Nicaragua- Following Haiti’s Footsteps
Poverty in Nicaragua is in close proximity to Haiti, being the second poorest country in the Americas. With poverty comes high dropout rates in schools and high child labor, which all go hand-in-hand. According to Nina Lakhani, there is about 6 million people in Haiti of which 2 million are school-aged children, because Nicaragua has the largest youth bulge in Latin America. Half of these adolescence are said to be living in poverty.
There is a vast array of reasons there are kids covering the Nicaraguan streets during the school hours, which range from boredom to getting kicked out because of teen pregnancy. What I see,however, is an underlying infrastructure issue that can be looked at through the eyes of Durkheim. Just as my Midterm 2 shows how education reform in Haiti can lead to education as a social institution that brings betterment to the society, so does Nicaragua have a similar opportunity. I think that framing education in Nicaragua as a platform that teaches children skills that can be directly applied to their everyday lives, can greatly benefit the society as a whole. Maybe Nicaraguan students should not be learning the same things that would be seen in a similar school in Panama, but Nicaragua should be looked at as its own entity.
There is question of whether the government of Nicaragua should push toward lowering drop out rates for secondary school. This question, in my opinion, is not a significant one considering there is scarily low retention rates for primary grades. Rather than deciding which grade level the reformation efforts should target, I think it would be more beneficial to look at the root cause of both. The reasons to drop out of school outweigh the ones to stay in school, and this is the problem.
According to the article, child labor is a major concern for Nicaragua. If students learn applicable job-related skills in the classroom, then once they enter the workforce, they can actually work in position that are safe and healthy. There is a need for reform, but the effectiveness of policy reform may be superseded by a transformation of classroom materials to better cater toward the Nicaraguan youth’s needs.
-Alexis Laggren
