Good afternoon everybody.
Today we are going to discuss education,
to what I've dedicated my life.
I've taught at elementary schools,
at Ezeiza's kid's home-school,
at the Maciel island's night school,
later, I was a teacher at the UNESCO for many years,
almost 28 years.
In the last few years, I've come back to my country,
as Director of the International Institute of Educational Planning of UNESCO,
then as Secretary of Education, later as Minister of Education,
where I had the opportunity of participating,
promoting ideas and making proposals
related to the subject we are now here to discuss:
education quality for everyone.
The last chapter of this process
regards to our aims of development in this millennium,
which is worldwide, at an international level.
In the last agreement that was reached
between different governments,
non gubernamental organizations,
the United Nation's agencies,
everyone agrees in that
the goal is to provide good quality education for all.
Today,
in the 21st Century,
this confronts us to new challenges,
and, even when we have our old challenges,
today we are faced with these new ones.
Educating in the 21st Century, providing a good quality education,
involves the need to face the challenge
of learning to learn, for example.
Because things have changed,
and what we've learned in school
or in college, isn't going to serve us for a long time.
We will have to educate ourselves throughout life.
And if this is so,
it means that the big challenge that schools face,
referring to schools in a broad sense,
is to teach the skill of learning,
because that is what we will continue onwards.
Together with this new challenges,
let's admit that we have still a debt
with challenges that belong to the 19th Century.
The goal of making elementary school universal is in the millennium's list.
This is actually a 19th Century objective.
Our country aimed to establish this in 1884, with the Law 1420.
Today, 2010,
we still have
levels that are beneath incomplete elementary school throughout the country.
We have almost 700.000 illiterate people.
Which, I insist, is a goal that should have been met in the 18th Century.
We could say that
we have to face the new goals together with these old ones.
And these challenges, these unpaid debts,
are directly related to the fact
that in our country almost 70% of our youth
does not finish high school timely.
Today high school is mandatory,
because we know, as we did in the 19th Century,
that elementary is the ground level, the basic educational level,
to be able to perform as a citizen,
and in the labor market.
Today, with an incomplete high school education
there is a strong risk of falling into poverty.
The standard has been raised... in this sense,
we now have ahead of us
an important debt to many of our young people,
and in the same way
that we now face major debts
that have to do
with the quality of our education.
For example, all the data
that is gathered from national tests,
when compared to international standards,
show that our results
in language, maths and science,
-the basic pillars of knowledge-
are quite mediocre.
And these poor results
hide huge inequality problems.
Here I've shown only one result,
which is the amount of grade repetition.
But any example you take in the education department
when you analyse it
and you compare it with the social condition
of the students' family
you will find enormous differences.
The poor complete less years of studies,
they tend to desert and quit before time,
and obtain poor marks.
Yesterday, for example,
a newspaper published facts regarding
Internet access.
Children in elementary school,
or people who have completed up to that level,
80% of them don't have access to the internet.
Inequality is one of the
deepest scars
from the educational point of view
that our society has.
All of these facts
are a critical issue if we want a more fair society.
If we don't, they are not a problem.
All of this turns into a problem
if what we aim for is to have a society more fair.
I insist on this.
The idea of wanting
to build a more equal society
is something we must consider.
Because the truth is,
when it comes to rhetoric, we all agree
that we want more just societies,
but then in practice,
in terms of real action,
when it comes to demands,
in terms of what each of us ask for,
the situation changes.
And this is true in the higher levels,
as in the lower ones,
and it has nothing to do with wickedness
or anything of the sort.
I can tell you, for example,
about school directors,
who said to me once:
"How come, Minister? I've been through a lot to kick them out,
and now you bring them back,
and with a scholarship?"
That was when we offered scholarships to kids who had deserted,
in order to get them back to school.
Then,
we have to promote the idea
of a more just society.
And this includes
eliminating poverty, eliminating inequality.
But, how does poverty happen?
Or moreover, how does it reproduce?
Poverty is not an illness,
it's a social phenomenon,
which tends to reproduce itself.
The reproductive cycle of poverty
goes this way
should one be able to frame it:
It begins in a poor family
whose parents are unemployed
or who have badly payed jobs.
They live in a poor house,
they have poor healthcare,
the material conditions they live on are poor.
They have children and they
usually go to a poor school.
Poor for the amount of class hours,
they don't attend school during the whole day,
as children from upper middle class in private schools do.
The schools aren't properly equipped,
the teachers and directors switch constantly,
because no one wants to work permanently in these places.
When the staff is continually changing,
the school is evidently poor,
and it cannot but deliver poor results:
children who have a poor performance, having to repeat or abandon school,
they manage low levels of learning in maths,
all together, with these poor results,
what do they achieve?
They get poor jobs,
with no stability and of low income,
which don't involve complex tasks
and therefore don't require high qualifications,
and pay poor salaries.
These workers start another poor family,
and this is the reproductive cycle of poverty,
which is responsible
for the poverty phenomenon, since so long.
Even when it goes up or down, it's a chronic phenomenon
in the world.
Now, how do we break this cycle?
That's the big question,
and here is where education jumps in.
I can break this circle
if I offer a very high quality education
to boys and girls that come from poor families
which allows them
to enter the working market
and develop as citizens in a different level
and this way, break this circle
that is the cause of poverty's reproduction.
That's why I say that a high quality education for everyone,
is not simply an educational project,
it is an overall social project.
This is not a pedagogic project.
To be successful, it has to be part
of a project that involves the construction of society as a whole.
It is not just education.
Now if I really want to do this,
the big question is: what type of education?
Because its not just any education.
It's not just adding school years.
Here I want to point out four big items:
The first is that we should begin as early as possible,
the first years of life are decisive.
Before they enter school,
there is when the core
of basic cognitive development is formed.
When they reach school, it is not impossible,
of course, to overcome those deficits,
but it is much harder
than working on them during the first years of life.
If you check
the most impressive statistics
of the countries with high levels of education
with high social equality,
are normally Nordic countries,
Finland, Sweden and Norway.
And if we analyze it,
why is it that they do so well,
not compared to us,
but to France, to England, to Germany,
the explanation lies in what they do
before kids enter school,
in the first years of their lives, begining when they are one year old.
They go to institutions that are much more homogeneous than families
and which allow a cognitive and emotional development
which puts them in much better conditions,
and levels them, when they arrive at school.
The second important point of this education
is what it has to do with the quality, the contents.
We have to overcome the literacy deficit
in reading and writing skills, no doubt about it,
but there are two literacies in this 21st century which are also essential:
the scientific literacy and the digital literacy.
Today, a scientific training is citizenship education.
It is no longer something reserved to those
who enjoyed science.
Today, to understand environmental issues,
economic policy issues, etc
requires a scientific literacy.
We need to put this scientific knowledge
among the mandatory levels of education
which is where the world is heading.
And the same thing goes for digital literacy.
It is unthinkable that a 21st century citizen,
might not know how to handle basic information technologies.
Because it's going to happen the same as when printing was invented.
Before that, knowing how to read and write was not necessary
in order to know what was going on.
Then when printing and books started,
literacy appeared like a necessity, and a right.
Today it's the same thing with the digital topic,
it is everyone's right, and if we don't handle it,
if we don't provide digital literacy in a universal way,
we are leaving people out of the information circuit
those who do not have scientific and
digital literacy.
Third factor: teachers.
We need professors comnitted to the results.
We can provide buildings,
equipment, more school hours, more books,
but we all know that in the end
the quality of education is defined by the teachers and the professors.
No country has a better educational quality
than the quality of its teachers and professors.
Here we need to give strong priority
to comprehensive policies for teachers
that result in better working conditions,
better training, better opportunities,
but above all,
policies that allow teachers to enlarge their commitment with results.
So that it's not the same if one student
learns or not.
This is the key of teaching commitment.
And the last factor, is a political factor.
It has to do with the fact that
there are no possibilities
of having successful education policies,
is they are not medium to long term policies.
That is to say that educational policies
should not depend on government periods.
The educational policies require terms
that are not the terms of governments.
That is why it is basic
for society to make a pact with itself,
a big agreement,
with ten-year goals, fifteen-year goals,
and to make a commitment to meet those goals,
whoever is in office at any given time.
This is a fundamental pact
that is necessary on a political level,
not only between political parties.
The parties, the businnessmen,
the trade unions, the churches,
the non-governmental organizations.
It is a social pact.
This is the educational issue as a whole,
the big challenge for us in educational matters,
this is the key element
in order to break the circle of poverty reproduction.
That is why we put so much emphasis,
and much more in the 21st century,
that has put in knowledge and information, the key
to economical development and citizen performance.
Both things.
To make your way in the working market,
in jobs which require technical skills, you have to have an education,
and to be able to participate as a citizen in strong democracies,
it is also essential,
to have an education.
That is why I want to tell you
taking into account all these elements
and factors
and also taking on account some of the talks we heard this morning,
that sadly,
in education there is no "silver bullet"
There is no way of changing just one thing
and solving the problem.
That does not exist.
Poverty is a complex issue,
and systemic.
And that is why it demands systemic strategies.
Education by itself is not going to solve this issue either.
There is work to be done in that front, for sure.
But if that educated person, later on
doesn't find genuine job possitions,
if there isn't a democratic system
that allows him to participate...
We have had this experience in our country already,
if there is but an educational progress,
with no social development,
that sum up into
the construction of a society as a whole,
a society which is just, more caring and more cohesive,
Then there is no "silver bullet",
everything has to be done
the sequence needs to be charted.
Because it is true,
I believe that here we can all agree on the fact that,
although it is difficult,
it is necessary.
It is absolutely necessary,
if we want to build a fair society,
if we want to live together,
in a more dignifying society.
If we don't do this,
we are compromising our future,
because education has a big peculiarity:
it anticipates the future.
If I want a fair society, counting 10, 20 years from now,
I have to have a fair education now, today,
that allows those who become part of the society,
to take their place in it in a more prepared way,
than if we had a mere fragmented and and unequal society.
Then, it is necessary.
And if it is necessary, let me round this up,
then it has to be possible,
we have to make it possible,
all of us together,
assuming the commitment,
each of us from their own scope of action.
Y from yours, you ask, what can you do?
I believe it is essential to increase
the quality of educational demand,
that we have educational demands of a higher quality.
It is unbelievable that we argue over the patio, the bathrooms, or the classroom's roofs.
It is necessary for us to start discussing how we make maths better, or language, or science better.
Those are the issues that we have to solve,
that's why I say that it has to be possible.
Because it is necessary.
And in this, we are all engaged.
Thank you.