By Socialist Workers Party – Colombia
Surprisingly, while the leadership of the teachers’ union FECODE (Federation of Colombian Education Workers) called on us to defend the government’s reforms, we found that after going through the process in the House of Representatives, a draft of the Statutory Law on Education was approved by an absolute majority in the Senate’s First Committee. The authors of the law were María José Pizarro representing the governing party Pacto Histórico, David Luna, and others from Cambio Radical, and some proposals from the Centro Democrático presented by Paloma Valencia. This text is a fatal blow to the aspirations of teachers, students, and parents, who for decades have been fighting for a quality public education with full coverage that includes higher education and three grades of preschool, as a mandatory right of the State.
For teachers in particular, this is a blow that adds to the uneasiness resulting from the problems related to the implementation of the new healthcare model for teachers, and the adverse conditions under which public education is currently being exercised in schools throughout the country.
It is unacceptable that government representatives and its legislators have made a conciliatory agreement with the bourgeoisie that means a huge step backward from what had already been agreed upon in previous decades with Law 115, 715, and Decree 1860. CR and the CD want to put into this law what they did not achieve before in their governments, due to the resistance of the teachers and the educational community. Several of the amendments weaken the financing and strengthening of state public education, favoring private education and demand subsidy policies such as school vouchers, an old aspiration of the sectors that defend the privatization and consequent commercialization of education. Several amendments also strengthen the subordination of education to the interests of the market and capital, to the detriment of science, culture, and the arts. Formal higher education is also weakened with the so-called Tertiary Education that further stimulates the business of universities and vocational institutions with deficient training programs.
It denies the obligatory nature of early childhood education on the part of the State; it opts for the definition of education as a public service, which opens the way to the old aspiration of denying the constitutional right of education workers to negotiate and strike. This is serious because the existing legislation today is ambiguous, since it recognizes education as a right and as a service, but with the amendments the balance is tipped against the right to protest for a sector that has always been at the forefront of fundamental social movements.
The pro-Uribe amendments absurdly deepen the punitive evaluation of teachers by tying teacher evaluation to the results of students on state mandated tests. This restricts even more the right to promotion, deepens the performance evaluation as a mechanism of sanction and repression, ignoring all the factors associated with the results of external tests on students.
In addition, several of the amendments seek to strike a blow to democracy in educational institutions, going back on fundamental issues such as democratic participation in decisions, academic freedom, and democracy for the designation of educational authorities. It is evident the purpose of these amendments is to prevent cases such as the recent struggle at the National University around the election of the rector, which achieved an important victory thanks to the struggle.
The right is not guaranteed by the State, since according to the text, “The responsibility of the State in its guarantee will be in accordance with the competences assigned by the special laws and their regulations, respecting its own systems” that is to say the public, mixed, and private systems. It includes as a guiding criterion for the State: “The recognition of the fundamental right to education does not imply an automatic promotion of students,” that is, recognizing the right does not mean either guaranteeing it or promoting it; that will be the responsibility of the evaluation and selection mechanisms.
In sum, a proposal that came out of FECODE in agreement with the government as a limited response to the demands of the educational movement, has been transformed into an instrument that deepens the neoliberal principles that were enshrined in Law 715 issued by Pastrana, when Juan Manuel Santos was Minister of Finance in 2001. This is a product of the government’s conciliatory policy, that seeks to approve its projects at all costs. What it achieves as a result is a major setback in the defense of public education, democracy in schools, and the rights of teachers.
From Unidad Docente PST we insist on what we have stated before: there is no statutory law or educational reform that will work, until we first get rid of law 715 and its regulatory decrees that have made the educational counter-reform that has been imposed on us possible.
In the face of the call for a strike by FECODE and the massive rejection of the amendments accepted by the government and its legislators, Minister Vergara insists on maintaining the current project at all costs, proposing, in the face of discontent, that the law will be implemented as planned. The right-wing opposition, led by Luna and Paloma Valencia, have warned that they refuse to go back on their amendments. This means asking educators to debate on the incorporated amendments, which in practice means a limited intervention that may make minor qualifications to some of the harmful formulations of this bill. This leaves no other alternative but to maintain the strike and extend the struggle to the entire educational community and the university movement until we sink this bill.
The way forward is the construction of a true educational reform as a whole, democratically built from the grassroots, that puts an end to all neoliberal legislation, strengthens free public and state education at all levels, and provides urgent and in-depth answers to the educational problems of the country. We have to remain independent as workers and demand that our union leadership not lift the strike without consulting the rank and file. We have already learned from experience that nothing good has ever come for those at the bottom out of the agreements with the capitalists at the top. We have to trust in our independent mobilization, if we win or lose with it, let it be our decision and not a decision imposed by governance agreements.
TEACHERS’ UNITY – SOCIALIST WORKERS’ PARTY
