By David Bacon
California Federation of Teachers website
http://cft.org/key-issues/quality-education/mexican-educators-face-reform.html
May 5, 2013
Recently an American Federation of Teachers resolution declared that U.S. public schools are held hostage to a "testing fixation rooted in the No Child Left Behind Act," and condemned its "extreme misuse as a result of ideologically and politically driven education policy." AFT President Randi Weingarten proposed instead that "public education should be obsessed with high-quality teaching and learning, not high-stakes testing." In Seattle teachers at Garfield High have refused to give them.
Many
Mexican teachers would find these sentiments familiar. The testing regime in Mexico is as entrenched
as it is in the United States, and its political use is very similar -
undermining the rights of teachers, and attacking unions that oppose it. In Michoacan, in central Mexico, sixteen
teachers went to jail because they also refused to administer standardized
tests. But the teachers' union in the
southern state of Oaxaca, Section 22 of the National Union of Education Workers
(SNTE)., has not only refused to implement standardized tests - it has proposed
its own reform of the education system, one designed by teachers themselves.
Tranquilino
Lavarriega Cruz, coordinator of the union's Center for the Study of Educational
Development, has taught for 11 years in primary schools in poor
communities. Today he works full time
coordinating the Program for the Transformation of Education in Oaxaca
(PTEO). "The PTEO is a product of
the vision of all the teachers in Oaxaca," he explains. "It covers the infrastructure of
schools, conditions of the students, evaluation, teachers' training, and
compensation. The program is more than a
written document. It seeks to transform
people's lives."
Nationalist
governments after the Revolution of 1910-20 started Mexico's public education
system. Today children start preschool
at three, and move to a six-year primary school at 6. At twelve, they start secondary school, which
ends when they're fifteen. These twelve
years are mandatory. The Department of
Public Education administers the national school system, while each state also
has its own department. All Mexican
teachers belong to the SNTE, the largest union in Latin America, and each state
has its own section.
The
national union's leaders were loyal supporters of Mexico's ruling Institutional
Revolutionary Party (PRI) for over 70 years, but teachers' movements in many
states fought to change what many viewed as a repressive bureaucracy. Today "this internal movement fights for
the democratization of the union and for educational reform," according to
Manuel Perez Rocha, former president of the Autonomous University of Mexico
City and one of the country's most respected educators.
Over
the last two decades, however, corporate influence has grown over Mexico's
educational system. "They started
creating mechanisms for controlling the ideology of both teachers and
students," Lavarriega says, "trying to certify education in the same
way they'd certify a product - to sell it."
Perez
Rocha sees parallels with the U.S.
"The Mexican right always copies the United State's right," he
laughs. "The politics of merit pay
and the correlation with standardized exam results is identical between the two
countries. The right wants to convert
education into a commodity and students into merchandise -- 'Let's fill their
heads with information and put them to work.'" Nevertheless, he notes, there are important differences,
because the national union in Mexico is an entrenched part of the power
structure.
In
2008 the recently-removed leader of the teachers union, Esther Elba Gordillo
Morales, signed an agreement with then Mexican President Felipe Calderon called
the Alliance for Quality Education (ACE).
Just weeks after taking office, Mexico's new president, Enrique Peña
Nieto, ordered her arrest on corruption charges, shortly after the Mexican
Congress gave its final approval to an education reform program based on ACE
that is hated by most of the country's teachers. Gordillo may prove to be guilty of the
embezzlement charges leveled against her. But what placed her in the
cross-hairs of Mexico's corporate elite was more likely her inability to keep
teachers under control as protests against testing and U.S.-style education
reform spread across the country.
The
ACE is based on a national standardized test for students called ENLACE. Pedro Javier Torres Hernandez, a biology
teacher since 1989, has been working for twelve years on the union's
alternative reform plan, most recently on its proposal regarding evaluations. He criticizes the ACE and the ENLACE test
because "they don't take context into account. A school in the city isn't the same as one in
a remote community. Sixteen languages
are spoken in Oaxaca, and in Mexico there are great differences between
communities. Some schools function very
well because they have resources while others don't. That shouldn't justify bad conditions, but to
think that teachers are the only ones responsible is wrong."
The
impact of the testing regime on curriculum is similar to that in many U.S.
schools. Humanities, art and philosophy
have all but disappeared from the curriculum, Perez Rocha charges. History and
literature are drastically reduced and placed in other programs.
"Under
the ACE," Torres says, "if students at a school don't achieve good
test results, the Secretary of Public
Education declares their teachers incompetent, and they're removed. They have to go to a private school and pay
to take courses, and later take tests.
If they don't score well, they're fired." The ACE also incorporates a previous reward
system, called Teaching Careers, where teachers accumulate points based on
their own test results, and can qualify for salary increases. "However those who have been given
awards are not necessarily the best teachers, and it divides teachers against
each other," he believes.
So
teachers in Oaxaca refused to implement the ENLACE test. There is resistance in other states as
well. Sixteen teachers were arrested in
Michoacan for refusing. "But Oaxaca is the stone in the shoe,"
Lavarriega says.
Section
22's alternative to the ACE proposes programs for infrastructure, student needs
and financial incentives, and systems for evaluating and training
teachers. For Lavarriega,
"Education must be diverse because Oaxaca is an extremely diverse
state. Schools in the heart of the city
should be equal to those in marginalized communities. Communities should be
able to generate their own educational process, and teachers should be part of
it."
To
critics who claim this sounds like deemphasizing education standards, he
responds, "We're not saying that all knowledge is contextual. A five is a five, no matter what part of the
world you're living in. There are
universal elements of the curriculum that we shouldn't modify. But many of us look at the textbook almost
like God, not just in Oaxaca but everywhere in the world. We believe we can't function without one. Isn't reality around us also a great
opportunity to develop content?"
In
indigenous communities Torres says "you hear parents saying they want more
instruction in their own language, as well as better instruction in the
sciences. What the PTEO tries to do is
to harmonize things. The fundamental
linchpin of this plan is forming groups or collectives. You could, for instance, set up a collective
in a school, or one for an entire community in which there are various
schools. These collectives bring
together teachers, students, and their families, and they work on educational
projects."
The
PTEO's main difference with the ACE is its approach to evaluation. Instead of a standardized test,
"evaluation should be a process," Lavarriega asserts, "a means,
not an end. ENLACE simply gives the test, and that's it. Evaluation should be a process of dialogue,
should be global and holistic, and should evaluate everything. It should be multidisciplinary, where
teachers to work together to evaluate a student."
In
place of the test, the PTEO proposes that teachers and students keep diaries,
and maintain portfolios of work.
"While we don't discard totally conventional tests, we should also
have interviews and surveys," Torres says.
"Teachers and families should sit down together and analyze what
they find in the diaries and portfolios.
Teachers of biology, for instance, can ask each other, how did you
explain a certain idea? How well did it
work?"
Proponents
of standardized exams allege that teachers and schools can't be relied on to
impartially evaluate themselves.
"We don't reject external evaluation," Torres continues,
"so that someone outside can understand what we're doing. But we need to combine external and internal
evaluations to make decisions and obtain information, not just to compare
schools or students. What's important
isn't just the achievement of the student but the process of learning."
One
of the most hotly debated questions in Mexico involves how teachers themselves
are trained, and in particular the role of the "normales" -- the
teacher training schools. These schools
have been hotbeds of activism, where students have challenged the government
and educational authorities. Just a year
ago police killed three students from the Ayotzinga Normal School in Guerrero,
after a student march left the campus and blocked a public highway.
The
normal schools have also been a way for the children of poor farming families
to get better jobs as teachers. Under
neoliberal economic reforms this role has eroded, however and Oaxaca is the only state left where students
are still guaranteed jobs when they graduate.
Leftwing
politics and class demographics make them a target for conservative
reformers. In June 2011 SNTE President
Gordillo joined Claudio X. Gonzalez, a wealthy rightwing businessman who heads
Mexicanos Primero, the country's corporate education reform lobby, to condemn
them. Gonzalez demanded that the schools
be replaced with private ones, calling the normales "mediocre, and a mess
of politics and complainers." Gordillo said they were graduating
"monsters" instead of "ducklings."
The
PTEO envisions "a training program that sees a teacher as an agent of
social change," Lavarriega counters, "someone who has roots in a
community, is interested in all the problems of the children, is familiar with
the culture of the people, who can promote education projects with
parents. In other words, a teacher the
ruling class doesn't want."
In
the PTEO vision, teacher training should develop critical thinking and
creativity, rather than dependence on rigid curriculum and a textbook. "But it won't happen just because we
give a workshop or some five-day course," he cautions. "We ourselves are too much the product
of the training we want to change.
Nevertheless, if we start a gradual process, I think that in several
years we can create new teachers."
Those
new teachers will join a workforce with a reputation for stopping work every
spring to fight with the government over salaries. Ninety percent earn between 3000 and 3500
pesos ($240-280) every two weeks. Many
interns make as little as 1500 pesos, on six-month contracts with no Social
Security benefits. "In a
marginalized community," Lavarriega says, "teachers can spend 10 to
15% of their salaries on supplies for the students -- crayons, markers,
binders."
However
the PTEO would actually end the individual bonuses given under the Teaching
Career system. In its place it proposes
financial rewards for schools and collectives that develop effective
educational projects. This would
encourage collectivity, the union believes, and ties with the community.
More
than 26,000 of Mexico's 223,144 basic education campuses have no water and more
than 100,000 no connection to sewers.
Four-fifths of the furniture doesn't comply with safety standards. The PTEO proposes that teacher collectives,
and groups of parents and community authorities, design buildings appropriate
to the local environment, using resources that come from the federal
government. But the PTEO and the state
of Oaxaca don't control those resources.
"In Oaxaca alone there's a documented budgetary need for 16 billion
pesos, and each year they only appropriate 180 million," Lavarriega
charges.
The
existence of a state program like the PTEO that differs from the federal ACE is
a product of Oaxaca's intense political turmoil. Teachers there were bitter enemies of the PRI
governors who ruled the state for 70 years, and a teachers' strike became a
virtual insurrection in 2006. But in
2010 Section 22 joined with other independent political forces and defeated the
PRI, electing Gabino Cue governor. That
opened the door to the union's reform proposals.
"Because
the money comes from the federal Department of Public Education, we need their
agreement to implement the PTEO," Lavarriega explains. "The state helped form a joint committee
of the Institute of Public Education (Oaxaca's state education department) and
Section 22. We agreed on our proposal,
and Governor Cue and [then] union president Chepi signed it. The next step is to present it to the federal
Department of Public Education and the national union. There has been a change with this new
government in Oaxaca. There's greater flexibility,
and more willingness to work together.
We still lack a lot, but the door is opening."
Section
22 set up the first work groups to design alternatives to the federal reforms
in 2008. It organized assemblies and
distributed a booklet at the start of every school year describing the
developing proposals. When it
established the first school collectives, it included the families of
students. Finally last May and June the
first parts of the PTEO were implemented in 280 pilot schools. Each was responsible for setting up a
collective, analyzing the needs of students and the community, and developing
an educational project.
Torres'
school wasn't chosen as a pilot, but he says the PTEO has affected it
nonetheless. "My school has a lot
of very marginalized families," he explains. "They want their school to get a lot of
awards, to be very beautiful, and their students to get straight As. But a better school is also one that can help
those who need it most - single mothers, families with lots of economic
problems. Our parents are beginning to
ask, what is the function of a school?
It's more than shining floors, with all the teachers wearing ties. Our school should be changing reality. That's what helping students really
means."
