The Government has taken advantage of Teacher's Day to make a gesture to teachers in Mexico: an increase in salary for those who earn less than 20,000 pesos (995 dollars) a month.
In this section, up to 20,000, those with the lowest monthly payment will receive a staggered increase of 3%, the following in the salary scale 2% and the rest 1%, so that those who earn the least reach 14,300 pesos.
"On average, lower-paid workers will finally receive an increase of 7.5%," said the Secretary of Education, Delfina Gómez.
For this, 25 million pesos will be allocated.
It is, added Gómez, “a thank you for her effort and commitment” especially in the last months of the pandemic.
In a solemn act that she has gathered at the presidential table half the Government Cabinet,
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has intoned a particular cry: “Long live education, long live the National Magisterium, long live justice, long live democracy.”
With this gesture, the Government begins to settle the silence in which the Fourth Transformation has maintained the educational community in the first half of the six-year term.
Teachers are the cornerstone of the Mexican educational system, according to the speeches of those responsible.
In this six-year term, it has been basified, that is, more than 650,000 teachers have been granted a fixed position and this Sunday it has been announced that they will receive training so that they can face the changes that are coming at school.
This conjures up the ghost of Peña Nieto's evaluations, which conditioned the permanence in the system of thousands of teachers, a measure that brought down this government when it came to power.
Mexico is immersed in an educational reform that has taken some clumsy steps in recent weeks that, later, have had to be retraced.
This was the case of the elimination of the Full Time Schools, which provided the poorest students with food and extra hours in the educational center.
That policy has been reversed later, with the announcement of a larger budget in direct aid to continue this program.
The educational discourse now has four axes of a markedly progressive character: the change of the curricular contents with a “humanistic” accent in all subjects, even if they are scientific;
scholarships: "Never before have so many been distributed," said López Obrador.
11 million have been granted in this administration and that "will continue to grow";
schools will have their own budget, "even if it seems utopian,
it will be fulfilled”, the president has promised;
and, cited in the first place, attention to teachers: "You will never be offended again."
The economic and dignifying effort that the Government is presenting these days for the teaching profession comes to cushion the blows to a very suffering sector in Mexico, with very low salaries and scarce resources that have been evidenced as never before in the pandemic, with thousands of schools without the minimum conditions of hygiene, infrastructure or technological equipment.
López Obrador has announced more economic measures.
The Secretary of the Treasury, Rogelio Ramírez de la O was present at the ceremony, in which medals were awarded to veteran teachers.
The Ministry of Public Education (SEP), however, has not clarified, for now, these confusing percentages of salary increases, nor the times to reach the 7% increase mentioned.
The pending task, the president has said, are pensions, which instead of being individual will go to a fund, as before "and the State will be responsible for them, so that they are not put at risk under any circumstances," said López Obrador .
Thanking him at the beginning and at the end of his speech for the work of the SNTE and CNTE unions, the president has promised that the money received by teachers "increases year after year without suffering lags in relation to Social Security", a union lawsuit.
The Secretary of Education, moved, thanked the president for having placed a teacher like her in that position and the economic effort, in times of austerity and cuts, that is announced today for the teaching profession.
López Obrador has also recalled the importance of having a teacher in that position.
And he has articulated a short speech in which he has transferred the ideals of the 4T to education, a matter that has been relegated in recent years in the president's speech in favor of anti-corruption and security policies, among others.
"Education is not a privilege, it is a right of the people, and the State has to grant it in a public, free and quality manner at all school levels."
For López Obrador, the importance of scholarships is unequivocal to achieve equity.
The formation of "good citizens" is another of the objectives that the Government links to education and its educational reform, of which many details are still unknown.
“Our school must be oriented towards humanism, so that nothing human is foreign to us.
First we must train ourselves as good human beings, then as scientists, eminences, but without abandoning humanism, we do not want inventors of atomic bombs, but creators of fraternity.
We seek a better society.”
It is not little in a country drowned by daily violence.
Delfina Gómez has also referred to "the transformation that must come with education" as the main engine of social change.
"We want mathematics, science, art, diverse knowledge, but with an ethical and humanistic base, of justice, civility, human rights, with a social and gender perspective, that attends to equity and love for our people, which is diverse, already our indigenous cultures.
The basket is going to be woven with these wickers, but the details are yet to come.
Gómez was happy to be able to advance, at least, the increase in salary for the most disadvantaged teachers.
And she also quoted the Secretary of the Treasury.
More commitments are to come.
Educational reforms are complex, especially if they are far-reaching, like this one that the Government is now outlining, with the elimination of courses by school phases.
And the teacher is always the key for them to come to fruition, because it will depend on their acceptance that the modifications finally materialize in the classrooms.
“Changes cost”, said Gómez, but he had numerous words of support for teachers, who are the ones who have “the possibility of influencing the life of a human being by turning the classroom into a space of solidarity for those who suffer from poverty, violence or inequality”.
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