Educate or embed

Published in El Pais, 23 September 2021.

Education is a human right. Schooling education up to the age of 18 is compulsory and further education (technical, university) is optional. But those who decide on a university education, will they really be willing to receive and manage it?

This idea is controversial, but I am going to explain it. In Bolivia, education at the university level is free and does not have any barriers to entry. In many countries, university education is accessible only to those who can and want to study at a higher educational level. For the rest, education at a medium or higher technical level is available. Therefore, the university highlights its teaching with a higher level of abstraction and structuring of thought. Knowing and having the ability to learn well is important because the university is synonymous with research. For students who can’t do this, they may like more of the practical stuff, the applied stuff, no boring theory. For these students, the ideal profile would be to enter careers that do more applications and less theory such as electricity, design, programming, administration, veterinary medicine, health, etc. All the same, but at an applied level.

However, in Bolivia the difference is not made. Many education ministers are afraid of the word discrimination and “right for all” without having understood that putting everyone in the same place and not giving options to what people like and want to do is also an option not to discriminate.

As a consequence, the university in Bolivia shares the training in its technical and university curriculum. All to please the large number of students who do not like theory or research, but still want to access a professional diploma. We have teachers who cannot demand a deepening of theoretical teaching to move on to critical teaching-learning to motivate research. Moreover, many teachers are from the group that does not like theory. Undergraduate and graduate students demand their slides from the teacher so that they do not have to read or study beyond PowerPoint and have to respond to the most practical cases because that is what they do on a day-to-day basis in their jobs and what they require for their life. But does this help companies progress? “There is only progress” if there is critical research thinking. People who repeat what “should be done” will only get what they always get, so no development is generated.

Therefore, we must rethink if we want to continue with the idea of “education is for everyone” that sounds good, but it is not; or to improve the vision towards “an education adapted for each taste and potential”.