The Education in the Dominican Republic: core problems and some possible solutions
When asked about the Dominican Republic, many will remember that country as a huge tourist attraction. Its beautiful beaches housed in the Punta Cana province are vibrant, brimming with the welcoming culture fomented in the country. However, that is just one of the faces of the Dominican Republic. For the Dominican populace, there have been many issues, from economic problems to daily life issues. That said, one of the more complex and curious problematics this country showcases is the all-round educational problem it presents.
According to Harold Vazquez in his 2013 article “How to improve the Dominican Educational system?”, He mentions that the main issue is that most students receive public education (Which is of low standard throughout the country). This problem also stems from several issues, such as bad installations for said public schools, teenage pregnancies, accessibility to potable water, and many, many more issues that have yet to be touched.
Another of the main issues of public education in the Dominican Republic is the reduce of students assisting higher-level classes. Most children start taking primary education at the age of six, where they proceed to take six years of elementary education. Sadly, that is where most of the country’s citizens stay. Around thirty percent less of students graduate middle school education and even less graduate high school to go to study at college. It is so low that the Dominican Republic is considered the Fifth country in Latin America to have the least graduated students of over the ages of twenty-five to twenty-nine.
Linked to these two issues is the lack of sexual educational knowledge and facilities in public schools. UNICEF expresses that a central concern in public schools is teenage pregnancy, were an astonishing twenty-two percent of teenagers between the ages of fifteen and nineteen are or have been pregnant. Pregnancies are the most prevalent in the provinces of Pedernales and Azua, where the percentage of teenage pregnancies is 35.1% and 36.9% respectively. The teenage pregnancies were the cause of several educational and social problems in the country, especially the problem mentioned above, as most of the female students need to leave school for them to take care of their children.
These are just several of the main issues plaguing the country, but according to another article published by the famous and local newspaper outlet, Listin Diario, The Ministry of Education of the Dominican Republic (referred to as MINERD), confirms that thirteen thousand problematics are surrounding the education of the country.
Some of the higher priority ones the article mentioned were the lack of accessibility to portable water and the building o infrastructures to foment student education further. The lack of potable water is in it a problem not only affecting the educational sector but also the country as a whole. Most of the rivers in the country are in a critical state, as most of them are contaminated with lead, copper, and arsenic, to name a few. There is also the fact that the rest of the rivers are in a drought, leading to massive losses of the water reserves in the country, especially to the poor sectors of the country that house the public schools.
As for the infrastructures, many have considered that the essential buildings, such as sports facilities, libraries, or computer labs, have not been modernized for public schools. This issue goes in detriment of the newer generations, as they are left to use old and outdated methods to find new information, while also trying to search for it through the limited books the school offers. There is also the fact that the conditions of the school facilities keep deteriorating significantly, as many of the school buildings are not maintained properly. The concrescence of poor maintenance leads to an unsafe environment for learning and a more natural way for diseases and sickness to spread to the students and staff.
Still, as vast as these problematics are, the investments placed upon the education of the country started movements. By law, 4% of the country’s GDP must go towards investing in the education of the country. At first, it was an issue. By 2017 More than half, since it was not followed through. As off 2017, the GDP has gone to the pays of the employed teacher, rising to 3.93% invested towards improving education.
Future references have been taken to improve the education of the country for further distances. MINERD has started taking the educational issues at hand and slowly implement new regulations. One of these regulations is the change of the school curriculums during the school year of 2016–2017. The regulation changed the classwork-exam system that all schools used in favor of a more practice-rigor based system. The changes have not taken effect as they are still relatively new, estimating that they will improve the graduation rate of high school students.
There are also other ways to tackle the enormous problem that is the education in the Dominican Republic. The first possible solution, and in a way, the simplest one, is the teenage pregnancies. The lack of proper sexual education and the lack of medical facilities has hastened the number of teenage pregnancies in the country. To combat this, there only one solution. The first one is to foment the betterment and teaching of sexual education for the students during middle school. It is only through teaching adequate knowledge and spreading it, to combat the problem at hand.
To strengthen the teaching of proper sexual education, the public schools should have medical facilities available for the students to use. The availability of the medical facilities should also correlate with the capabilities of the staff present to manga the facility, for if any occurs during school hours, students can be attended with the proper help, and if not to help defer to proper hospitals. This measure is to ensure safety and to have proper medical care, while also having professionals that can impart the appropriate knowledge on human biology
By solving the lack of sexual educational knowledge, we can start solving up the ladder of problems. The first one to come up with that can start to mend with this solution is the reduction of students assisting in classes at higher levels of education. Researchers prove that by teaching students proper sexual education, it will reduce the level of teenage pregnancies. The fewer teenage pregnancies there are, the more students can attend the higher-level classes, which will lead to an increment in the students that can graduate from high school and go to college.
Likewise, by inverting into purifying water, the accessibility to potable water will increase. Purifying the water will lead to seeing students in a healthier state, as access to the use of potable water would be more widespread not only to the public schools but to the houses of the students too. This change will undoubtedly increase the number of students who can attend school while creating a safer environment for them to go and attend school.
Another possible solution to another one of the problems is the infrastructural problems. A possible way to solve this problem is to invest part of the money allocated to the educational sector into renovating the buildings. This economic capital can also be used to start the modernization of public schools by starting to build computer labs and libraries. There should also be some money used to stock the libraries of up to date informational books for the students.
The maintaining the school buildings and modernization of the schools through updated libraries and computer labs gives two direct effects: The first effect is that it motivates the students to start attending as they gain more than what they feel they can lose. If the students are motivated to learn, then they will dramatically improve the overall graduation rates. The second effect is that they gain a safer place with the maintained school building. If they gain a place that is not only modernized but at the same time is stable, then they feel as if they gain a new place to go.
For now, The Dominican Republic’s education problem will continue to come, and the people of the country will continue to address them in the best way they can. It is through time and effort that they will solve the problems the education of the country, even if it linked to many other problems the country suffers from, like water contamination throughout the rivers of the Dominican Republic. However, one thing is sure: steps are being made to solve the problematics facing this vital sector of the country. They will try and solve, even if it is the slow process of solving them one by one.
