My daily work at the Junior High has led me to change my research topic. I am now investigating the nature of rural education in Mexico and how a governmental poverty alleviation program is negatively affecting the quality of education in Ziquitaro, and other rural towns like it.
Everyday after I leave my classes at the Junior High I am left wondering why the majority of the teachers are always drinking coffee in the staff room rather than teaching in their classrooms, why kids get kicked out of school on a whim everyday, why classes are always canceled for extraneous reasons and why the students cannot write basic sentences correctly in their own language. The more I became involved -- and subsequently frustrated -- with my Junior High students I began to consider changing my thesis topic so that I could investigate why the general educational experience at the Tele-Secundaria is so utterly derelict.
I mentioned the topic to my good friend who happens to be a kindergarten teacher as well as the kindergarten director. I told her how frustrated I was with my work at the school -- the low achievement levels, the lack of enthusiasm, and the lack of interested teachers. She told me that she was not surprised for she knew exactly what the problem was: the Progresa-Oportunidades program -- a government aid program, entitled Progress-Opportunities, which allocates impoverished families cash transfers contingent on their children’s school attendance.
While my friend recognized the program’s positive impact in increasing enrollment rates as well as providing welfare like benefits to needy families, she asserted that the program has actually had quite a negative affect on the already low quality of education in Ziquitaro, for many Progressa beneficiaries attend school “just to get paid”. In the meantime they crowd classrooms, slow the learning process and occupy the already scarce resources, thus negatively affecting the small minority of students who actually attend school to learn.
Ever since my friend gave me her explanation I have been researching the program and its effects, and what I have found has been remarkably in sync with the teacher’s claim.
The Progresa-Oportunidades program was initiated by the federal government in 1997 – a time of economic crisis in Mexico. The poverty alleviation program aims to improve education, health and nutrition through cash transfers which are allocated to the female head of the family every two months. The educational stipends are contingent on a child’s attendance of 85% of classes. While this aspect of the Progresa program aims to alleviate poverty while simultaneously improving education, it has solely focused on improving enrolment and attendance rates thus neglecting what I argue to be the most important component of an educational system, its quality. Hence, while Progresa has been successful in poverty alleviation its advances in education have been far less congratulatory. My research is beginning to show that the program has actually resulted in decreasing the quality of education in many aspects.
Many of my students come to class, look out the window and abstain from participating in classroom activities. They are there for Progresa. According to a recent anonymous survey I gave the students, many of them indicated that they view school as a space in which they can “hang out with friends and pass the time”….and they get paid for doing it. While a large portion of the students exhibit this attitude, there are select others who do not. Roughly five students in every class are exceptional students who study adequately -- a rarity for most -- pay attention in class and regularly turn in homework. Yet, despite their exceptional efforts they get “paid” just as much as my students who receive F’s on tests. Why? Because the cash stipends are only contingent on attendance rates. Performance and attitude gets you nowhere with Progresa. Students can even fail a grade, repeat it the next year and receive yet another year of the cash transfer. Thus, the majority just do what is required of them: They show up. They punch their time card. They stare out the window. And they get paid.
When I interviewed the school’s former principal and current principal about Progresa both mentioned higher attendance rates as its only benefit while both equated the program with lowering the quality of the school’s education as they noted that classes are now overcrowded with students who lack “interest and responsibility”. Yet, despite their complaints about the Progresa students, the teachers themselves are in large part responsible for the extremely low quality of education in Ziqutiaro.
In addition to being poorly trained, the majority of the teachers exhibit little to no enthusiasm or interest in their students – instead of teaching students in their classrooms many teachers give students assignments and leave their class for long periods of time to chat in the staff room, and even leave the school grounds or the town limits to attend to personal matters such as “looking at open houses”, or shopping in the larger town nearby.
While their lack of interest and effort obviously affects the children, even more concerning are their strikingly low levels of preparation. This dire reality became apparent to me yesterday as I reviewed a short survey I gave to one of the teachers regarding Progresa: the teacher’s survey was filled with the same grave spelling, syntax and grammar mistakes which regularly appear in my student’s work. Despite their alarmingly low levels of quality, Progresa has no checks system for teacher quality. In fact, when I asked the director about Progresa evaluations he said he “has no idea how the program is evaluated” and his best guess is that there is no evaluation beyond the attendance forms he must fill out for each student.
Apart from low achievement levels exhibited by both teachers and students, the school is in dire need of resources; text books are not up to date, spiders -- who live in the corners of the class rooms -- crawl aimlessly across the dirty rooms, and the bathrooms often have neither running water nor soap.
Unused textbooks haphazardly heaped in the corner of a classroom.
Despite the dire quality of education offered in Ziquiaro’s Junior High, the Progesa plan has been herald as a silver bullet – alleviating poverty as well as improving education across Mexico. While the former is true, the latter is only partially valid for the program has neglected the quality of education in favor of focusing on improving enrollment rates. While the quality of education is hidden behind boasts of “high enrollment rates” and “higher average scholastic attainment levels”, students are suffering as the educational quality is actually decreasing.
According to UNESCO “none of the existing studies are designed to examine the independent and interactive consequences of cash transfers and the quality of education”. I hope to fill this gap with my thesis. My goal is to examine how Progresa has affected the quality of education – and what can be done to improve its hidden faults.
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