Specialists speak for Nueva Vida about the situations that have led the country to have one of the most deficient educational systems They say that it is not enough to invest in training, programs, technology, and facilities if there is no real commitment from all the actors
In early December, the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) announced that almost four out of ten 15-year-old Mexican students do not have the minimum level of proficiency in math, reading, and science and that between five and six students who finish their high school studies are not ready to be competitive in high school.
In this context, Vida Nueva interviewed two specialists in the field: Sister María de Lourdes Pank Valenzuela, from the Eucharistic Missionaries of the Holy Trinity (MESST), and the pedagogue Claudia Castellanos , who promotes “Maker” education in the country, based on objects and projects.
Lack of commitment to education
María de Lourdes Pank is convinced that education is not a priority for the authorities since the necessary has not been reversed and only a reform has been promoted that seems competitive on paper, but which in practice leaves much to be desired. ” Political interests have had more weight than the true intention of generating a change in education that benefits the population and the development of our country,” he says
However, he says, education is not only the responsibility of the authorities but of everyone: “Government, institutions, family and Church, we have not done enough to raise the educational level and reduce the lag. We have not been able to motivate students to learn, we make things easier for them and with this we impede the development of their skills. And we are not prepared as a country to meet and respond to the educational needs of the new generations, we continue to use methods from the past that definitely do not give results with today’s students. ”
For the religious, the commitment is fundamental: “serious private institutions make a great effort to invest in training, programs, technology, and facilities, and we never finish updating ourselves. And yet, these investments do not guarantee quality education if there is no real commitment to education and development in our country
In general – he added – the actors of education “we have not assumed a real commitment to generate a quality education, an education that not only forms successful men and women, but good citizens; and do not say in Catholic schools, where Christians committed to their society and their less favored siblings must be formed. ”
Hacking the education system?
Claudia Castellanos, meanwhile, says that the Mexican education system remains stuck in the past. “Since 2000, generations that, in general, have been trained under the same traditional education processes have been evaluated. The last straw is also that many students are prepared, not to learn and develop critical, autonomous, creative and problem-solving thinking, but precisely to present such standardized international exams. ”
He considered that the Mexican education system “ignores the pace and extent of technological, demographic, even climatic changes that are reshaping the face of today’s world. And unfortunately, they do not voluntarily ignore or ignore educational alternatives, in terms of learning tools or methodologies with which millions of children are learning every day in other parts of the world. There is no provision of the same trainers to re-learn, change and implement alternative educational processes, such as ‘Maker’ education, the integration of STEAM approaches with an experimental base, the integration of digital tools, and so on. ”
For the pedagogue, there are many alternatives to “learn to learn meaningfully (personal, human, social, future) but this implies ‘hacking’ the educational system and generating disruptive models that allow developing the skills that new generations really need to be protagonists of the construction of alternatives ”
Commitment and union
As a solution to overcome the educational lag, the religious María de Lourdes Pank highlighted the training and training of teachers – and all the staff who collaborate in schools – to discover this profession as a vocation, a vocation for service ”
After making a call to innovate in the classrooms and break schemes, he insisted on the importance of the commitment, not only to fulfill the program and the planning elaborated at the beginning of the school year. “The government, private institutions, and parents, we must all invest, and not only money, but also time to create, to innovate, to be with those who need more support, to prepare, and so on. Send resources and tools to those most abandoned places, and work for hand in hand with the School-Family ”.
Claudia Castellanos also considered commitment and union as key, “and that people dedicated to education put at the service of the community what they know how to do .”
Pope Francis – he concluded – “expresses it very well in his recent invitation to reconstruct the global educational pact: ‘We must base the educational processes on the awareness that everyone is intimately connected and it is necessary to find other ways to understand the economy, Politics, growth, and progress. We must have the courage to train people available to put themselves at the service of the community … to promote and activate this educational pact together. Let’s try together to find solutions, start transformation processes, without fear. I invite each one to be the protagonist of this alliance
Source: vidanuevadigital.com
The Mazatlan Post
