I have about had it with Alejandrina German

[Chirimoya]

The UNESCO report was covered in the DR1 news yesterday:

Poor showing for DR education
Cuba shows up as the best and the Dominican Republic as the worst in a study of third and sixth graders in 16 countries in the region, as well as the state of Nuevo Leon in Mexico. A total of 196,000 students, 8,854 classrooms and 3,065 urban schools were part of the four-year study, which was conducted by the Latin American Laboratory for Quality Evaluation under the aegis of the United Nations Education, Science and Culture Organization (UNESCO). Today’s A.M. editorial in Diario Libre, written by Adriano Miguel Tejada, himself an educator, states that Dominican education has “never been good, despite the myth about the old schools.” Tejada says that schools used to cater for very few people and the teachers were barely high school graduates. The big contrast was with the total ignorance of the general population. In that context, students and teachers were geniuses. Tejada, himself a product of this older system, says that this does not take any merit from those teachers, who did their best and who had a real vocation, but it does give the right perspective. After Trujillo’s assassination, education took two mortal blows: politics and large-scale growth. Both led to the creation of private schools without being truly elite. All over the world, the elite sends their children to private schools, either locally or overseas, but here, all the parents who wanted to educate their children within the proper timeframe had to pay for it, and the quality of education suffered, although it appeared that it was better than the public schools, themselves affected by student mobilizations and taken over by “toughs” that scared the middle class away forever. Because of this, according to the editor-professor, despite having a very high percentage of students in private schools, some of these very good, Dominican education never climbed a point, as evidenced by the studies of mathematics that have been carried out since the 1980s, because, in reality, the parents not only pay for education but also for the protection of their children in a safe environment, even though they have to carry their own chairs to school every day like they do in the barrios.

Here is the link: http://llece.unesco.cl/ing/noticias/49.act

[bob saunders]

even though they have to carry their own chairs to school every day like they do in the barrios
I'm not sure about this part of the statment. I've been in about 15 public schools and 5 private schools and never seen one yet with desks or chairs. I'm sure there are some, but not many. Yes Dominican Education has a long ways to go, and they really need to improve the quality of teachers. You can do that in a number of ways.

[ExtremeR]

A private school without desks and chairs?? Are you sure??

[Hipocrito Mejia]

Who cares about improving education? Figuring out a way to build a nice vacation home and skimming money from the breakfast program by feeding kids watered down the milk is way more important!

[Chip]

Originally Posted by Hipocrito Mejia

Who cares about improving education? Figuring out a way to build a nice vacation home and skimming money from the breakfast program by feeding kids watered down the milk is way more important!

Sure is, except when maybe she is standing in front of the pearly gates.

[qgrande]

Originally Posted by A.Hidalgo

Take a guess which country among some others consistently came out at the bottom of the barrel. Another report along with the PNUD 2008 report that sadly will be ignored by the Dominican government. Leonel where are your cojones......fire her!!!!!!

http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/001...06/160659S.pdf in Spanish

Thanks for the link. This truly is a disastrous report for the DR. The research seems thorough (200,000 students tested!), and the DR does not just come last, but last by a large margin. And that in a comparison with similar or even considerably lower GDP/capita to spend, and countries that also have high levels of curruption, clientelism, and populism. There must be a more fundamental cause here than an ineffective minister.

Perhaps positively (although you could equally interpret it in a glass half empty way), the DR is also an exception in Latin America according to the report with girls doing significantly better than boys, and with little urban/rural difference with campo children doing almost as much as those in the cities.

[A.Hidalgo]

Originally Posted by qgrande

There must be a more fundamental cause here than an ineffective minister.

That is an excellent observation and one that really hits the mark. By no means is the fix just to fire her, but to fundamentally restructure the pedagogy of the country and of course the way government is run in general.

[arturo]

Originally Posted by A.Hidalgo

That is an excellent observation and one that really hits the mark. By no means is the fix just to fire her, but to fundamentally restructure the pedagogy of the country and of course the way government is run in general.

Private schools aren't doing so much better than their public counterparts. That's an indication that, yes, the problem goes far beyond the Education Ministry and teachers. The greatest, if not the only, threat to the Dominican oligarchy is the prospect of an educated populace. An educated populace would have perspective enough to understand what it knows or doesn't know, and what it has and does not have. Few educated people would accept at face value a system in which they are made to pay sky high taxes but are denied the most basic government services (sanitation, environmental protections, at least 19th century infrastructure), among other abuses. Meanwhile, the "elites" enjoy a laregely tax free existence and live within a bubble of privilege.

I am no bolshevik. I appreciate the plight of the small Dominican middle class. Many of them work very hard and, for lack of an inside track in the system, bear the tax cost of a bloated, botella riven public sector full of arrogant and ineffective functionaries.

How serious does the oligarchy take the danger of education? They deny it even to their own, lest their young develop a conscience and reject their place in the circle of oppression. This is clear to see in the surprisingly low standards at high priced private colegios.

[qgrande]

Originally Posted by arturo

The greatest, if not the only, threat to the Dominican oligarchy is the prospect of an educated populace.

That might be relevant, but after reading the report I am still left wondering what really sets the DR apart among other Latin American countries.
Yes, the DR has corrupt ministers, but do Nicaragua, Peru, Honduras, etc. not have corrupt ministers?
Yes, the point about the Dominican oligarchy might be valid, but do Paraguay, Guatemala, El Salvador, etc. not also have protective oligarchies?
What does make the DR so much different? I certainly do not know the answer, but I would be extremely interested in informed suggestions on what would explain the poor educational performance comparative to other Latin American countries, also taking a comparative perspective when coming up with explanations.

[bob saunders]

A lot of it has to do with attitude but also pedagogy. The average teacher has a two year program which many of the teacher accomplished over a 4 -6 year time period by taking night school or weekends, or every Friday...etc. They learned the basics but not much more. Their own language skills, ability to properly prepare lesson plans, develop proper exams, disipline children...etc is lacking. The main thing is to get the qualifications so they can get a job, perferably with the public system because of the pay, no pressure to perform, no standards, and pretty good job protection/pension in comparison to the private system. There is little if any dedication to actually helping children succeed. Now this doesn't apply to all teachers or all teaching programs. My take on what a teachers job is different than what many of you would have. To me being a teacher is a vocation not a job. The first thing a teacher should be doing is instilling a love of learning for the children- to encourage the child to think and accept challenges. Once a child know that the teacher truely wants them to succeed and plants those seeds of self-confidence, most children will only look forward to learning and growing. The learning by rote method employed by most teachers in the DR is good for learning math basics and language basics but stifles creativity and learning becomes an exercise in memory rather than an understanding of the material and the ability to apply this knowledge.