The great transition of López Obrador leaves aside education

Students at a public high school in Mexico City attend classes in June 2021. Andrea Murcia (CUARTOSCURO)

The ravages of the coronavirus pandemic in Mexico have one of its great victims in the educational system.

In a country where millions of children live in families submerged in poverty, a contingency like this, which has kept them away from school for almost two years, has burst the weak seams that sustain the educational community.

Due to illness or lack of money, both causes perhaps related, 1.8 million students were forced to drop out of classes last year, almost double the number who left the system in previous years.

But the pandemic is not the only thing that afflicts the Mexican school: absenteeism, current teacher training, access to the profession and even a trade unionism stranded in other times weigh down regulated training.

Three years after a government that proposed to turn Mexico around like a sock, there are no major changes in the classrooms, nor a great, comprehensive educational model that supports them.

The right attacks the measures that are announced and the left is extremely disappointed by the lack of drastic changes in this matter.

They do not understand a revolution like the one preached by the president, who is situated on the political left, without a great educational project behind it.

Andrés Manuel López Obrador spends almost two hours every morning talking about the future of the country, but education is not one of his recurring themes.

The right attacks the measures that are announced and the left is extremely disappointed by the lack of drastic changes in this matter.

They do not understand a revolution like the one preached by the president, who is situated on the political left, without a great educational project behind it.

Andrés Manuel López Obrador spends almost two hours every morning talking about the future of the country, but education is not one of his recurring themes.

The right attacks the measures that are announced and the left is extremely disappointed by the lack of drastic changes in this matter.

They do not understand a revolution like the one preached by the president, who is situated on the political left, without a great educational project behind it.

Andrés Manuel López Obrador spends almost two hours every morning talking about the future of the country, but education is not one of his recurring themes.

“Every movement that calls itself one of change has to pay attention to education,” says Juan Manuel Rendón, professor and former director of the Benemérita Escuela de Normalistas in Mexico City, where teachers have been trained for 133 years.

From his point of view, however, education “is not among the priorities of this government”, which does insist on fighting corruption and poverty, for example.

“I think that in health they have made a colossal effort, but not in education,” laments Rendón.

A person closely linked to the left, his criticism does not fall within the ranks of the political opposition, but it does form those of disillusionment.

“Perhaps there are pressing needs for which the president has forgotten education,

In recent weeks, there have been several news items that have turned their gaze towards the educational system.

The extirpation of the budget that supported the so-called Full Time Schools, in which not only training, but also food and extracurricular classes were provided to 3.6 million poor children, has raised a dust storm that forced the Secretary of Education, Delfina Gómez , to contradict his first speech and announce that this money would be given in direct aid to families.

But a judge has preemptively annulled the Government's guidelines in which food and the extended day at school were dispensed with.

Another: the professors who enrolled in the so-called Benito Juárez Welfare Universities, one of the president's emblematic projects, are still on the warpath,

because more than 150 were informed during the pandemic that their agreements would not be renewed, and the students have accused the academic undermining of that measure.

These universities were designed to favor the access of students with limited resources in marginalized areas.

There are more than 100 scattered throughout the country, but with feet of clay, according to those affected, who do not find in them sufficient quality or infrastructure for graduates to compete with their colleagues from other universities.

The opacity about the resources in these university schools is in question.

There are more than 100 scattered throughout the country, but with feet of clay, according to those affected, who do not find in them sufficient quality or infrastructure for graduates to compete with their colleagues from other universities.

The opacity about the resources in these university schools is in question.

There are more than 100 scattered throughout the country, but with feet of clay, according to those affected, who do not find in them sufficient quality or infrastructure for graduates to compete with their colleagues from other universities.

The opacity about the resources in these university schools is in question.

The economic effort in the educational field can be measured in various ways, using the percentage of GDP that is allocated to schools or the percentage of the total budget that a government dedicates to its public management.

The latter has remained practically the same in recent years, around 30% of the money budgeted by the Government ends up in education.

"What is being done is to distribute it in a different way, for example, taking it from one side to take it to student scholarships," begins Manuel Gil Antón, a sociologist specialized in Education at the Colegio de México (Colmex).

This responds entirely to the president's conviction to grant direct aid to families instead of making monetary transfers that, according to what he says, can be shipwrecked by corruption.

But also to a deeper idea of ​​understanding social and educational policy, which Gil Antón explains: “Before, transfers were made conditioned on merit, only the deserving poor received, and to universalize this support is to understand it as a right, not as a benefit. like pensions.

And it is in the scholarships where the Government has deposited a good part of its educational policy.

Or almost all.

López Obrador came to power in December 2018. A six-year term was inaugurated that had an electoral support unknown in recent times, pushed by the announcement of new winds for the Mexican political system, which had not yet gotten rid of the PRI airs.

Before him, the PAN member Enrique Peña Nieto had had a great response among the teachers because his political reform had a central axis that they did not like: everyone had to be evaluated and if they did not pass the test they would leave the system, to summarize it.

"That meant a frightening simplification of the school problem and unloaded on the teacher the great weight of possible failure, when there are many other factors," continues Gil Antón.

The new president promised to tear down that evaluation system and something was done about it.

“He bought social peace, he deactivated the conflict,

Three years after coming to power, the new educational policies are still not materialized: the Government is working to modify the school program with supposedly participatory assemblies for teachers, parents and students, it announces universal education from zero to three years, and it is advanced the complete revision of the textbooks and the new curriculum.

There is a budget for the care of students with special abilities.

But educational measures continue to be in a nebula that places them more on the side of theory than on practice.

“More than disappointment, it surprises me that we barely see cosmetic changes.

There has been no will to bring equity to the school, scholarships are fine, but the educational problem is not exhausted by staying in school under a scholarship system.

Changes in the educational system are not simple or quick.

The Government has proposed to modify the way of teaching in the classroom, says the Undersecretary of Higher Secondary Education, Juan Pablo Arroyo: "We want a solid and comprehensive education to continue learning throughout life, but with freedom and independence, with access to knowledge, without ideological or disciplinary instruction.

There are those who teach for productivity and in recent six-year terms all creativity has been curtailed.

We also focus on job training for those who do not go to university, currently 60% [of students who complete previous education]”.

Among the quantifiable achievements, the undersecretary mentions the 9.5 million scholarships received by students of various stages, the job stabilization of 150,000 teachers in these three years and the training of teachers to face the new challenge, for which they support each other. in agreements with universities and study centers: “240,000 teachers have already undergone training courses, in a program that was interrupted by the pandemic to give them digital tools.

75% of the students between the ages of 15 and 18 were able to follow their classes online, and that was important in curbing dropouts,” says Arroyo.

But he is aware that changes in schools are slow and he appeals to the commitment of teachers, without whom little or nothing can be done: “Everything will materialize when the teacher understands and applies them,

In education, everyone intervenes with their opinions, from the canteen to the academy, and that generates tensions.

Catalina Inclán, a pedagogue teacher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), maintains that Mexico is in a transition process in which not everything that arrives is new and not everything is going to be displaced.

She believes that the general thinking “is still anchored in a system based on global indicators, preparation for the future and new technologies, but perhaps we have to stop, rearrange everything and see who is being left behind with that ideology.

It takes time.

Until now everything was to measure, measure learning, measure whether or not they go to class, if they go to another level.

It is valid that we place ourselves in other places.

It is not bad to measure, but perhaps it is better to see how we can help the teacher to think differently,

with different logics, with accompanying policies”, he says.

He believes that "it is worth exploring" the new policies proposed by the Government.

And to think that “if the students do not learn as required, it is perhaps because they are being taught something that does not mean much to them.

You have to enter a different worldview from childhood, ”she suggests.

A senior official from the previous government complains, however, that global measurements will show that Mexico is still behind in international parameters, despite the fact that López Obrador's "counter-reform" has not been such.

“There is no educational policy design to replace what was done in the previous administration.

The president said that there would not be a comma left, but that is not true, many things have remained, such as the federal management of the payroll of teachers, before even dead or retired teachers were paid.

But they have suppressed the process for the access of teachers to the teaching career and the evaluation of their performance every four years, and that is very serious”, he maintains.

Contrary to what Undersecretary Arroyo says, he suspects that there will be an enormous ideological burden in the new Mexican school.

Higher education complains of a lack of budget and of attacks that it does not understand, such as the one carried out by the president against UNAM, the jewel in the academic crown, a huge packet of 400,000 students and about 42,000 professors that the president accused of not having detached itself from the neoliberal times in which it places the policies and practices of its predecessors.

The scandal was huge.

And also the one that followed the accusation of organized crime against 30 members of the National Council of Science and Technology, another blow to the academic and scientific class that destroyed the expectations that many placed in this government.

"There is a general discouragement due to the deterioration of the system in these three and a half years," says Carlos Iván Moreno Arellano, professor of Public Policy at the University of Guadalajara.

The budget for higher education, which was presumed to be on the rise with the new government, has fallen, according to Moreno Arellano: “In 2015, 3.5 pesos out of every 100 were invested in higher education and now 2.9.

In Science and Technology, it went from 1.7 of every 100 pesos to one peso”.

An inflationary loss that represents an accumulated deficit of 34,000 million pesos, according to data from the National Association of Universities and Higher Education Institutions.

"In addition, we have lost 10 of the 11 additional funds that we had for quality, infrastructure, support, teaching incentives," continues Moreno Arellano.

He assures that 15 public universities are already in financial crisis, with difficulties to pay professors”

Scholarships, 114,000 million pesos, represent an increase of 80%.

"We are not against it, but I think they should be linked to academic performance and we also do not see that they are having a great impact on the educational system and while scholarships increase, student enrollment falls," criticizes Moreno Arellano.

What everyone agrees on, and that in education is difficult, is that the pandemic has only aggravated a starting situation that was already deficient.

And it has exposed those usual shortcomings, such as the digital gap between the city and the countryside, between the wealthy classes and the poor.

“There is a great inequality that persists.

Qualified teachers flee from community schools [those far from urban areas, those in the deep mountains, for example], and they are fed by instructors with certain training and qualifications.

Those boys are my heroes,” says Carlos Ornelas Navarro, an expert in Education Policy at the Autonomous Metropolitan University (UAM).

He does not walk with half measures: "We are very bad, the country is going to be in a catastrophic situation," he predicts.

From the left, Juan Manuel Rendón shares the idea that López Obrador's counter-reform was never such.

“He took the edge off the teaching workplace, but he is still just as damaging.

The commitment to give direct access to teachers who graduated from normal schools after studying population growth and the need for teachers has not been fulfilled.

In the previous six-year term, more teachers were hired”, he affirms.

As soon as the so-called Fourth Transformation began, Rendón saw signs that he did not like in the appointments of those responsible for the Ministry of Education, closer, in his opinion, to the PRI than to a renewal movement.

He believes that there are some changes in the right direction, "but without financial support the turnaround will not be achieved."

His criticism is bitter, because he had higher expectations:

“They are making believe that the teachers are consulted to implement the changes, but it is not true.

Although we are not worse off, they continue with the old PRI policies.

I recognize advances in other subjects, but in education they are leaving us to duty”.

In his opinion, "neoliberalism has permeated the thinking of all the people who naturally see a purely meritocratic system where competitiveness and individualism prevail"

There are three years left in the six-year term, but some already see things crooked.

Gil Antón sums it up with a football simile: “We played like never before and lost like always.

This was ours, but we voted like never before and lost like always”.

Perhaps the great disappointment with the 4T is played out in the field of education.

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