate on the issue of development and the role of the State.
“Per capita public spending on health in Brazil is 208 dollars, in Mexico 172, in Peru 98. The average healthy life years only reach 59 in Brazil. This country is one of the largest industrial powers in the world. On the other hand, when it is looked for in the performance tables of the WHO health systems, it appears in 125th place. The high levels of inequity that it presents have a marked impact on this. "
The crucial character of state action in key fields such as health and education emerges in full force from a recent research (Financial Times, 2000) that shows what happens when the policy of tariffing services in poor population areas is set under the idea of “sharing costs” and “community financing”, thus reducing the responsibilities of the State. In Tanzania, following World Bank conditions, fees were introduced in primary education.
The result, according to the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Tanzania, was an immediate drop in school attendance, and total school attendance was half of what was expected. In Zimbabwe, conditionality was that they should charge fees for health services, but that the poor would be exempted from doing so.
An evaluation by the World Bank itself concluded that only 20% of the poor were able to obtain the necessary exemption permits. In Ghana, by imposing school fees 77% of Accra's street children who attended schools dropped out.
The falsehood of the demonization of the State leads to very concrete consequences, by discrediting its action, it leaves the ground open for its indiscriminate weakening, and the gradual disappearance of firm public policies in crucial fields such as social ones. Thus, it causes irreparable damage to vast sectors of families, increases poverty and inequality, and limits the possibilities for sustained growth. The reality data suggest that there is another way. In some of the most economically and socially successful countries in the world, one of the pillars of their economies is an active, highly efficient state. One of its central characteristics, contradicts one of the axes of the fallacy. It is a State closely coordinated with civil society. The false State-Civil Society opposition that advocates the fallacy as fact,it is denied in them. The ties of cooperation are very many, and an integrated action arises. Also in Latin America itself, some of the societies with better equity figures, less poverty, and better rates of human development had as a basis for these achievements well-organized States, with bureaucracies considered efficient, such as Costa Rica, Uruguay, and democratic Chile.. It is essential to reform and improve state efficiency and eradicate corruption. But for this it is necessary to move in another direction totally different from the fallacy. Not to make the State a servant of evil, but to build spaced, crystalline public administrations, open to community cooperation, well managed, with stable administrative careers based on merit. We, the teachers,that many times we are called to managerial positions in the educational field, we can do a lot.
