Page 108 - EW November 2023

International News

a radical review of research design, including questions,
indicators and scales used, she says.
“The team realised the scales normally used had been
designed to make conservatives look more authoritarian, so
they looked at the 50 tests available and discarded all but
one of them. It also eliminates practices where people will
run 120 analyses and report the results of only a fraction
of them — those that support their hypothesis. If you’re
designing a study and you decide to set it up to produce
certain results, a moderating voice will say, ‘No — that’s not
going to fly,’” says Dr. Clark.

MEXICO
Textbooks rewriting anger

TEXTBOOKS OFTEN CAUSE CONTROVERSY. President Obrador: full advantage
Parents object to what they teach children about
sex. History can be ideologically charged. Maps work for Hugo Chávez, that country’s late left-wing dictator.
sometimes provoke anger in neighbouring countries. But A guide for teachers urges them to ask themselves whether
rarely have textbooks caused such an uproar as in Mexico, they are “oppressed or an oppressor”.
when the government issued new books for the start of the The new textbooks are also full of mistakes. One suggests
school year on August 28. The governors of several states that herbal tea can treat Covid-19. Another puts a Mexican
refused to distribute them. Parents have burned them. state in the wrong place on a map; another gets the birth-
Mexico is among the few countries in which the national date of Benito Juárez, a 19th century president wrong.
government produces approved textbooks for all schools — Teachers have received little training for the new con-
public and private. Cuba, North Korea and Nicaragua, all tent. That’s not surprising, since López Obrador has slashed
dictatorships, are among the others. Mexico began its policy the budget for teacher training, from 1,644 pesos ($88) per
in 1959, saying that obliging schools to use the same books, teacher per year in 2016 to just 85 pesos today. “I had to do
and providing them free, would help reduce inequality in a lot by myself and still have many questions,” says Vianney
a stratified society. Most six- to 15-year-olds study in the Narváez, a history teacher.
public system: some 21.5 million compared with just 2.7 The President has weakened education in other ways. On
million in private schools. taking office in 2018, he reversed a reform by the previous
When the state writes textbooks, the government can im- government that curbed the power of the teachers’ union
pose its ideology on schools. That has been especially true and introduced performance reviews. He disbanded a body
since 1980, when the education ministry took over direct re- that evaluated the quality and performance of public educa-
sponsibility for writing the books from a semi-independent tion (there are no plans to assess his new curriculum). His
body (which now prints them). government does give out more scholarships than the previ-
It is perhaps no surprise that Mexico’s populist presi- ous one did, but they help children attend badly perform-
dent, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, is taking full ad- ing schools. Some parents send their children to fee-paying
vantage of the opportunity. He sees himself as a transfor- schools as soon as they have enough money. Schooling is
mational leader, and textbooks are a cheap way to bring “really so basic”, says Julia Arlette Huerta, who wants to
about big changes. This year, the fifth of his six-year term, move her eight-year-old to a private school.
he has introduced a shake-up of the curriculum, textbooks A debate that is still to be held is “whether the govern-
included, that he calls the “New Mexican School”. Mexico ment should be writing the textbooks at all”, says Euge-
needs education reform. It performs poorly on PISA, an nia Roldán, of Cinvestav, a research body on education.
international test of the reading, maths and science skills Private schools have long ignored the official textbooks,
of 15-16-year-olds. But experts doubt that the New Mexican which means prosperous and poor children have not been
School is what the country needs. learning the same things. The new curriculum and books
More contentiously, students will now be schooled in are likely to increase the inequality that uniform textbooks
President Obrador’s ideology. The books denounce indi- sought to lessen. For a government whose motto is “first the
vidualism, capitalism and ‘neoliberalism’, which allegedly poor”, that would be a failure.
“has eliminated worker gains”, says one. They extol the
president’s pet building projects, including a museum and
an airport in Mexico City. One of the officials who directed (Excerpted and adapted from The Economist and Times
the textbooks’ composition is a Venezuelan who used to Higher Education)

108 EDUCATIONWORLD NOVEMBER 2023