MEXICO CITY — Soaring dropout rates. Pitiful scores in math and science. A proliferation of so-called "trash universities" that offer diplomas but little learning.
By all accounts, Mexico's education system is in serious trouble.
Nearly a decade after former President Vicente Fox vowed to lead an "education revolution," the country has made important strides in ensuring universal access to basic schooling. Today, virtually all children attend elementary school and three of every four attend middle and junior high school, up from six of 10 in 2000.
But the poor quality of that education has thwarted efforts to modernize the economy, trapping the country in a cycle of poverty and low-skilled labor. That pattern has fueled the wave of illegal immigration to the United States.
More than half of Mexico's 15-year-old students don't have basic math and science skills, according to the Paris-based Program for International Student Assessment, which tests education systems throughout the world. Four in ten high school students drop out. And thousands of rural children study in primitive conditions.
Many, like residents of the dust-choked village of El Rialengo, 150 miles north of the capital, rely on volunteer teachers with little training.
On a scorching afternoon, nine children ages 6 to 11 jammed into a crumbling, one-room schoolhouse in El Rialengo. The building, built by residents, lacked electricity and plumbing. While scrawny goats roamed outside, the pupils clamored for the attention of the sole teacher.
"She's not a real teacher," said farmer Javier Garcia, referring to the timid, 21-year-old trainee assigned to the village. "Just because we're poor doesn't mean we don't deserve better."
Mexican President Felipe Calderon, a Harvard-educated lawyer who succeeded Fox, is aware of the problems. They include huge inequalities between private and public institutions and between the country's more prosperous north and the impoverished south.
He has promised to lead his own overhaul of the education system, which is more ambitious, at least on paper, than that of his predecessor.
"We won't permit Mexico to be seen as a country of failures," Calderon said while unveiling the latest piece of the reform package in February.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5659404.html*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*
Mexico reforming the reforms made by the "harvard boys", De La Madrid, Salinas de Gortari, Zedillo, Fox, all of them from the same club.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
