( Published in The Nation, April 29, 2008 )
about two years have passed so-called movement of the penguins, which manifestations secondary students opened a broad debate on the precariousness of basic and secondary education in Chile. Not surprisingly, the students have returned to the streets and demonstrations, and that the claims raised by them become and remain profit, the General Law of Education, quality of education, the full school day, school fee, among others. All this, despite the installation of the Presidential Advisory Council on Quality Education, pompously announced by Ms. Bachelet, who should have generated the appropriate proposals, but that only served to stop the student movement and not exceed great scourges of the educational system: financing, quality and equity. And yet also, that the issue is currently before Parliament, although there appears to be an intention to advance its pipeline. In this scenario
operating under the existing logical question in May 2006, the expectation is that gaps education accrue, for example, the results of the PSU 2007, only 1% of the children of lower-income families exceeded 700 points, while the children of high-income families this percentage reaches 16 %. These figures show that the poor condition of exclusion in education are very poor, which does not occur with high-income students. Hence the college selection system is not only a reflection of social reality in the country, why in the latest proposal submitted by the Ministry of Education side last December, raised its final disposal and replacement for a mechanism to consider school systems and scientific humanism.
and wrong in the same direction can consider other mechanisms such as indirect tax contribution (AFI) which is now a public policy as regressive, since the assumption of promoting academic excellence awards to institutions of higher education hosting students from higher socioeconomic strata, which are those who obtained better results from the PSU and at the same time, private schools that historically shown better results in SIMCE. A vicious circle has more than 30 years without breaking, inherited from the dictatorship and the Concertación has ratified. Just remember the demands of the side of the second half of the eighties which were neither more nor less than the same on 24 April, when students again took to the streets in cities across the country and received the usual repression police.
since May 2006 has been two years of unnecessary steps, where, contrary to what was proposed in May of 68 French students of our own have been realistic because they have asked only possible, but in Chile, the possible is impossible. It is politically absurd to blame the student movements of the little progress achieved as if it were not for these, the advisory board Bachelet appointed sesionaría education at the tomb of former dictator. Let's be honest, neither the government nor the opposition have tried to modify the regulatory framework of the dictatorship. The solution exists and is as old as the Old Europe, that we all love to imitate, and facing the problem with large public investments financed by a tax system which taxes most those who have more and larger companies.
Then, we will not be surprising that students return to take to the streets to complain about a serious country that has tried to present as settled or in process of solution, which is the false image that they wanted to close the revolution penguin, 2006. Also it should not be surprising in light of what happens in Parliament, as the project is in the Congress considers only part of the claims and makes no substantive changes to the system requires. A make-up, among many, thanks to which, stylists of the Coalition and the Alliance has achieved international recognition.
Marcel Claude, an economist.
0 comments:
Post a Comment