education reforms

there was a giant protest in bogotá last week with the teachers, university students, and education administrators. hundreds of thousands of people protested in various cities around the country.  now i'm no expert on the issue, i've only had it explained to me or read about it in spanish, but as i understand it, this is the problem:

government is instituting a package of education reforms, which seems to be designed mostly to help with the budget.  of course everyone's tightening their belts these days, but in my opinion this is the wrong way to go about it.  as often happens when governments try to save money (ahem republicans in washington), they cut social services first, and this falls hardest on those who can least afford it--the poor.  so they're privatizing a large fraction of the community colleges and public universities.

now privatization is often good for development, and can lead to greater efficiency. but in this case the result is this: the poor are going to lose almost all access to tertiary education.  what's the result?  quality education will continue to become increasingly concentrated in the hands of the wealthy.  colombia's already heavily unequal society will become even more divided.  the rich will get richer, the poor will get poorer. not good.  it is also thought that with privatization, the universities will loose their focus on public service and the common good--community colleges in colombia have traditionally focused on research, curricula, and projects that will help improve the lot of the common people in colombia, not just earn more cash for the school.  all that could change soon.

the protests are also calling for better conditions for teachers in public schools.  teacher salaries are low in colombia (just like in the US) and there's a gignormous gap between the salaries at public and private schools.  there's a huge problem with retention of good teachers in public schools--they can make so much more money at private schools, and the conditions and resources are so much better, most teachers light out of the public school system as quick as they can.  so you wind up with the least trained, least effective, and least motivated teachers teaching in the roughest schools, the worst neighborhoods, with the fewest resources, for the poorest and most troubled kids in the city.

"Health is a right--it's not negotiable"

the protests are also calling for better healthcare and more union rights for teachers.  lousy conditions on these fronts just further hurt teacher motivation.  and they're calling for better funding for preschool education--which is especially important for children from poor families who aren't exposed to the supplemental education and early childhood development opportunities their wealthier peers are.

 the proposed education reforms will likely most hurt two vulnerable groups in society because of their low economic status: the Displaced people who fled their land because of the war, and the indigenous people and ethnic minorities.  this will further degrade their already low economic and also social status. 

like in the united states, in colombia education often gets the short end of the stick.  whenever something needs to be cut, there's a shortfall somewhere and resources need to be diverted, or something unexpected comes up, you can bet that the education pot is the first one they'll dip into.  like this winter with the floods--of course it was an emergency and the spending was necessary, but a lot of the money came from the education budget.  [incidentally, what is one of the biggest problem faced now by the displaced victims of the floods?  oh, yeah, lack of education infrastructure, and access to quality education...]

anyway, the education budget gradually gets chipped away and doesn't get replenished.  and the tricky thing about cuts to education spending is that it takes a long time to really feel their effects.  it's not like the kiddos are going to vote against you, they're too young, their parents often have other, more immediate problems on their mind.  the real blow won't be felt until maybe a decade later, when the kids graduate with substandard educational background and hurt the economy.  by that time you're well past your term of office.  bloody election cycle.  and it's all compounded by high levels of corruption in government anyway.  congratulations,  you got re-elected by wiggling the budget to favor short-term gains over long term economic and social growth.  you win, but your country loses.