I had the opportunity to sit down with Mtro. Antonio Gago Huguet, Director General Consejo para la Evaluación de la Educación del Tipo Medio Superior A.C. (COPEEMS). Following the Education reform enacted in 2009 Gago has been tasked with supervising the evaluations of all high schools in Mexico. Over a bowl of ice cream neary Plaza Independencia we discussed the current state of Mexican Education.
Can you tell me about your educative experience?
Well I have been in the education area since 1962, 54 years, almost all the time in high school and higher education, I’ve worked in Universidad Nacional Autonoma de México (UNAM), on Universidad Vera Cruz to Pittsburgh. Then I stopped being a professor and moved onto bureaucracy, in the national university association, mainly in the public education secretary and in an organism called national center for the high education evaluation, that’s basically it.
What is your role now?
In 2008 the public education secretary (SEP) sets a program in motion to reform, modify, modernize the middle high education, middle high education equals high school or bachelor’s degree. The secretary makes the proposal, but it also decides to stimulate the schools who take in this proposal, it is not a mandatory one, it’s of voluntary incorporation, if the school wants to, they go with it, otherwise they can do as they please.
The secretary, the federal government and the state governments sign agreements to stimulate, give financial support to the schools who adopt the reform and create an organism that evaluates said schools and that is the one I run now. Which means, my job is to evaluate schools, high schools, that decide to incorporate the reforms, We the national counsel to evaluate middle high education, have to go to the schools, to revise their study plans, subject plan, to evaluate the classes that are given by the teachers, interview the teachers, to interview the students, to observe the facilities, the workshops, the labs, etc. and then to make a dictum of the progress made by the school.
This is my sixth year we have evaluated, 1916 schools. There are 17,000 however, in Mexico. Well, these 1916 schools had shown progress, not totally, but they are slowly advancing in incorporating the reform, they have the 33%, no, the 37% of the registration, so it’s 1900 schools but more than a million and a half students, 37% of all young people are studying high school, in Mexico all systems have 4.8 million students.
There’s a long way to go, a very recent law establishes that high school is mandatory education-- all young people have to attend, between the ages of 15 and 17. It’s a goal that will take some years to achieve but currently it’s 4.8 million students, and the total coverage would be 6 million young people between 15 and 17 years old. So what I am doing is that, to promote the reform, to evaluate the schools, to make observations, recommendations, to the teachers, the tutors, the management who make the study plans, that’s what I have been doing for 5 years.
We deliver a dictum to the public education secretary and this takes our observations into account and from there they make decisions to give support to the schools, regarding teachers, more full time teachers, that they have tutors for the students, that they have counselors for the young and that they have equipment, lab, etc.
The quality of the schools is very diverse, very, very diverse, from big schools of almost 5 thousand students with good buildings, good labs, experienced teachers but also there’s thousands of schools with small spaces, no equipment etc. Mexico is not the only country, but it is a country of many contrasts, so many contrasts, there is a city with 20 million habitants, Mexico City, and there are 100,000 towns with less than 100 habitants, very far in the mountains. The main problem is to reach those places and now it is required by law that those young kids that live so far away also have high school. So special programs have been designed, with few teachers, with technological support, videos, texts, 2 teachers for 10 or 15 students and those 2 teachers give the whole high school study plan.
That’s in one place, and in other places, there are huge schools, very big, almost like universities, so the quality difference is grand and what we have to achieve with the reform is a necessary level, starting from a basic level, indispensable then up as far as it can go. That’s a big problem of the country. In basic education, meaning elementary school and secondary school, a lot of progress has been made, the coverage is almost of 100%, it’s a 90 something percent covered, with varying qualities but the coverage is ample, but we are still lacking a lot in middle high. Next question.
On current issues:
A big problem is school desertion (drop outs), out of 100 kids who finish elementary and secondary school, which means 6 plus 3, 6 years plus 3 years of basic education, out of 100 kids who finish this, 70 don’t make it to high school, they don’t pass and after, during the 3 years of high school, another 30% quits. It’s a very troublesome age, young kids between 15 and 17 years old, especially women, especially on rural areas, quit school, go to work or get married or stay home if they are women, to look after their little brothers and sisters, to help out the family etc.
And a fundamental problem is to provide support to the families, so that they allow the girls and boys to keep on studying, so there is a program that the federal government supports, it gives a lot of money but it is that money is not enough yet to give scholarships, the program is called “Progresa” (progress) and the requirement to get that money is that the young kids, boys and girls keep on studying after basic education. There are also scholarships, money for the young while they are studying high school, the professors, the tutors have to put in practice a program called “Early alert”, to identify the kids who are in risk of dropping the school. Because they stop attending classes, they skip out a lot or fail subjects or they just ignore all and drop school.
The problem of abandonment is very large. The main causes for this are: economic situation, they have to stop studying to bring money home, second element; the kids say “I’m not interested in what they teach at school, it doesn’t help me for what I want to do or to help out my family”, third reason of abandonment is not to be able to deal with the studies, they don’t understand what they read, insufficient information, fourth cause of dropping school, unwanted pregnancy, there are differences according to the country region, in the indigenous communities the problem is much more prevalent, it’s also existing in the rural area, there is a big contrast between city situation and on the countryside, or among indigenous communities and between men and women, there’s also disadvantages for girls, so school has to help in 3 major things.
The new reform, that the young develop intellectual competences, reading comprehension, mathematical skills, ability to reason, capacity for team work, collective work and the competence approach is stimulated, an applied knowledge to the solution of problems. Second objective. Besides natural sciences, physics, chemistry, biology etc. or social sciences, sociology, laws, psychology etc. Competences for citizenship life must be developed, a scale of aptitudes, tenacity, decision, commitment, solidarity, teamwork, legality culture, answer to the laws etc. To form kids with a bachelor degree so they later on study at a university, but also to form them as persons. There are diagnoses that tells us there is a value crisis and of the attitude of the young people. They want everything immediately, to have money right away, having cars, mobile phones and delinquency catches them. So values as work, decision must be reinforced and school is losing authority over the students, which is a very big problem.
And the third objective is to capacitate for work, currently we have 2 big systems of bachelor’s degree, one destined fundamentally, mainly, to prepare the young for superior education and another one that we call “technological high school”, with 2 goals, 2 objectives.
To form them for higher education and at the same time to give them a professional formation of middle level, that allows them to study and work or to work first, get a better position and then go to superior education, those are the big 2 purposes of high school. General high school only for superior education, and technological high school with a double title, high school degree and a middle level professional degree.
Is the local University and the three public high schools in Merida are complying with the new SEP reforms?
I come to the university 3 to 4 times a year to an adviser counsel and there the university program is presented and what they have told us is that they are not ready yet to take the integral reform, they have to educate their teachers still, they have to change their study plans, but the approach of high school #3 (UABIC, see earlier posts) is precisely what the reform proposes, to keep the kids, support them so they don’t quit, to include every kind of young kids, men, women and those who have less resources, but they aren’t formally in the reform, yet. They will be, I am sure, they are working and they will take their time.
The high school system in general:
There’s many high school systems in the country, that’s something that doesn’t happen in other countries, universities have high school programs and some of them have dozens of thousands of students in high school, the national university, the university of Guadalajara, Nuevo León, Yucatán, they all have high schools and after they have careers, PhD, masters, etc.
Then there is a very big system all over the country, which is the school of bachelors, strictly high school, all over the country there are 2,000,000 students in this, then there’s the industrial technological high school, the ones with a double purpose, technological agricultural high school, technological high school on ocean science, then there are much more elemental programs, which are tele-high school, it is these very small schools that are very far away from the cities, with 2 or 3 teachers at most, 15,20,15 students, books and videos, that’s all they have, so quality is very different.
There is another very big system, called CONALEP, “colegio nacional de educación professional técnica” ( national school of technical professional education), is it quite interesting, CONALEP operates in 26 states in the country, when it was founded 30 years ago, they didn’t offer high school, just the professional formation, kids didn’t want to go there, very few signed up, so it started to modify and now they offer high school plus a professional career, so it’s 6 or 7 systems, some are on the federal level, some on the state level and the quality differs greatly, also the procedures.
One of the goals of the reform is to create what is called a mutual curricular frame, whichever the system is, either technological, agricultural, be it a high school, a high school within a university, it must have a segment of the mutual curriculum, with basic disciplines at a certain level and after, in the last, say 3 semesters at the end to go on specializing towards the technological, to human sciences, social sciences etc. But there must be a mutual curricular frame to ensure the articulated formation and to ensure the citizen formation, values, intellectual skills, academic skills, reading comprehension, capacity to redact, what everyone with a bachelor’s degree should have, well it’s easily said but it’s hard to achieve it.
But the program started 8 years ago and in my personal opinion it will take at least 20 more years to say that it has been implemented in the country, there’s been some fortunate things, the program started when a party, the partido accion nacional party was in federal power, they set this in motion, years later said party goes out of government, another party comes in, PRI, and continues this, it keeps on supporting it, which is notorious, here in Mexico that is remarkable. What usually happens is that every 6 years everything changes and this time it was given continuity and I hope that the next government, whoever wins, keep on with this program, it is a good one. The program is accompanied with several parallel actions, teacher’s capacitation, a problem in high school is that teachers are not educated as teachers, they are engineers, biologists, medical doctors, lawyers, sociologists, professionals but they do not possess the pedagogical experience, didactic, they don’t always know the kids, the teenager’s problems, the juvenile cultures, the way in which the kids move. So a parallel program has to be made, to get them certifications.
And teachers are evaluated and within the reform the schools have to keep on training their professors, it’s a task that we do there where I work, we go to the schools, they have to show us that they had taken these certificates, that they already have this and we observe how they teach, how they register the competences from the kids, how the grade their learning, the work they do etc. We have to make the reports, then the important thing is to transform the teacher staff.
And another actions to take is to form kids, when they finish university, many of them don’t know it yet, but will end up as teachers, so to give them the chance to form themselves in pedagogical activities, didactic strategies, student evaluation, teen psychology, and so on. Assuming that later on they could work as professors.
Another very recent reform, with many political conflicts, it was what called, professional teaching service. The teachers have to contest, write exams, to show evidence to win a position as teachers, this didn’t happen before. The positions were from the friend of the principal, there were parents who were teachers and they let the spot for their children, the union controlled who was a teacher and who wasn’t. So, main objective is to have better teachers, it’s the essential, good teachers will have better schools, there is no way to have a good school if the teachers aren’t good, later on comes the equipment, materials etc.
These are the programs basically, to solve economic problems, to support the families and to give money to the schools that are doing this, training teachers and to create specializations at schools, tutors and counselors are fundamental, there are many problems of the emotional kind, sexual habits, to control pregnancy etc. and they have to be with them and not all the teachers are up for this, many have the belief that such formation is up to the families, many teachers say “I teach math, physics and I don’t have to teach values or to see about citizen behavior, that’s up to government and families” There is a saying that goes: “responsibility is something that is always passed onto someone else” and that prevails. We haven’t invented anything here, per se, we just see experiences from other places, the Chileans have had good experiences in this sense and what to say about Europe, the Koreans and the OCDE is constantly sending us material etc.
And well we are on it. But that is the important thing, to raise the spirits of the teachers, for a long time a teacher was a very respected figure, in small towns the teacher was a really big authority, even more important than the priest and that’s been getting lost, teachers have lost vocation, they ask for more and more things. Because well, life is also hard for them, yes, they don’t make much money.
But no one who wishes to become rich should think about becoming a teacher, the people who are in the education field, are people with social interest, solidary interest, those who want to get rich, should study another career or make business.A similar thing must happen in USA, a teacher was telling me that in USA there’s also places very far away, small communities, but instead of bringing a very small school to such places, a bus goes, picks up the kids and takes them to a proper school, this caught my interest, why don’t we do such a thing in Mexico? Instead of having very poorly equipped schools or very small, why don’t we go get them and take them to a school, have them there for 5 days and then on the weekends return them to their families? But maybe it’s an issues with the costs.
What are your basic beliefs on education?
Education is the single most important factor for social justice, to create prosper societies, to generate solidarity, there’s nothing more important than education. Definitely and not only in the economic part, also in the social, the cultural, education gives you cultural roots, education allows you to resolve technological problems, health problems, security problems etc. And I believe that the most important someone can do is to educate their children, if that family could not be educated. That’s another factor that greatly influences when the family didn’t attend school, the risk of the kids not doing so either is bigger and that’s common sense, but I think that even more important than taking care of education is to take care of health and education can go a long way to do this.
For my it’s an ideal, I studied psychology, I could had worked in the clinic psychology field, I had chances to turn into a psychoanalyst and to me that’s a lie, to work for a minority that can pay very expensive consultations, it makes no sense, one has to be a little bit romantic, a little bit idealistic and I meant, it is important, yes it is. To be honest I am very satisfied, I’ve made good things in my personal life and also many things make me sad, it’s 52 years of work in the education.
Is it possible to evaluate teachers and education outside of standardized exam scores?
Indicators to evaluate teachers, their academic formation, their studies, be it university or polytechnic ones, etc. After it their pedagogical training, if they had had this already, where did they study it etc. The most important is what their students think about them and the learning said students achieve, the most important factor to evaluate a teacher is the number of students who start the source, finish it and achieve the learning and competences that the curriculum dictates, that’s the fundamental indicator to evaluate a teacher, there’s others that are also taken into account, like how they behave in the community of their school, out of the classroom, in social activities, dealing with the family of the students, the community, the administration of the school itself etc.
But the main indicator is the learning of their students and a good teacher gets good learning having few or many students, even the teachers working with students who are very far behind, very poor, lacking family support, the good teachers achieve more than those who aren’t good.
The teachers sometimes complain, when they say “If I am to be evaluated with my students learning, you must take into account the kind of students I have, it’s not the same to have students in a private school, whose parents are professionals, that have books at home, with all the cultural background, as opposed of me, I have to work with sons and daughters of farmers etc.”
But the comparison is made among teachers who work in equal circumstances and it is quite clear that with the same kind of students there are remarkable teachers and mediocre teachers, under the same conditions and those are the teachers that must be stimulated and kept.
But the main indicator is the student’s learning, in the syndicate they insist a lot on the seniority, a teacher that has been working for 20 years must be promoted only because he has been doing this for 20.25 years. I’m not a fan of this. I think if a young one incorporates as a teacher and gives good results, he should have a good position, and with time he may even improve, but seniority is not a guarantee, it helps, experience is useful and important but for many years the syndicate was simply like, best positions, promotions, salary raises for the teachers with greater seniority, so the young people weren’t interested in becoming teachers, because they say “I have to wait 20 years to get a better position” and on the other hand the country has several programs for the students to study post-graduate, we have something like 25 000 students learning this in Mexico and abroad and when they are back there are no positions for them, they are for the teachers with many years and the young people ,now professionals with a PhD stay in the places where they went to study, USA wins with Mexicans with PhD, they stay over there, the same goes for Spain, France and Germany, we lose the young people. That concept of seniority it’s a principal that the unions use a lot and I would say it should be taken into account but not as the main factor.
What is the biggest obstacle in education today?
A major problem. Regarding what, the destiny of the students or for the learning?
I think the main problem is the teachers, the good ones that make their students learn even with a bad economic situation, the teachers can’t intervene when the kids don’t attend school due to economic problems, it’s 2 issues here, the economic problems are an obstacle that prevent the young from attending high school, they don’t go to school due to this, teachers can’t do anything there, if they don’t attend school. The problem would have to be solved by communities, authorities, to see that the kids have scholarships, have the means to go to school instead of going to work.
Another problem is when the kids do go to school but quit on the first semester or on the second one, they don’t learn what they need to learn etc. So they also go out, teachers can do a lot in that case, if the kids are already at the school, if they made it there, they must be kept, must be convinced and talk to the family, give scholarships and support etc.
But those who don’t even make it in, school can’t do anything about it, the 2 problems go on, the economic issues make it that young people don’t go to school, or when they go, school doesn’t manage to keep them in, it doesn’t make them fall in love, I think school has to lure the young people, to make them understand that it is important to study, to work, to ask the school, to take good use of the support etc. Both things
What would you change in education in Mexico?
What would I change, more investment in education, more money, public money more than anything, in a federal and state level, this would mean better trained teachers, teachers with better salary, more teachers to take care of the students in smaller groups and to have not only teachers but other figures at school, tutors, tutors who work with the kids who have learning problems and that have been failing, they have to work in detail. To diversify the ways of learning, counselors and more economic support. So what would I change? More spending, more money.
Second, better programs to train the teachers and better positions.
It’s very common in high school that the teachers go for 1 or 2 hours, a teacher works as a lawyer in a firm and goes 3 hours a week to teach one class, it’s what we call teacher by the hour and very few teachers work full time, meaning to be at school for 8 hours, to be in the classroom, revise assignments, exams, to prepare material, there are few full-time positions and that can be solved with money.
So the main problem is that, teachers in middle high are not professionals of education, they have another job and teach, some because it’s gratifying and some to make more money. For me that is the main task, then pretty buildings can come, well lit, with comfortable furniture, air conditioned in very hot places, many computers, when that comes it’ll be very good but first, good teachers. Then we can ask for more.
The ones who have such technologies don’t make good use of them, they are mostly wasting time, on Whatsapp, chatting and they don’t make use of the huge data banks.
Or they make mistakes, they don’t read, they have an investigation assignment or to make an essay or to criticize a book, how is this called, copy paste? Yes they do this over and over, and they don’t read and the teachers know less about this that their students so in this moment there is a technological barrier, kids think they don’t need to go to school to learn things because everything is on Google, everything is on Wikipedia, so what would they want teachers if everything is there? And well there are very important things on Google and Wikipedia but also a lot of garbage, and there are certain issues, but more investment, well the biggest item for Mexican government is education and it has been that way for 30, 40 years, the highest percentage of public spending is in education, however it’s still not enough, above all for that, in high school teachers are teaching amateurs, they don’t have enough professional training.
But with the reform around 70,000 teachers had already taken certificates, they are a little bit more prepared, 70,000 but there are 250,000. We are still far away, but we must continue, we do so. And then the other thing is to create full time positions for the teachers, maybe not all them but at least a nucleus of teachers who are all the time at school, especially those more experienced with better training to help out the younger teachers, those who only go some days.
My approach is that progress must be made, even little by little but to keep on moving forward, the urgent programs do not work, they make immediate promises. And this is simulated. Today better, tomorrow better, past tomorrow a little better, but some are in such a hurry.
Can you tell me about your educative experience?
Well I have been in the education area since 1962, 54 years, almost all the time in high school and higher education, I’ve worked in Universidad Nacional Autonoma de México (UNAM), on Universidad Vera Cruz to Pittsburgh. Then I stopped being a professor and moved onto bureaucracy, in the national university association, mainly in the public education secretary and in an organism called national center for the high education evaluation, that’s basically it.
What is your role now?
In 2008 the public education secretary (SEP) sets a program in motion to reform, modify, modernize the middle high education, middle high education equals high school or bachelor’s degree. The secretary makes the proposal, but it also decides to stimulate the schools who take in this proposal, it is not a mandatory one, it’s of voluntary incorporation, if the school wants to, they go with it, otherwise they can do as they please.
The secretary, the federal government and the state governments sign agreements to stimulate, give financial support to the schools who adopt the reform and create an organism that evaluates said schools and that is the one I run now. Which means, my job is to evaluate schools, high schools, that decide to incorporate the reforms, We the national counsel to evaluate middle high education, have to go to the schools, to revise their study plans, subject plan, to evaluate the classes that are given by the teachers, interview the teachers, to interview the students, to observe the facilities, the workshops, the labs, etc. and then to make a dictum of the progress made by the school.
This is my sixth year we have evaluated, 1916 schools. There are 17,000 however, in Mexico. Well, these 1916 schools had shown progress, not totally, but they are slowly advancing in incorporating the reform, they have the 33%, no, the 37% of the registration, so it’s 1900 schools but more than a million and a half students, 37% of all young people are studying high school, in Mexico all systems have 4.8 million students.
There’s a long way to go, a very recent law establishes that high school is mandatory education-- all young people have to attend, between the ages of 15 and 17. It’s a goal that will take some years to achieve but currently it’s 4.8 million students, and the total coverage would be 6 million young people between 15 and 17 years old. So what I am doing is that, to promote the reform, to evaluate the schools, to make observations, recommendations, to the teachers, the tutors, the management who make the study plans, that’s what I have been doing for 5 years.
We deliver a dictum to the public education secretary and this takes our observations into account and from there they make decisions to give support to the schools, regarding teachers, more full time teachers, that they have tutors for the students, that they have counselors for the young and that they have equipment, lab, etc.
The quality of the schools is very diverse, very, very diverse, from big schools of almost 5 thousand students with good buildings, good labs, experienced teachers but also there’s thousands of schools with small spaces, no equipment etc. Mexico is not the only country, but it is a country of many contrasts, so many contrasts, there is a city with 20 million habitants, Mexico City, and there are 100,000 towns with less than 100 habitants, very far in the mountains. The main problem is to reach those places and now it is required by law that those young kids that live so far away also have high school. So special programs have been designed, with few teachers, with technological support, videos, texts, 2 teachers for 10 or 15 students and those 2 teachers give the whole high school study plan.
That’s in one place, and in other places, there are huge schools, very big, almost like universities, so the quality difference is grand and what we have to achieve with the reform is a necessary level, starting from a basic level, indispensable then up as far as it can go. That’s a big problem of the country. In basic education, meaning elementary school and secondary school, a lot of progress has been made, the coverage is almost of 100%, it’s a 90 something percent covered, with varying qualities but the coverage is ample, but we are still lacking a lot in middle high. Next question.
On current issues:
A big problem is school desertion (drop outs), out of 100 kids who finish elementary and secondary school, which means 6 plus 3, 6 years plus 3 years of basic education, out of 100 kids who finish this, 70 don’t make it to high school, they don’t pass and after, during the 3 years of high school, another 30% quits. It’s a very troublesome age, young kids between 15 and 17 years old, especially women, especially on rural areas, quit school, go to work or get married or stay home if they are women, to look after their little brothers and sisters, to help out the family etc.
And a fundamental problem is to provide support to the families, so that they allow the girls and boys to keep on studying, so there is a program that the federal government supports, it gives a lot of money but it is that money is not enough yet to give scholarships, the program is called “Progresa” (progress) and the requirement to get that money is that the young kids, boys and girls keep on studying after basic education. There are also scholarships, money for the young while they are studying high school, the professors, the tutors have to put in practice a program called “Early alert”, to identify the kids who are in risk of dropping the school. Because they stop attending classes, they skip out a lot or fail subjects or they just ignore all and drop school.
The problem of abandonment is very large. The main causes for this are: economic situation, they have to stop studying to bring money home, second element; the kids say “I’m not interested in what they teach at school, it doesn’t help me for what I want to do or to help out my family”, third reason of abandonment is not to be able to deal with the studies, they don’t understand what they read, insufficient information, fourth cause of dropping school, unwanted pregnancy, there are differences according to the country region, in the indigenous communities the problem is much more prevalent, it’s also existing in the rural area, there is a big contrast between city situation and on the countryside, or among indigenous communities and between men and women, there’s also disadvantages for girls, so school has to help in 3 major things.
The new reform, that the young develop intellectual competences, reading comprehension, mathematical skills, ability to reason, capacity for team work, collective work and the competence approach is stimulated, an applied knowledge to the solution of problems. Second objective. Besides natural sciences, physics, chemistry, biology etc. or social sciences, sociology, laws, psychology etc. Competences for citizenship life must be developed, a scale of aptitudes, tenacity, decision, commitment, solidarity, teamwork, legality culture, answer to the laws etc. To form kids with a bachelor degree so they later on study at a university, but also to form them as persons. There are diagnoses that tells us there is a value crisis and of the attitude of the young people. They want everything immediately, to have money right away, having cars, mobile phones and delinquency catches them. So values as work, decision must be reinforced and school is losing authority over the students, which is a very big problem.
And the third objective is to capacitate for work, currently we have 2 big systems of bachelor’s degree, one destined fundamentally, mainly, to prepare the young for superior education and another one that we call “technological high school”, with 2 goals, 2 objectives.
To form them for higher education and at the same time to give them a professional formation of middle level, that allows them to study and work or to work first, get a better position and then go to superior education, those are the big 2 purposes of high school. General high school only for superior education, and technological high school with a double title, high school degree and a middle level professional degree.
Is the local University and the three public high schools in Merida are complying with the new SEP reforms?
I come to the university 3 to 4 times a year to an adviser counsel and there the university program is presented and what they have told us is that they are not ready yet to take the integral reform, they have to educate their teachers still, they have to change their study plans, but the approach of high school #3 (UABIC, see earlier posts) is precisely what the reform proposes, to keep the kids, support them so they don’t quit, to include every kind of young kids, men, women and those who have less resources, but they aren’t formally in the reform, yet. They will be, I am sure, they are working and they will take their time.
The high school system in general:
There’s many high school systems in the country, that’s something that doesn’t happen in other countries, universities have high school programs and some of them have dozens of thousands of students in high school, the national university, the university of Guadalajara, Nuevo León, Yucatán, they all have high schools and after they have careers, PhD, masters, etc.
Then there is a very big system all over the country, which is the school of bachelors, strictly high school, all over the country there are 2,000,000 students in this, then there’s the industrial technological high school, the ones with a double purpose, technological agricultural high school, technological high school on ocean science, then there are much more elemental programs, which are tele-high school, it is these very small schools that are very far away from the cities, with 2 or 3 teachers at most, 15,20,15 students, books and videos, that’s all they have, so quality is very different.
There is another very big system, called CONALEP, “colegio nacional de educación professional técnica” ( national school of technical professional education), is it quite interesting, CONALEP operates in 26 states in the country, when it was founded 30 years ago, they didn’t offer high school, just the professional formation, kids didn’t want to go there, very few signed up, so it started to modify and now they offer high school plus a professional career, so it’s 6 or 7 systems, some are on the federal level, some on the state level and the quality differs greatly, also the procedures.
One of the goals of the reform is to create what is called a mutual curricular frame, whichever the system is, either technological, agricultural, be it a high school, a high school within a university, it must have a segment of the mutual curriculum, with basic disciplines at a certain level and after, in the last, say 3 semesters at the end to go on specializing towards the technological, to human sciences, social sciences etc. But there must be a mutual curricular frame to ensure the articulated formation and to ensure the citizen formation, values, intellectual skills, academic skills, reading comprehension, capacity to redact, what everyone with a bachelor’s degree should have, well it’s easily said but it’s hard to achieve it.
But the program started 8 years ago and in my personal opinion it will take at least 20 more years to say that it has been implemented in the country, there’s been some fortunate things, the program started when a party, the partido accion nacional party was in federal power, they set this in motion, years later said party goes out of government, another party comes in, PRI, and continues this, it keeps on supporting it, which is notorious, here in Mexico that is remarkable. What usually happens is that every 6 years everything changes and this time it was given continuity and I hope that the next government, whoever wins, keep on with this program, it is a good one. The program is accompanied with several parallel actions, teacher’s capacitation, a problem in high school is that teachers are not educated as teachers, they are engineers, biologists, medical doctors, lawyers, sociologists, professionals but they do not possess the pedagogical experience, didactic, they don’t always know the kids, the teenager’s problems, the juvenile cultures, the way in which the kids move. So a parallel program has to be made, to get them certifications.
And teachers are evaluated and within the reform the schools have to keep on training their professors, it’s a task that we do there where I work, we go to the schools, they have to show us that they had taken these certificates, that they already have this and we observe how they teach, how they register the competences from the kids, how the grade their learning, the work they do etc. We have to make the reports, then the important thing is to transform the teacher staff.
And another actions to take is to form kids, when they finish university, many of them don’t know it yet, but will end up as teachers, so to give them the chance to form themselves in pedagogical activities, didactic strategies, student evaluation, teen psychology, and so on. Assuming that later on they could work as professors.
Another very recent reform, with many political conflicts, it was what called, professional teaching service. The teachers have to contest, write exams, to show evidence to win a position as teachers, this didn’t happen before. The positions were from the friend of the principal, there were parents who were teachers and they let the spot for their children, the union controlled who was a teacher and who wasn’t. So, main objective is to have better teachers, it’s the essential, good teachers will have better schools, there is no way to have a good school if the teachers aren’t good, later on comes the equipment, materials etc.
These are the programs basically, to solve economic problems, to support the families and to give money to the schools that are doing this, training teachers and to create specializations at schools, tutors and counselors are fundamental, there are many problems of the emotional kind, sexual habits, to control pregnancy etc. and they have to be with them and not all the teachers are up for this, many have the belief that such formation is up to the families, many teachers say “I teach math, physics and I don’t have to teach values or to see about citizen behavior, that’s up to government and families” There is a saying that goes: “responsibility is something that is always passed onto someone else” and that prevails. We haven’t invented anything here, per se, we just see experiences from other places, the Chileans have had good experiences in this sense and what to say about Europe, the Koreans and the OCDE is constantly sending us material etc.
And well we are on it. But that is the important thing, to raise the spirits of the teachers, for a long time a teacher was a very respected figure, in small towns the teacher was a really big authority, even more important than the priest and that’s been getting lost, teachers have lost vocation, they ask for more and more things. Because well, life is also hard for them, yes, they don’t make much money.
But no one who wishes to become rich should think about becoming a teacher, the people who are in the education field, are people with social interest, solidary interest, those who want to get rich, should study another career or make business.A similar thing must happen in USA, a teacher was telling me that in USA there’s also places very far away, small communities, but instead of bringing a very small school to such places, a bus goes, picks up the kids and takes them to a proper school, this caught my interest, why don’t we do such a thing in Mexico? Instead of having very poorly equipped schools or very small, why don’t we go get them and take them to a school, have them there for 5 days and then on the weekends return them to their families? But maybe it’s an issues with the costs.
What are your basic beliefs on education?
Education is the single most important factor for social justice, to create prosper societies, to generate solidarity, there’s nothing more important than education. Definitely and not only in the economic part, also in the social, the cultural, education gives you cultural roots, education allows you to resolve technological problems, health problems, security problems etc. And I believe that the most important someone can do is to educate their children, if that family could not be educated. That’s another factor that greatly influences when the family didn’t attend school, the risk of the kids not doing so either is bigger and that’s common sense, but I think that even more important than taking care of education is to take care of health and education can go a long way to do this.
For my it’s an ideal, I studied psychology, I could had worked in the clinic psychology field, I had chances to turn into a psychoanalyst and to me that’s a lie, to work for a minority that can pay very expensive consultations, it makes no sense, one has to be a little bit romantic, a little bit idealistic and I meant, it is important, yes it is. To be honest I am very satisfied, I’ve made good things in my personal life and also many things make me sad, it’s 52 years of work in the education.
Is it possible to evaluate teachers and education outside of standardized exam scores?
Indicators to evaluate teachers, their academic formation, their studies, be it university or polytechnic ones, etc. After it their pedagogical training, if they had had this already, where did they study it etc. The most important is what their students think about them and the learning said students achieve, the most important factor to evaluate a teacher is the number of students who start the source, finish it and achieve the learning and competences that the curriculum dictates, that’s the fundamental indicator to evaluate a teacher, there’s others that are also taken into account, like how they behave in the community of their school, out of the classroom, in social activities, dealing with the family of the students, the community, the administration of the school itself etc.
But the main indicator is the learning of their students and a good teacher gets good learning having few or many students, even the teachers working with students who are very far behind, very poor, lacking family support, the good teachers achieve more than those who aren’t good.
The teachers sometimes complain, when they say “If I am to be evaluated with my students learning, you must take into account the kind of students I have, it’s not the same to have students in a private school, whose parents are professionals, that have books at home, with all the cultural background, as opposed of me, I have to work with sons and daughters of farmers etc.”
But the comparison is made among teachers who work in equal circumstances and it is quite clear that with the same kind of students there are remarkable teachers and mediocre teachers, under the same conditions and those are the teachers that must be stimulated and kept.
But the main indicator is the student’s learning, in the syndicate they insist a lot on the seniority, a teacher that has been working for 20 years must be promoted only because he has been doing this for 20.25 years. I’m not a fan of this. I think if a young one incorporates as a teacher and gives good results, he should have a good position, and with time he may even improve, but seniority is not a guarantee, it helps, experience is useful and important but for many years the syndicate was simply like, best positions, promotions, salary raises for the teachers with greater seniority, so the young people weren’t interested in becoming teachers, because they say “I have to wait 20 years to get a better position” and on the other hand the country has several programs for the students to study post-graduate, we have something like 25 000 students learning this in Mexico and abroad and when they are back there are no positions for them, they are for the teachers with many years and the young people ,now professionals with a PhD stay in the places where they went to study, USA wins with Mexicans with PhD, they stay over there, the same goes for Spain, France and Germany, we lose the young people. That concept of seniority it’s a principal that the unions use a lot and I would say it should be taken into account but not as the main factor.
What is the biggest obstacle in education today?
A major problem. Regarding what, the destiny of the students or for the learning?
I think the main problem is the teachers, the good ones that make their students learn even with a bad economic situation, the teachers can’t intervene when the kids don’t attend school due to economic problems, it’s 2 issues here, the economic problems are an obstacle that prevent the young from attending high school, they don’t go to school due to this, teachers can’t do anything there, if they don’t attend school. The problem would have to be solved by communities, authorities, to see that the kids have scholarships, have the means to go to school instead of going to work.
Another problem is when the kids do go to school but quit on the first semester or on the second one, they don’t learn what they need to learn etc. So they also go out, teachers can do a lot in that case, if the kids are already at the school, if they made it there, they must be kept, must be convinced and talk to the family, give scholarships and support etc.
But those who don’t even make it in, school can’t do anything about it, the 2 problems go on, the economic issues make it that young people don’t go to school, or when they go, school doesn’t manage to keep them in, it doesn’t make them fall in love, I think school has to lure the young people, to make them understand that it is important to study, to work, to ask the school, to take good use of the support etc. Both things
What would you change in education in Mexico?
What would I change, more investment in education, more money, public money more than anything, in a federal and state level, this would mean better trained teachers, teachers with better salary, more teachers to take care of the students in smaller groups and to have not only teachers but other figures at school, tutors, tutors who work with the kids who have learning problems and that have been failing, they have to work in detail. To diversify the ways of learning, counselors and more economic support. So what would I change? More spending, more money.
Second, better programs to train the teachers and better positions.
It’s very common in high school that the teachers go for 1 or 2 hours, a teacher works as a lawyer in a firm and goes 3 hours a week to teach one class, it’s what we call teacher by the hour and very few teachers work full time, meaning to be at school for 8 hours, to be in the classroom, revise assignments, exams, to prepare material, there are few full-time positions and that can be solved with money.
So the main problem is that, teachers in middle high are not professionals of education, they have another job and teach, some because it’s gratifying and some to make more money. For me that is the main task, then pretty buildings can come, well lit, with comfortable furniture, air conditioned in very hot places, many computers, when that comes it’ll be very good but first, good teachers. Then we can ask for more.
The ones who have such technologies don’t make good use of them, they are mostly wasting time, on Whatsapp, chatting and they don’t make use of the huge data banks.
Or they make mistakes, they don’t read, they have an investigation assignment or to make an essay or to criticize a book, how is this called, copy paste? Yes they do this over and over, and they don’t read and the teachers know less about this that their students so in this moment there is a technological barrier, kids think they don’t need to go to school to learn things because everything is on Google, everything is on Wikipedia, so what would they want teachers if everything is there? And well there are very important things on Google and Wikipedia but also a lot of garbage, and there are certain issues, but more investment, well the biggest item for Mexican government is education and it has been that way for 30, 40 years, the highest percentage of public spending is in education, however it’s still not enough, above all for that, in high school teachers are teaching amateurs, they don’t have enough professional training.
But with the reform around 70,000 teachers had already taken certificates, they are a little bit more prepared, 70,000 but there are 250,000. We are still far away, but we must continue, we do so. And then the other thing is to create full time positions for the teachers, maybe not all them but at least a nucleus of teachers who are all the time at school, especially those more experienced with better training to help out the younger teachers, those who only go some days.
My approach is that progress must be made, even little by little but to keep on moving forward, the urgent programs do not work, they make immediate promises. And this is simulated. Today better, tomorrow better, past tomorrow a little better, but some are in such a hurry.