Bulmer-Thomas V., Coatsworth J., Cortes-Conde R. The Cambridge Economic History of Latin America: Volume 2, The Long Twentieth Century
Подождите немного. Документ загружается.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
P1: JPJ
0521812909c11BCB929-Bulmer 052181290 9 September 30, 2005 18:31
462 Fernando Reimers
These results are consistent with those of another international study of
mathematics and science achievement of students in thirty-nine countries
(the Third International Mathematics and Science Study, TIMSS). Among
the thirty-nine countries participating in the study, only students in South
Africa, a country suffering the heavy burden of years of apartheid, scored
slightly below students in Colombia.
53
The results in the science test were
just as poor for Colombian students, with only South African students
scoring below Colombian students.
54
Mexico participated in the same TIMSS study but withdrew upon receiv-
ing preliminary results that placed it at the bottom of the distribution of
scores. Chile participated in a repeat round of the TIMSS study, obtaining
average scores far below the international average.
There is no evidence to suggest that countries that have not participated
in international comparisons would fare better than those reported here. In
a comparative study of student achievement in twelve Latin American coun-
tries conducted by UNESCO in 1998, the differences in average achieve-
ment between countries were less than one standard deviation. The top
achievers in the fourth grade were Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia,
and Mexico, countries that performed poorly in international compar-
isons. Only Cuban students achieved at significantly higher levels than
their counterparts in the rest of Latin America.
55
The low levels of literacy and basic skills of Latin American students
reflected the poor teaching conditions that resulted from ineffective and
unstable policies to support opportunities to learn. In a survey of students
in third and fourth grade in a number of countries in Latin America,
only some of the students indicated that they understood their teachers’
lessons consistently. The percentage of students who always understood
their teachers was higher in private schools and higher in urban than in
rural areas, as shown in Table 11.8.
The low quality of teaching was the result of insufficient instruc-
tional materials, poor preparation of teachers and principals, and poor
communication between teachers and parents. These deficiencies com-
pounded the impact of the limited circumstances in which many poor
53
Albert Beaton et al., Mathematics Achievement in the Middle School Years: IEA’s Third International
Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), (Chestnut Hill, MA, 1996), 23.
54
Albert Beaton et al., Science Achievement in the Middle School Years: IEA’s Third International Math-
ematics and Science Study (TIMSS), (Chestnut Hill, MA, 1996), 23.
55
UNESCO-OREALC, Primer estudio internacional comparativo sobre lenguaje, matem
´
atica y factores
asociados en tercero y cuarto grado (Santiago, 1998).
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
P1: JPJ
0521812909c11BCB929-Bulmer 052181290 9 September 30, 2005 18:31
Education and Social Progress 463
Table 11.8. Percentage of third- and fourth-grade students who reported they
always understood the explanations of their teachers in a survey administered
by ministries of education and coordinated by UNESCO
Large cities (>1 million) Small cities Rural areas
Private (%) Public (%) Private (%) Public (%) Public (%)
Argentina 69 66 57 61 57
Bolivia 69 64 69 65 60
Brazil 53 46 53 52 49
Chile 42 46 50 51 52
Colombia 62 62 64 62 54
Cuba 090 086 87
Honduras 66 71 70 64 68
Mexico 66 60 60 62 60
Paraguay 71 74 63
Peru 56 63 69 64 53
Dominican
Republic
69 67 62 63 63
Venezuela 74 65 61 71 62
60 66 62 63 61
Source: My own calculations based on data from UNESCO-OREALC, Laboratorio
Latinoamericano de la Calidad de la Educaci
´
on, Primer estudio internacional comparado
(Santiago, 1998).
children grew, without adequate early childcare, nutrition, and stimulation.
Table 11.9 shows the percentage of elementary school children who had
textbooks to support literacy instruction, the most basic subject of the cur-
riculum. It is remarkable that in so many countries these rates are below
100 percent.
The emphasis of reform during the twentieth century on elementary edu-
cation arguably undermined the development of a strong civic culture and
democracy. A study of the relationship between education and democratic
attitudes based on a cross-national survey of forty-eight societies, includ-
ing Chile, Costa Rica, and Mexico, found that more-educated individuals
were more likely to support democracy.
56
A separate study of the same data
only for the three Latin American countries concludes that although the
56
Alejandro Moreno, “Democracy and Mass Belief Systems in Latin America,” in Citizen Views of
Democracy in Latin America, 35.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
P1: JPJ
0521812909c11BCB929-Bulmer 052181290 9 September 30, 2005 18:31
464 Fernando Reimers
Table 11.9. Percentage of third- and fourth-grade students who reported they
had a language textbook in a survey administered by ministries of education
and coordinated by UNESCO
Large cities (>1 million) Small cities Rural areas
Public (%) Private (%) Public (%) Private (%) Public (%)
Argentina 56 84 58 73 59
Bolivia 76 90 60 76 45
Brazil 84 76 85 93 92
Chile 90 94 93 95 92
Colombia 70 79 67 84 70
Cuba 97 0 97 0 98
Honduras 75 79 76 68 74
Mexico 96 100 94 98 96
Paraguay 007687 75
Peru 55 84 48 62 46
Dominican
Republic
57 68 57 63 53
Venezuela 71 81 76 84 70
Source: My own calculations based on data from UNESCO-OREALC, Laboratorio
Latinoamericano de la Calidad de la Educaci
´
on, Primer estudio internacional comparado.
majority of the adults polled do not trust other people (suggesting low
levels of civic culture), the 30 percent who do trust others are signifi-
cantly more educated and more likely to have reached secondary education
and college.
57
A similar increasing marginal effect of secondary educa-
tion on interpersonal trust was found by Robert Putnam in the United
States.
58
The emphasis of most public schools on rote learning and the limited
opportunities for students to learn to think for themselves further limited
the preparation of democratic citizens. How could those taught to parrot
poorly understood ideas and to accept that truth rests on authority rather
than on evidence and reasoning value the freedom to think independently?
The climate in most schools did not favor the development of rela-
tionships of trust among students and teachers. International studies
57
Timothy Power, “Does Trust Matter?” in Citizen Views of Democracy in Latin America, 59.
58
Robert Putnam, “Tuning In, Tuning Out: The Strange Disappearance of Social Capital in America,”
Political Science and Politics 27:4 (December 1995): 665.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
P1: JPJ
0521812909c11BCB929-Bulmer 052181290 9 September 30, 2005 18:31
Education and Social Progress 465
Table 11.10. Percentage of third- and fourth-grade students who report they
trust their teacher and who say they constantly fight with classmates in a
survey administered by ministries of education and coordinated by UNESCO
Do youtrust your teacher
Constantly fight
Estrato Yes (%) Sometimes (%) No (%) with classmates (%)
Large city: Public 28 42 30 26
Large city: Private 23 47 29 19
Urban: Public 30 39 30 30
Urban: Private 26 45 29 21
Rural 33 36 31 32
Source: My own calculations based on data from UNESCO-OREALC, Laboratorio
Latinoamericano de la Calidad de la Educaci
´
on, Primer estudio internacional comparado
(Santiago, 1998). Averages for all countries surveyed, unweighted. Countries in the sur-
veyare Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Honduras, Mexico, Paraguay,
Dominican Republic, and Venezuela.
consistently point to classroom and school climate as important predic-
tors of civic knowledge and participation. In a survey of elementary school
students, less than a third indicated that they trusted their teacher some-
times and about a third said they did not trust their teacher. About a fourth
of the students said that they constantly had fights with their classmates,
as shown in Table 11.10.
Confining educational opportunity to elementary education of low qual-
ity prevented the development of civic and social capital and of democratic
attitudes, which was in keeping with the conservative ideology and with the
designs of authoritarian governments that saw the most important purposes
of education for the masses as training workers rather than democratic cit-
izens of good judgment, capable of independent thinking, and committed
to universal human rights. Several studies of the curriculum of primary edu-
cation in Latin America have found it lacking in opportunities to develop
democratic attitudes or understanding of basic human rights.
59
Te achers
often show disrespect to students and the social climate in many schools is
one where students learn to mistrust and fear their teachers and classmates,
rather than safe communities that model democratic practices. Elementary
59
Eleonora Villegas-Reimers, Can Schools Teach Democratic Values? (Washington, DC, 1993), and Civic
Education and the School Systems of Latin America and the Caribbean (Washington, DC, 1993).
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
P1: JPJ
0521812909c11BCB929-Bulmer 052181290 9 September 30, 2005 18:31
466 Fernando Reimers
school teachers were also limited role models of tolerance and acceptance
of differences, important civic virtues in a democracy. A random sample
survey administered to public school teachers in Mexico in 2002 revealed
that one in five teachers would not allow an indigenous person or a person
of another race to live in their home, a third would not accept a person of
another religion, and two in five would not accept a homosexual.
60
Surveys
administered to teachers in Argentina, Peru, and Uruguay found also a high
prevalence of prejudice toward a number of groups. For instance, 34 percent
of the teachers in Argentina had negative views toward homosexuals and 55
percent in Peru and 20 percent in Uruguay did too. In Argentina, 15 percent
of the teachers, 38 percent in Peru, and 11 percent in Uruguay had negative
views toward members of other nationalities or ethnic groups. Teachers
also had negative views towards people who lived in slums, 52 percent in
Argentina, 16 percent in Peru, and 33 percent in Uruguay.”
61
An international study of civic knowledge of fourteen-year-olds, con-
ducted in 1998 in which Chile and Colombia participated, found that
students in those countries had significant lower levels of civic knowledge
and skills than students in the United States and other OECD nations. For
example, almost a full decade after the transition to democracy in Chile,
only half of the fourteen-year-olds in that country knew that in a democracy
government is carried out by elected representatives.
62
Illustrative of the lack of civic effectiveness of education reforms in Latin
America are the declining rates of political engagement of young people
in Chile and the low levels of civic knowledge of high schools students
in this country, a full decade after the transition to democracy, after a
major education reform that involved a complete revamping of the cur-
riculum and the production and distribution of new textbooks. While a
third of those aged eighteen to twenty-nine participated in the referen-
dum in 1988, just over 15 percent voted in the presidential elections of
1999.
63
60
Fundaci
´
on Este Pa
´
ıs, Percepcion de la educaci
´
on b
´
asica. Encuesta nacional sobre creencias, actitudes y
valores de maestros y padres de familia de la educaci
´
on b
´
asica en Mexico (Mexico, 2002).
61
Emilio Tenti Fanfani, “Les immigres a l’ecole. La xeonophobie des enseignants en Argentine,
PerouetUruguay,” Instituto Internacional de Planificaci
´
on de la Educaci
´
on, Buenos Aires, 2003.
http://www.iipe-buenosaires.org.ar/pdfs/docentes-inmigrantes
frances.pdf page 4.
62
Judith Torney-Purta and Joanne Amadeo, Strengthening Democracy in the Americas through
Education,Organization of American States, Washington, DC, 2004. http://www.oas.org/udse/
ingles2004/executive
summary-fin.pdf.
63
Cristian Cox, “Formacion ciudadana y educaci
´
on escolar. La experiencia chilena,” presented at VII
Reuni
´
on de la Red de Educaci
´
on, February 17 and 18, 2005,Washington, DC.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
P1: JPJ
0521812909c11BCB929-Bulmer 052181290 9 September 30, 2005 18:31
Education and Social Progress 467
THE POLITICS OF UNIVERSITY REFORM
DURING THE TWENTIETH CENTURY AND
THEIR RESULTS
Established during colonial times to prepare the religious, political, and
intellectual leadership of the Americas, universities are the oldest of Latin
America’s educational institutions. The struggle between progressives and
conservatives had limited impact in universities in that access to higher edu-
cation remained elusive for the majority of the population in Latin America
throughout the twentieth century. However, faculty and students at dif-
ferent times during the century framed the nature of the debate between
progressives and conservatives and shaped ideas on how countries should
develop, as well as what role universities should play in the development
process. As part of this debate, universities opened limited access to the
children of the emerging middle classes.
The public university emerged to challenge the dominance of the
Catholic university. The university reform movement, begun in C
´
ordoba
in 1918, called for the autonomy of universities as a way to position them as
critical interlocutors of the state. This reform, advocating greater academic
freedom for faculty, would be gained with open and public contests for
teaching positions. In the 1920s and 1930s, the “autonomous” universities
emerged.
For most of the twentieth century, traditional public universities contin-
ued to be centers of recruitment and socialization of political leadership,
as they had been in the past. They frequently challenged the state and
accounted for more than one political transition. In Venezuela, for exam-
ple, during the 1950s, much of the resistance to the military regime was
organized by the university student movement. The key leaders of the mod-
ern political parties were leaders of the student movement. The same was
true in Peru in the 1950s.
The progressive victory in universities during the twentieth century was
in a limited expansion in access, which resulted in significant intergen-
erational educational mobility, not for the most excluded but for a small
fraction of the urban middle classes. By the end of the century, the per-
centage of the population aged twenty-five to fifty-nine years with a college
degree averaged 6 percent, and an additional 6 percent had some techni-
cal qualification reflecting some higher education.
64
During the century,
64
Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, Social Panorama 2001–2002, 74.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
P1: JPJ
0521812909c11BCB929-Bulmer 052181290 9 September 30, 2005 18:31
468 Fernando Reimers
institutional differentiation and experimentation grew, which produced,
at the same time, institutions of very high and very low quality. Some of
the new institutions, many of them private, served to accommodate an
unmet demand at low cost. By contrast, some of the new institutions, the
experimental universities, received significant financial support from the
state and from the private sector, to provide high-quality instruction with
less politics than traditional public universities.
The inability of the majority of the population to access higher educa-
tion and the growing social segregation and isolation of public universities
reflect a multifaceted victory of the conservative project through various
complementary processes. One of these was the relatively low growth of
enrollment in this sector. In 1997, 9.4 million students attended higher
education institutions in Latin America. Although on the surface this is
aremarkable increase over the 300 thousand students enrolled in 1950,it
is a very modest increase relative to the 70 million increase in primary
education enrollments during the same period. During the 1980s, just as a
college education became more important than ever to aspire to leadership
positions and for social and economic mobility, access to this level became
more constrained. The ratio of primary to university students, which had
declined sharply from forty-five in 1950 to thirteen in 1980, changed only
slowly to nine in 1997. The corresponding changes in the ratios of secondary
to university students declined from seven to three between 1950 and 1980
and did not change thereafter.
65
As shown in Table 11.11,bythe end of
the century, access to tertiary education in Latin America was significantly
more constrained than access in comparator countries, a continuation of a
trend characterizing most of the century.
In the mid-century, higher education was truly an opportunity for the
elites, ranging from 6 to less than 1 percent of the relevant age group enrolled
at this level. Access expanded most during the 1960s and 1970s. In spite of
this expansion, by the end of the century, access to higher education was
lower in Latin America than in comparator countries. Whereas more than
half of the relevant age group attended a tertiary institution in Korea, the
United States, Canada, Spain, Belgium, France, Portugal, and Italy, only
Argentina had similar levels of access; in the rest of the countries, less than
a third of the students had access to college.
Private institutions grew to fill the demand unmet by public universities.
Authoritarian governments supported the expansion of private universities
65
These figures are derived from Table 11.1 in this chapter.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
P1: JPJ
0521812909c11BCB929-Bulmer 052181290 9 September 30, 2005 18:31
Education and Social Progress 469
Table 11.11. Gross enrollment ratios in tertiary education ranked by access
in 2000
Gross Enrollment: Tertiary
1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 1995 2000 Male Female
Korea, Republic of 715395277.62 97.02 57.02
United States 47 56 75 81 72.62 62.86 82.77
Canada 53 57 95 88 59.99 51.57 68.82
Spain 923374859.36 55.20 63.71
Belgium 17 26 40 56 56.99 53.52 60.58
France 19 25 40 51 53.58 48.16 59.24
Portugal 711233950.20 42.53 58.11
Italy 17 27 32 42 49.88 43.07 56.95
Argentina 5111322383647.96 36.43 59.72
Chile 24912212837.52 39.12 35.88
Uruguay 68 1730 30 36.10 25.59 46.96
Bolivia 24915212335.66
Thailand 315192035.27 38.88 31.69
Singapore 681934
Panama 25721213034.90 26.23 43.82
Philippines 17 24 28 29 31.21 29.80 32.66
Peru 241117 30 27 28.84 42.87 14.66
Venezuela 14102129 30 28.50 23.21 33.96
Cuba 34172113 24.16 22.42 25.98
Colombia 12491315 23.33 22.37 24.30
Mexico 23514151520.71 21.14 20.27
El Salvador 11391619 18.20 16.30 20.11
Brazil 12511111516.51 14.42 18.61
Costa Rica 25921273016.04 14.54 17.62
Dominican
Republic
12691823
Ecuador 137352020
Honduras 11279914.73 12.75 16.76
Nicaragua 11512811
Paraguay 1249810
Guatemala 123898
Haiti 11 111
Source: UNESCO Statistical Database, accessed June 19, 2003.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
P1: JPJ
0521812909c11BCB929-Bulmer 052181290 9 September 30, 2005 18:31
470 Fernando Reimers
as a convenient alternative to the more politicized and radicalized public
universities, and elites saw them as convenient alternatives to protect their
children from political radicalization.
66
These processes led to a growing
social stratification of students in public and private universities and made
it possible for economic and political elites to abandon public universities
to the deadly mixture of underfunding, excessive isolationism, and man-
agement by incompetent demagogues because many public universities had
systems of governance that rewarded political entrepreneurship over aca-
demic merits. The results curtailed the potential benefit of having achieved
access to this level.
To sum up, some things changed while much remained the same dur-
ing the twentieth century in Latin America. Education systems expanded,
and the number of people declaring themselves to be literate increased.
However, illiteracy levels remained higher than those of countries in Asia,
Europe, and North America and the demonstrated reading proficiency
and academic skills of Latin American students were at the bottom in all
international comparisons. The opportunity to enroll in schools and uni-
versities also increased, but access to secondary and tertiary education was
significantly lower than in other regions. The educational attainment of
the population changed only modestly as a result of the educational expan-
sion of the second half of the twentieth century. There were differences
between countries in educational outcomes and access. Although some of
these reflected earlier commitments to a progressive project, as in Argentina,
Chile, and Uruguay, some of the greatest gains in educational opportunity
were in countries where progressive education policies reflected a larger
political project, such as in Costa Rica, Cuba, Peru, and Venezuela.
THE POLITICS OF TARGETED POLICIES
TO REACH THE POOR
Along with the policies that supported the expansion of access to all levels
of education, particularly to primary education, progressive policies sought
to provide differentiated attention to marginalized populations. Initially,
policies were developed to attempt to provide access to rural and indige-
nous children by developing alternative modalities of education. More
recently, targeted policies have attempted to improve the quality of the
66
Daniel Levy, Higher Education and the State in Latin America (Chicago, 1986).
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
P1: JPJ
0521812909c11BCB929-Bulmer 052181290 9 September 30, 2005 18:31
Education and Social Progress 471
education provided to marginalized children and to support their enroll-
ment in existing modalities of education. These reforms did not last long
and had disappointing results.
Because the expansion of education during the twentieth century
reflected the interests of urban-based political alliances and the city-based
industrialization under import substitution, rural education was largely
neglected during the last century. As a result, indigenous populations,
most of whom lived in rural areas, were marginalized from educational
expansion.
The first of two important exceptions to this trend was the expansion
of rural education in Mexico while Jos
´
edeVasconcelos was Secretary of
Education after the revolution. In his efforts to use education as the means to
create a new Mexican identity (the Raza C
´
osmica) and to reunify the country
after the war, Vasconcelos established primary schools and teacher-training
institutions in rural areas and supported “cultural missions” of teachers,
university graduates, and technicians who went to rural areas to work with
teachers and communities in education, health, and organized campaigns
to increase productivity.
Costa Rica provides another exception to the secular neglect of rural edu-
cation. At several times throughout the century, reformers tried to improve
the quality of rural schools, the orientation of the curriculum to improve
the productivity of small rural farmers, or the links between the curriculum
and rural life.
The reforms attempting to improve the options of indigenous com-
munities through education were rare and short-lived. Supported only
by their disempowered beneficiaries and by isolated politicians and social
entrepreneurs, these reforms did not have the muscle to resist the fury of the
landed oligarchies who saw them as all too convenient targets to express
their resistance to the progressive project. Especially contested were the
educational programs to reach indigenous groups with specific objectives
to foster social and political organization.
67
The Jesuit reductions were arguably the earliest initiative to provide edu-
cational opportunities to indigenous children. These larger forms of social
organization included schools that sought to empower the indigenous for
67
Foranexcellent discussion of the politics of indigenous education in Bolivia at the beginning
of the twentieth century, see Brooke Larson, “Capturing Indian Bodies, Hearths and Minds: ‘El
hogar campesino’ and Rural School Reform in Bolivia, 1920s–1940s,” in Merilee Grindle and Pilar
Domingo, eds., Proclaiming Revolution: Bolivia in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge, MA, 183–
209).