La revista The Economist, en su último número, trae dos artículos que comentan las reformas educacionales de Venezuela y Ecuador; la primera centrada en torno al eje del control del sistema (su gestión y currículo) y, la segunda, en torno al eje de la profesión docente, sus estándares y evaluación. Cabe anotar que en Ecuador mismo, hay quienes piensan que la reforma del Presidente Correa, si bien inspirada en un correcto diagnóstico, podría apuntar eventualmente también al control del sistema… sólo que por un camino distinto.
Ambas reformas han levantado intensos debates y movilización de actores sociales, aunque con muy distintos actores y dinámicas.
Ver más abajo los dos artículos del Economist.
Artículo anterior del Economist sobre la reforma de la educación venezolana aquí
Otros postings sobre lan reforma educacional del presidnete Chavez en este Blog
Venezuela: oposición frente a la nueva ley orgánica de educación, 17 agosto 2009
Venezuela: Chávez promulga nueva ley de Educación, 16 agosto 2009
Venezuela: Más sobre la nueva ley orgánica de educación, 15 agosto 2009
Venezuela: Nueva Ley Orgánica de Educación, 14 agosto 2009

Venezuela’s education “reforms”: Hugo Chávez seeks to catch them young
From The Economist print edition, Aug 20th 2009 | CARACAS
A hastily passed education law is part of the president’s plan to take control of all aspects of Venezuelan society
THE first time Hugo Chávez made a serious attempt to reshape the Venezuelan education system, the resulting political battle contributed to the coup that in 2002 briefly ousted him from the presidency. A new education law, shoved through parliament on the night of August 13th after minimal debate, already has the opposition talking of civil disobedience.
The government claims that the law will overcome centuries of exclusion, at last giving the children of the poor equal access to education. But its critics argue that it fails to deal with the key causes of inequality—low-quality teaching, crumbling buildings and widespread truancy in state schools. Whereas Mr Chávez’s Ecuadorean ally, Rafael Correa, seems sincere in his drive to raise educational standards (see next story), the focus of the Venezuelan leader’s reforms is on ensuring the intrusion of politics at every level. Mariano Herrera, an educationalist, predicts that the result will be greater inequality, not less.
Teaching is to be rooted in “Bolivarian doctrine”, a reference to Mr Chávez’s ill-defined Bolivarian revolution—supposedly inspired by Simón Bolívar, a leader of Latin America’s 19th-century independence struggle. Schools will come under the supervision of “communal councils”, indistinguishable in most places from cells of the ruling socialist party. Central government will run almost everything else, including university entrance and membership of the teaching profession.
Couched in vague terms, the law acquires coherence when seen against the president’s professed intention to establish revolutionary hegemony over Venezuelan society. In a 2007 campaign on a referendum on constitutional change, Mr Chávez lectured a bemused public on the writings of Antonio Gramsci, an Italian communist who died in 1937. In essence, Gramsci said that to eliminate the bourgeois state one must seize the institutions that reproduce the dominant class’s thought-patterns.
The three most important of these institutions, the president noted, were the church, the education system and the mass media. Among the iniquitous doctrines with which they poisoned the minds of the masses, he argued, were representative democracy, the division of state powers and alternating government.
The new education law also lets the government suspend media outlets that affect the public’s “mental health” or cause “terror” among children. It threatens to end subsidies for church-run schools that educate the poor. And it seeks to weaken or abolish students’ and teachers’ unions and to “democratise” university authorities.
How much of Gramsci the president has actually read is unclear. What is apparent is that the law was not framed in parliament but by a team of ideologues in the presidential palace. Legislators suspect Cuban specialists had a hand in it, along with radicals from the Spanish left in Mr Chávez’s close circle.
Whether or not it can be implemented as intended will become clear as schools and universities reopen in September. Some opposition politicians and educationalists want to gather signatures for a referendum to repeal the law, as is allowed under the constitution. Student groups, the church, the media, parents and teachers could together form a powerful coalition.
University rectors say the hasty way the law was passed violated both parliamentary norms and the constitution. They were tear-gassed when they approached parliament as it was being debated, to try to deliver a document criticising its content. But a campaign of peaceful resistance is gathering strength.
Since winning a referendum in February abolishing term limits (thus allowing him to seek re-election again in 2012), Mr Chávez has stepped up the pace of his revolution. He has taken powers and funds from mayors and governors, clamped down on independent trade unions and broadcasters, and passed a law which will allow the government-controlled electoral authority to gerrymander constituency boundaries. A wilting economy and a lack of money to spend on his ambitious welfare programmes have begun to sap Mr Chávez’s popularity, forcing him to keep casting around for fresh scapegoats.
In his weekly broadcast on August 16th he promised a stimulus package but gave no indication of how he would pay for it. With public dissent growing, his response has been to stifle sources of independent thinking, be they private television channels, trade unions, the church or the schools and universities. However, once he has achieved complete dominance over them all, there will be no one left to blame for the country’s ills but himself.
Copyright © 2009 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.
———————————————————
Ecuador’s education reforms: Correa’s curriculum
From The Economist print edition, Aug 20th 2009 | QUITO
The president seeks to improve ailing schools and universities
AS IN Venezuela, education reforms in Ecuador, promoted by its left-wing president, Rafael Correa, have led to protests and tear-gas on the streets. The teachers’ union and the students’ federation, both linked to a Maoist opposition party, are furious at proposals to sack bad teachers and make schools and universities account better for the $2.3 billion or so a year the government spends on them.
Ecuador’s schools are poor even by South America’s generally low standards. Although almost all of its children enroll in primary education, fewer than two-thirds make it to secondary school. By 2015 Mr Correa, a former economics professor re-elected for a second term in April, wants state schools to match the quality of elite private ones like the Lycée La Condamine in Quito, which his own children attend.
Mr Correa is going about his reforms more sensibly than his Venezuelan chum, Hugo Chávez. Awash with oil revenues because of strong crude prices, he has, since coming to office in January 2007, spent around $280m repairing schools and building new ones. In impoverished places like Zumbahua, a remote village in the Andes where Mr Correa once did voluntary work, high-tech “schools of the millennium” have risen among the maize and potato fields. Some of the cheapest private schools have already closed as state schools have scrapped fees and started providing meals for pupils, says Verónica Benavides, a senior education official.
But it is not just about spending more money. Mr Correa wants to supervise more closely how the education budget is spent, and to improve the quality and consistency of teaching. At present, schools have so much leeway that comparisons between the wide variety of leaving certificates they issue are all but meaningless. The government is seeking to impose a standard, minimum syllabus.
Early in his first term, applicants for teaching jobs were set a voluntary test of reading proficiency and logic. Just 4% of those taking the logic test passed it. The government is now making tests compulsory for existing teachers. Those who flunk them will be offered a year’s training and then be required to resit them. Those who fail a second time face the sack, as do the large numbers of teachers who have joined a union-led boycott of the tests.
So far the reforms seem highly popular except, unsurprisingly, among the teachers. Edmund Gordillo, a teacher in Quito with 30 years’ experience, complains that coercion is the wrong way to go about reforming. Others grumble at their meagre pay: a typical teacher, with almost 25 years’ experience, earns only around $650 a month. The government is promising pay rises but, to the union’s disgust, it intends to link them to performance, not seniority.
Ecuador’s universities are also having to shape up. Low-quality private ones will be shut, while state-funded ones will have to account publicly for the $490m a year they receive. Professorships will be opened up to foreign academics. Mr Correa’s reforms are non-negotiable, insists René Ramírez, his planning secretary: if the unions and student groups ramp up their protests, the government is ready to call a referendum to demonstrate that Ecuadoreans support the president’s policies.
Copyright © 2009 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.