History repeats itself like an endless tape.
On May 22, 2013, the then President Cristina Kirchner announced the implementation of the Look to Care plan: “We are going to use the force of the political, social, and youth movements to deploy them throughout the territory with the campaign that It will be called Watch to Care.
Look at what?
Prices.
Take care of what?
The pocket of the people.
Today, ten years later, the attempt is repeated like so many other times in our history.
The Fair Prices Program, as stated on its website, "has the objective of reducing inflationary expectations and tending towards price stability in the short term to recover the purchasing power of the population's income," the page also points out. They constitute "agreed prices for the products that Argentines consume the most."
Various sectors of our society, such as union members, members of social groups and piquetero movements, joined in the control of the program's results.
The same story, over and over again.
It is even surprising not even the lack of the most elementary knowledge, but also the lack of learning capacity.
At that time I published in this same space a note that focused your attention on an absurd asymmetry.
In our country, citizen participation was encouraged in the supposed care of the pocket of the people, but their participation in the effective care of the education their children received was prohibited.
Ten years later nothing has changed, only the educational tragedy we are experiencing has been accentuated by the school closure policy carried out during the pandemic.
Parents continue to be the guests of stone because, given article 97, of Law 26,206 of National Education sanctioned in 2006, which establishes that "the policy of dissemination of information on the results of the evaluations will protect the identity of the / “Students, teachers and educational institutions, in order to avoid any form of stigmatization, within the framework of current legislation on the matter”, have no possibility of controlling the education their children receive.
I ask myself, who can have more right than the parents themselves to know the educational level of the institutions their children attend?
Why carry out campaigns for the supposed citizen control of the uncontrollable and, on the contrary, systematically refuse to modify an absurd legislation that prohibits, in practice, those who are naturally the most interested in the education of children and young people from exercising a reasonable control over the schools and that in such a way they contribute to taking care of the level of education received by their children?
Stigmatization?
Of course, the identity of students and teachers must be preserved, but not of educational institutions.
It was not possible to face the tremendous situation that Argentine education was already experiencing ten years ago, and that its mismanagement during the pandemic deteriorated even more, without the active participation of parents.
Making the results of the evaluations public, at the school level, would awaken many of them and make them react.
It is difficult to find clearer evidence of this fact than that provided by the reopening of schools during the pandemic.
Without the tireless action of organizations such as Organized Parents, demanding a return to face-to-face, it would have been carried out much later, given the fierce opposition of the teacher unions.
Fair prices?
an absurdity.
A fairer education?
It's possible;
but for this we must allow the parents themselves to control it.
Modify the art.
97 of the National Education Law is essential, hopefully one day it will be understood.
Edgardo Zablotsky is Rector of the CEMA University and Member of the National Academy of Education
