Proposal for a new idea to cure the issue of agency in Latin American education systems

For this week’s reading on Social and Economic Inequality, Francis Fukuyama analyzes the socioeconomic issues of Latin America, and recommends that “anyone earnestly interested in democracy in Latin America [should] formulate a serious social policy agenda—one that targets substantial resources at the crucial problems of health, education, and welfare, but one that does so in a way that produces results”. In general, the conclusion is that Latin American governments have provided many short term solutions that will fail—or already have failed—in correcting the larger problem of social and economic inequality that only hurts prospects for successful and consolidated democracies in the region.

The article placed large focus on education’s ability to help social and economic inequality, but also demonstrated why education is barely helping at all in Latin America due to corrupt relationships between social and political actors. I took particular interest in the author’s argument of the “de correlation” between government spending on education and the actual educational outcome. The idea of agency, and the interests/motivations of those running the local school systems, as the reason why education isn’t improving with programs that have increased school attendance is obviously a major obstacle to social and economic equality in the region.

For example, frequent strikes by teachers unions in Latin American countries continue to demonstrate the issue of agency, as educational professionals “fight” for higher wages while their students sit at home for extended periods of time, which is illustrated in the article: “Teachers Unions: Corrupt Institutions or Necessary Protectors?”. The article explores the very possible corruption of teachers unions, in which educational development has been long gone as top on the list of priorities for most educational professionals in these unions. In Argentina, the strike by teachers to raise wages by 30% affected more than 5 million students who weren’t able to attend school because of the protests. In Mexico, the SNTE violent protests of Oaxaca led to “more than a dozen deaths, as well as school shutdowns affecting 1.3 million children for a large portion of the school year”. Hence, if this issue of agency keeps up where the teachers don’t have the students’ educational development as a top priority, education unfortunately will have a gloomy suspected future role in the cure of social and economic inequality in Latin America (http://www.coha.org/teachers-unions-corrupt-institutions-or-necessary-protectors/).

Yet, I believe the second kind of educational reform mentioned by the Inter-American Development Bank in the article, the idea to improve the quality of the existing educational system, has potential. It’s clear there’s an issue within the system, and thinking strategically in terms of finances, timing, and public unrest, completely doing away with the current system and formulating a new one would take way too much time, too many resources, and too much compromise with the public to make a large project like that work. So, what if instead of giving into corrupt teacher unions and other related educational professions, the governments instead spend a portion of their financial resources on hiring willing teachers from other countries outside of the region who are passionate enough to move their entire life to a new area of the world and improve educational outcomes in local schools? There’s certainly a market for it: organizations such as Teachers Without Borders (http://teacherswithoutborders.org/) and Teachers Latin America (http://www.teachers-latin-america.com/), newly graduated bilingual educational professionals, etc. are in abundance around the world.

Therefore, I am suggesting a hypothesis for research that explores the possibility of Latin American countries dedicating a portion of their budget hiring clearly passionate and willing teachers from other regions around the world to help the education system. Of course, one would need to think about the issue not having local teachers who know the diverse cultures of Latin America; however, perhaps a few enthusiastic international teachers per school could provide some positive development in educational outcomes. In addition, I’m not saying there aren’t teachers in Latin America who aren’t devoted to their jobs and genuine in their intentions as an educational professional, nor am I promoting a forced “westernized” influx of educational professionals. I simply think that it’s likely to find very dedicated and zealous teachers if they’re willing to travel to a different country to pursue their profession and help children, especially with the current obvious issue in Latin America being with agency where teachers are seen as corrupt.

Although more research would definitely need to be conducted on this topic, perhaps dedicating some of the country’s budget to recruiting or encouraging outside educational professionals to live in the region and teach could improve educational opportunities, and in the long run, help eradicate the extremely marginalized Latin American societies both socially and economically.