Fred Reed has a screed up about education in Mexico wherein he compares Mexican public schooling to U.S. public schooling. Now, most of y’all who read this blog know I’m no fan of our “prisons for kids” approach to education. In fact, I think that by and large, public schools in these United States are the most glaring example of child abuse in America.
But. IMO, Fred’s screed misses several points and argues apples to oranges*. Here are some excerpts from a “country study” dealing with Mexico from Department of the Army (US) archives.
“Approximately 54 percent of all students attend a six-year primary-school program that, together with preschool, special education, and secondary school, constitute the basic education system. Children in nursery school or kindergarten accounted for 12 percent of matriculation at all levels in 1995-96. As the Mexican population gradually aged during the 1980s, the primary-school share of matriculation at all levels declined from 70 percent in 1980 and was projected to continue to fall through the year 2000… Upon successful completion of primary school, students enter a three-year secondary-school program, or vocational-education program. Approximately 19 percent of all students in 1995-96 were in secondary school. Those graduating from secondary school can pursue mid-level education, either through a three-year college preparatory program–the bachillerato– or advanced technical training; this encompassed 10 percent of all students in 1995-96. Higher education consists of four-year college and university education–the licenciatura– and postgraduate training. Approximately 5 percent of all students in 1995-96 were in postsecondary institutions…”
“…Students’ access and retention remain critical concerns for educators. The government reported in 1989 that each year, 300,000 children who should be in first grade do not attend. An additional 880,000 students drop out of primary school annually, 500,000 of them in the first three grades. Nationally, in 1989 only 55 percent of students successfully completed their primary education, and graduation rates were only 10 percent in many rural areas. However, the government reported that in 1995 the national graduation rate reached 62 percent….”
“Approximately 15,000 schools–20 percent of the total–did not offer all six primary grades in 1989. In that year, 22 percent of all primary schools had only one teacher. The government could meet only 10 percent of potential demand for special education. Thirty percent of all secondary-school enrollers failed to complete the three-year curriculum. As a result, government education officials estimated that 20.2 million Mexicans had not completed primary education and another 16 million had not finished secondary school.”
Note the gaps. A LOT of kids don’t even attend primary school, and of those who do, many do not even complete that.
This information pretty much squares with both my experiences attending high school in El Paso in the ’60s, though much improved from that time, and it also seems congruent with the time I taught there, in a “barrio” school in south El Paso, some years later: parents living in Mexico would seek to get their children in American schools, then, because they had a better shot at getting a better education.
Fred Reed noted some examples from his 14-year-old step-daughter’s curriculum in Guadalahara that are comparable in quality to what I recall from eighth grade work back in the (very) early 60s. Not comparable to today’s curriculum in most American schools, of course. But then, his step-daughter is among the relatively small minority of students that both graduate from primary school in Mexico and then proceed along an academic track. Another small percentage stay in school for tradeschool training.
My experiences more recently with immigrant students (legal and otherwise) from Mexico is a mixed bag. Most were either subliterate or illiterate in Spanish, although as far as intelligence goes, they seemed to follow a normal bell curve distribution. The problem was that a.) they came hampered by language barriers; b.) many were illiterate in both English and Spanish—a higher percentage than even the illiterate English speaking students (which was bad enough) and c.) ESL programs were designed—intentionally or not—to keep them from attaining literacy in English in a timely fashion, if at all.
But then, a rather large portion of Mexican students (or children of student age who do not attend school for various reasons) enter adulthood as illiterates there, too.
But all this talks across the real issue: structurally—apart from heavy central government controls—the Mexican system makes a lot of educational sense. By tracking children into tradeschool or academic programs following primary school, kids who simply are less-equipped to handle abstract reasoning (at the very least, around the middle of the bell curve for IQ—a well-established measure of abstract reasoning ability—and left) can be tracked into areas where their abilities can be successful.
In the U.S., every child is apparently from Lake Woebegon. All through junior high and high school, students are expected to handle subjects demanding complex abstract thought regardless of the fact that Calculus, for example, simply will not compute with any but a small number of students, darned near all of whom will have IQs above 120 and most of whom will be mathematically gifted to some degree or another.
And what of college? High school curricula (and No Chile Gets Ahead testing) seems to assume that all high school students ought to prepare for college, whether they are college material or not. Which is one reason among many why freshman years in college have so many “remedial” courses… and why so many incoming college freshmen must take dumb-dumb math and English courses… as well as one of the reasons so many college students graduate as profoundly subliterate.
They didn’t belong in (a real) college to begin with. So, in many cases, they get trash degrees from dumbed down colleges.
*sigh*
We’d be much better off to crib from Mexico (and many, many other more well-developed countries!) and “track” students relatively early into tradeschool or academic tracks. but we won’t, cos too many parents have been brain-muddied to think that their child can achieve above average, and educrats, pubschool administrators, many teachers and most politicians have given themselves lobotomies where their good sense could have developed.
Still, Fred’s argument, slickly made, is an apples-to-oranges argument, as well as leaving out a lot of relevant information about how many students actually attend school at all—though he very carefully avoids stepping directly into that mess by disclaiming (and not doing any homework to find out) any knowledge about Mexico’s public education in general. It makes his polemicization of the topic so much easier, you see.
But that’s what he does very well: polemics. And by stirring me offa my fat lazy butt to check the first one or two pages in a Google search on pubschooling in Meshico (or some such), he did demonstrate that old farts like me can still read, maybe even nearly as well as his 14-year-old step-daughter.
*Let me be clear: Fred did say he was familiar with ONLY his stepdaughter’s school, and couldn’t make any generalizations about pubschooling in Meciso from that alone. Read his article for yourself and tell me if I’m being fair here, OK?
