Saboted education and other paradoxes of the governments of left in Uruguay: towards a government change?

Abstract

Public, secular and free education has been one of the pillars on which Uruguay has been built since the end of the 19th century. However, the census data of 1963, showed an unknown reality: public education did not reach the entire population and only half of the adult population had finished primary school. Since then, coverage has been expanded, but paradoxically, at a much slower pace than the rest of Latin American countries. In this context, leftist governments were expected to give a new impetus to education. In fact, the educational budget increased from 2.8% to more than 5%, the teaching salary doubled in real terms, the building facilities improved and the number of students per class felt. However, the results do not improve. only one third of young people complete secondary education. From a brief historical account, two symbolic universes that have structured the speeches of the left and the right in the last decade in Uruguay will be examined, in particular reference to education. We will argue that the answer to the educative question is given by paradoxical confluence between the practical effects of a discourse from the left, which seeks to impose its devalued vision of education with conservative consequences, on one hand, and, on the other, an authoritarian right discourse, and yet victimist which says it wants to restore - along with aspects of the traditional symbolic order that the left has managed to reverse - the importance of public education at all levels.