From the pinnacle of state power that he has enjoyed from the moment he was born, Máximo Kirchner raised, once again,
a critique of the notion of merit
as an engine of individual growth in society.
In an interview he gave to an official media outlet, he mocked those who defend those values of progress.
With his finger raised, and laughing, he caricatured them:
"Eeehh, they don't want to work, ta ta ta, give them the fishing rod, don't give them the fish..."
, she mocked them.
And he delimited:
"let's try so that they are not in the Atacama or Sahara desert"
, to specify why, from his ideological point of view -which is shared by a large part of the ruling party-, in the face of a situation of extreme social vulnerability, such as the current one , the “fishing rod” (training? employment of a certain quality?) is useless and it
is necessary for the State to provide “help”.
With these statements, the son of two former presidents - who finished high school in Río Gallegos, but did not complete the journalism and law careers that he started and
is now a national deputy
- revived a debate about meritocracy that returns time and time again.
Above all, since Fernández came to government.
Opposition voices came out to criticize him.
The Buenos Aires Minister of Education, Soledad Acuña, for example, tweeted:
“Maximum, we are proud to defend the culture of effort and merit.
It is the opposite of the failure of the Kirchnerist policy, based on assistance without compensation, which, far from creating opportunities, multiplied and consolidated people's dependency”.
Beyond political positions, it is good to know that the debate on merit and meritocracy is not new here or in the world.
Experts from various universities -authors of essays and books- have been working on it for years, concerned about
the growing inequality after economic globalization.
But there is something that everyone agrees on, regardless of their vision: that in the face of increasingly unequal and polarized societies,
greater access to quality education
is vital to reach that ideal egalitarian starting point that gives all same opportunities.
Argentina is a good example to understand it.
Public schools, which at the beginning of the 20th century tended to match different sectors of society,
have suffered a notable deterioration in recent decades
.
It is not worth going into statistics here.
This caused many sectors of the middle classes to abandon it and "refuge" in elite private or state schools when possible.
And so
those differences will be widened from the cradle
.
That is one of the tips to change and improve, if you want
to seriously fight against meritocracy.
Rod?
Who knows?
In any case, something very far from the vision of a son of power.
look also
Educational crisis: the enormous amount that the State owes to schools and violates a law
look also
The ambitious educational reform that Uruguay is starting, the role of unions and how Argentina could imitate it
