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<h1><b>Uribe the
Teacher</b></h1><font size=3>
<a href="http://www.narconews.com/Issue47/article2814.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.narconews.com/Issue47/article2814.html</a><br><br>
<br>
</font><h2><b>A Few Things the Colombian President Forgot to Mention in
His Speech in New York Last Week on Education<br><br>
</b></h2><h3><b>By Laura Del Castillo Matamoros<br>
Managing Editor, Narco News</b></h3><font size=3>October 4, 2007<br><br>
<b>BOGOTA:</b> Last Thursday, one of the great luminaries of contemporary
Latin American thought graced New York’s Sharaton Hotel with his
presence. The occasion was the Clinton Global Initiative’s annual
conference, led by ex-president Bill Clinton, that same philanthropic
figure who devised one of the noblest initiatives in the history of
social, military and economic aid that a great power has ever offered an
underdeveloped country: Plan Colombia.<br><br>
We are speaking, kind readers, of nothing more and nothing less than the
philosopher-president Alvaro Uribe Vélez, who, with his speech at the
September 27 forum on education in conflict and post-conflict zones, has
reached a new milestone in reflection on the education problems facing
Colombia.<br><br>
What follows is the brilliance with which the president left the
auditorium stunned:<br><br>
</font>
<dl>
<dd>“In my country we have a great obstacle to education: illicit drugs.
That is why we need to eradicate illicit drugs, because terrorist groups
force rural families to cultivate coca and not to send their children to
school.”<br><br>
</i>
</dl>Of course. Why didn’t it occur to anyone sooner? All the experts on
the subject have been wrong: the problems in education lie not in the
lack of opportunities, nor in economic inequalities, nor in the lack of
resources that the state provides to public schools and universities. No,
President Uribe hit the nail on the head. The problem of education is
another product of the great evil of the contemporary world:
coca.<br><br>
This concern over the country’s educational situation was what brought
Uribe to the United States last week, hoping to meet up with his old
friends and win over some of the holdouts in the Democratic party.
Fortunately, many ended up seeing Colombia from a new perspective, as a
country where there is really no “armed conflict” or “civil war,” where
there are <a href="http://www.narconews.com/nmonth0900.html">no more
paramilitaries</a> but rather guerrillas and drug traffickers, as the
president claimed on Thursday before the UN General Assembly. These are
more than enough reasons for one to realize that the president has done
nothing but guard the country’s future; a future in which foreign
multinational corporations play a deciding role (many of them, in return
for tax breaks, create foundations that give notebooks to poor kids).
This is why we must fight those terrorists, who don’t let the
corporations work as comfortably as they deserve. And for that to happen,
more resources are needed so that the second phase of Plan Colombia can
happen. That way, everybody wins. It is truly incredible that some
resentful people go through the trouble to question the social component
of this project.<br><br>
In fact, today new and innovative pedagogical learning models are being
built, led by soldiers from the Colombian army. In many rural areas of
the country, it is quite common for military troops, funded by Plan
Colombia, to commandeer school buildings as security checkpoints,
temporary barracks or shelters to protect themselves from the terrorists.
Surely, Uribe must have been proudly thinking about such actions when he
spoke at the conference of how important it is for children to cultivate
values like living within a community and solving problems peacefully. In
Colombia, despite the tension it might provoke, the army doesn’t hesitate
to approach children through recreational activities. Just look, kind
readers, at this moving story, taken from the Prensa Rural website, and
which clearly shows how harmonious the coexistence is between the troops
of the army’s 15th Brigade and the children who live in the municipality
of El Tarra (department of Norte de Santander):<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>“…That same day (August 18, 2007), at 9 pm, in the village of El
Milagro in the municipality of El Tarra, Mrs. Ofelia Oscuro sent her
three children to the local school. At the school, troops from the 15th
Mobile Brigade set up a military checkpoint. When the children arrived,
the soldiers forced them to remove their cloths, verbally mistreated them
and finally did not let them continue into the school to receive classes
normally, but rather sent them home after these outrages. The oldest of
the children was just 10 years old.”<br><br>
</i>
</dl>And if the children can’t go to school due to the fighting, no
problem. The Colombian Army is always willing to make it up to them with
fun activities like excursions to military bases, with sweet incentives,
supported by the government. Activities like Club Lancita (in military
jargon, a diminutive form of “lanza,” a work many soldiers use to refer
to their comrades), or practical training sessions where the children are
prepared to serve as informants in their own communities. Of course, the
non-governmental organizations, devoted to dirtying the good image of the
armed forces, criticize activities like these that complement rural
children’s education. Just read this article from last year by the
Coalition Against the Involvement of Children in the Colombian Armed
Conflict, to get an idea of how they complain.<br><br>
It seems like these activists are unable to understand that in a country
like this one – where there is no “conflict,” just “terrorist attacks” –
fear and shock therapy can become great didactic learning tools. And
that’s not to mention that these activities aim to convert those peasant
children into the soldiers of tomorrow. One must realize that in the long
term, just like in natural selection, only those who deserve to enter
university (that is, those who can pay for it) will be able to. In that
sense, those children out there don’t have many options. And so the best
thing is for them to continue educating themselves as adults in our armed
forces, conveniently defending the interests of those luckier than them.
In this way, we will be able to live in harmony and, while we’re at it,
avoid them turning into social leadera, trade unionists or other such
communist abominations.<br><br>
I should add that with these activities, the armed forces help children
to remain optimistic amid the offensive against terrorism, like all the
good Colombians who believe in the government. Not like those foreign
organizations, who only see the dark side of everything. Just look at
this quote that accompanies a drawing of an upside-down pig that the
psychologists of something called the Ecuadorian Inter-Institutional
Committee had Diego Maldonado – a boy who lives on the border with
Ecuador – do as they were carrying out a study on the supposed damage
that fumigations cause in that part of the country:<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>“My piggy died and I loved him very much. He was going to help me buy
a uniform so I could go to school. Whoever reads this and sees my
drawing, please help me finish elementary school. All the plants and
animals are gone and nothing’s left.”<br><br>
</i>
</dl>Poor boy! He’s been traumatized. All right, the government just
recently concluded that the fumigations strategy was not as effective as
had been thought and causes some minor damage to the environment. But one
must look at the positive side of things: for example, in this particular
case, if the pig dies, he can go work in the school garden. If the
fumigations destroy the school gardens, they can plant them again, and if
the boy gets sick from the herbicide sprays, well, let him put some
effort into getting better and getting back to cultivating vegetables and
raising animals so that he can study. It’s all a lesson in perseverance
and tenacity – another way that Plan Colombia supports rural
education.<br><br>
But of course, the non-governmental organizations, the infamous “NGOs,”
try to convince the poor that they should complain and promote
underdevelopment. If they keep at it, Colombia is going to turn into
another nation of bums, just like all the countries pulled down by
Marxism, where education is free for all, where everyone follows the law
of least effort. Fortunately, the presidents understands well that in a
democratic country, education is an investment, not a public service, as
he stated at Clinton’s conference:<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>“People should know that democracy provides opportunity for them to
raise their social level. And the way that those people can raise their
social level is education. In addition to that, education creates
opportunities for more productivity, more competitively, and more
income.”<br><br>
</i>
</dl>“Those people” don’t understand a thing, and even want to turn their
children into enemies of the state. Later on, those children can’t be
stopped, and they begin to turn to subversive acts like the National
Strike for the Defense of Public Education that took place last May. The
situation was nearly out of control: classes were suspended in schools
and universities for a month and a half. High school and college students
occupied public educational facilities, and many teachers stopped giving
classes and went out into the streets. All in protest of the cut in
“transfers” (national funds sent to pay for regional public services) and
the measures taken in the National Development Plan (including a cut in
pension payments for university professors, forcing the universities
themselves to assume the costs).<br><br>
Fortunately, the Colombian government has experienced pedagogical teams
in place to put a stop to all this ignorance: the ESMAD (Spanish initials
for the National Police Mobile Antiriot Squad). They made sure to put
“those people” back in their place in the only way it can be done: with a
firm hand. Just read this fine example of coexistence from a communiqué
of the District Educators’ Association, published in those days when the
dangerous and uncultured masses tried to destroy the nation’s
order:<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>“… police squads under presidential orders, without warrants or prior
accusations, violently invaded educational institutions using teargas,
jumping over walls, breaking down doors and intimidating everyone present
in which ongoing assemblies were being held, and proceeded to evict the
students by force, amid protests by defenseless neighbors. Several youths
were injured in the course of these events and had to be
hospitalized.”<br><br>
</i>
</dl>The above occurred in one of the high schools occupied by its own
students protesting the mediocrity, lack of resources and despotism that,
they claim, are common in such institutions. Poor little things, surely
they were being – as President Uribe said at the time – “manipulated by
political interests,” because the children and youth of Colombia cannot,
of course, think for themselves.<br><br>
Maybe the pedagogues of the ESMAD were a little rough on them, but “those
people” have to learn to appreciate what they have. How is it possible
that they don’t know of the great sacrifice the government makes when it
invests 20 percent of the United States’ generous aid to this country in
social and economic programs, reducing the funds for eliminating
terrorists (who surely must be leading those protests) and for the war on
drugs to 80 percent – especially when the drugs are the real culprits in
the educational crisis the country suffers?<br><br>
The chapter on the Colombia’s educational situation in the report Lifting
the Curse</i> (Desaher el embrujo</i>, published last year by the
<a href="http://www.narconews.com/Issue31/article881.html">Colombian
Platform on Human Rights, Democracy and Development</a>) recognizes that
the educational coverage for young children rose from 82 percent in 2002
to 88 percent in 2005. But despite this, as President Uribe would put it
in one of his famous sayings – “instead of contributing, they have to
criticize.” For the dissidents, the rise in coverage means nothing as
long as the family is often unable to pay the costs of transportation,
school supplies, lunches and uniforms. How can they be incapable of
paying those nearly symbolic costs? The problem lies in the fact that
they don’t know how to invest their money (they spend it all on food). As
such, they don’t want to progress, compete, or rise socially. That is the
real problem and one of the causes of the country’s
underdevelopment.<br><br>
Ahh, yes. And they also complain in this report about the supposed lack
of investment in quality</i> education. What do they want? For the public
schools to have the same level of teachers as the private schools, where
children really are educated with the goal of productivity and
competitiveness? Please – that kind of advanced education is a privilege
only for the children of the good families that have written the history
of this country in the color red. Those same children who will study in
the best universities of the United States and Europe when they grow up,
in order to come back later to Colombia and assume their positions of
power. The other children, the ones who, politically and economically
speaking, are the sons and daughters of nobody; the only thing they
really need to learn is to read and write, in order to vote for the
others come election time. And for that, there is no need for investment
in “quality” education.<br><br>
President Uribe definitely could not have explained any better how the
education system works in Latin America’s oldest democracy. Surely, after
the conference he was able to share a moment with President Clinton to
remember the old times, when Plan Colombia was nothing more than an idea
what would one day guarantee an education for both men’s grandchildren at
Harvard, Oxford, Princeton or whichever one of those universities, where
their children’s children can and deserve to end up… especially when this
war between the ignorant shows no signs of letting up any time
soon.<br><br>
<br><br>
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