EDUCATION-LATIN AMERICA: Books not Bombs, says Arias

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, May 6 1998 (IPS) - Latin America has no choice but to cut military spending and increase investment in education if it wants to develop and become more competitive, said Oscar Arias, 1987 Nobel Prizewinner and former president of Costa Rica.

Six percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of each country needs to be spent on education and children should be offered an obligatory 12 years of schooling, not leaving until they are 16 years old, added Arias.

The average length of schooling in Latin America today is between six and seven years, said Miguel de la Madrid, former president of Mexico who, like Arias, was in Rio de Janeiro from Monday to Tuesday at the annual meeting of the Interaction Council, a forum of 27 former governors from all over the world.

This prioritisation of education in the region was formally affirmed during the Summit of the Americas in Santiago, in April, where the aim was set to universalise primary education by 2010 throughout Latin America, said Arias.

His fear is that this will become “another unfulfilled aim” demoralising the people even further, and making “Latin America” remain a continent of day-labourers in the 21st century.”

Higher levels of schooling are “the only path which can ensure competivity,” argued the former leader of Costa Rica, a country which recently amended its Constitution to give six percent of the GDP to public education.

The educational situation in Latin America is “shameful,” he said. The school year is only 170 days long, and totals a mere 300 hours in the rural zones of various countries, while it is closer to 250 days in Southeast Asia.

And Latin America does not spend less on education than Asia, but its priorities are wrong. While 90 percent of funds go into preschool, primary and secondary education in Asia, higher education takes 40 percent of the budget in Latin America.

Thus the studies of the better off are better funded, increasing inequality which is already the worst in the world. In Latin America, the richest 20 percent of the population is 18 times richer than the poorest 20 percent, an index which reaches 32 times in Brazil.

One of the possible alternatives for increasing education spending is to reduce military spending, another favourite issue of the man who was president of a nation which abolished the armed forces 50 years ago.

To demonstrate the damage caused by the arms trade, Arias stressed that 85 percent of the weapons exported from the United States, the leading world arms seller, in the last four years, had gone to non-democratic governments in the developing nations.

According to the United Nations Education Science and Culture Organisation (UNESCO), investment in public education in Latin America has grown from 3.8 percent of the GDP in 1980, to 4.5 percent in 1994.

But this is still lower than the 5.1 percent of the developed countries and is concentrated at the university level. Per pupil spending in 1992 was around 252 dollars in primary education, and 5.9 times as much, 1,485 dollars, in higher education.

Up until now, greater investment has not meant greater efficiency, according to a newspaper survey in eight South American countries, coordinated by Brazil’s ‘Zero Hora.’

Brazil has the highest level of investment, at 4.85 percent of GDP, and the worst performance indicators, with 15.6 percent illiteracy from the age of 15 onwards and only 29.5 percent of the economically active population having completed primary school, falling behind poorer countries like Ecuador and Peru.

Another study by the World Bank, stated Brazil and Haiti rank last in Latin America and the Caribbean, with barely 1 percent of pupils completing year six of primary school without repeating a year.

In any case, this country, like the rest of the region, is now show aware of the dire need to improve their teaching in order to confront the international competivity demanded by economic globalisation and technological advances.

As well as the commitment to the aim set at the Summmit of the Americas, at least 16 Latin American nations are promoting educational reforms, said a commission of business leaders and experts meeting under the auspices of the Interamerican Development Bank and North American development agencies.

The report warns that Latin America and the Caribbean are “putting the future at risk,” given the poor quality of public education, which deals with 80 percent of students.

Only half its pupils finish primary education compared with 95 percent in South Korea and Malaysia, and 70 percent in China. And only a third of Latin American youths attend secondary school, compared with 80 percent in Southeast Asia.