Gustavo Iaies passed away a year ago.
His early and unexpected death left his friends and colleagues without an essential interlocutor.
Argentine education lost one of its most committed defenders, Gus began and ended the day thinking about how to improve the classrooms and the learning of the kids.
Valuing his ideas, recovering his vital perspective on the educational system is not only a well-deserved recognition, but also a reminder of the need to prioritize the transformation of our educational system.
Gustavo was a rare bird in the world of education.
Passionate, eclectic, capable of feeling at home both in a schoolyard and in an international forum.
It was common to turn on the radio or TV and find Gustavo explaining the topics on the educational agenda in plain and familiar language, contributing not only his knowledge but also a good dose of common sense, sometimes so scarce in our country.
His phenomenal ability to communicate was based on two pillars: the conviction that the educational system could only change with the commitment of the entire society and a solid education that went far beyond his academic record.
Gustavo knew the school and the educational system.
He was a grade teacher in the Buenos Aires public school, director of a private school of reference, textbook editor, pioneer in the development of virtual classrooms, consultant, researcher and official of the Ministry of Education of the Nation.
Throughout his career, he consolidated and refined a series of fundamental ideas to address, which for Gustavo was a true obsession, how to achieve real change in our educational system.
The first of these is that the educational system fulfills its functions based on a governance model in which not only the rules of government interact, but also the way in which the system is financed, its curricular structure and teaching practices, and that Trying to replace or modify the undesired results of this form of organization with specific programs usually gives poor results, which last as long as the official who promoted them lasts and collaborates with the inflation of programs or "programitis" as Gustavo called it, but it does not solve the problems. underlying problems.
Linked to the above, he argued that to be successful institutional reforms should invert the pyramid and put the school at the center of the system.
This look led him to be a fervent defender of school autonomy and the leadership of school management teams as engines of deep and lasting change.
Lucid when making diagnoses about the ills that afflict our educational system, Gustavo kept seeing the glass half full, believing that change is possible.
Hence his tireless enthusiasm to tour the country, participate in forums and conferences, support the work of local organizations, continue researching and communicating.
Today, when Argentina is looking for a certain direction to get out of the exasperating decadence in which it has been submerged for years, Gustavo's voice is missed inviting us to fight, to believe in social commitment as a way to break the inertia and promote the changes that the union and ministerial bureaucracies refuse to make.
Andrés Delich is a former Minister of Education.
