A Fake Education in Honduras
To remain hopeful, teenagers are only allowed to dream. Why doesn’t Honduras give us a chance to prove our best?
Honduras education system is definitely doing wrong. From first-hand experience, I can tell that we are way long behind on giving the next generations a good sight of the future I have seen the real picture of what a good education is here in the United States. Honduras education system can be a picture as bored and unnecessarily long lessons about cooking that are supposed to be the knowledge for us to succeed for a spot in the country. I spent nine years in the same school because there was no other middle or high school nearby. The real truth is that most of the graduated students cant be able to find jobs for their career certificates and forced them to look for labor work. What’s the reason for spending such amount of money and time when we are getting nothing back? Out of 100 students, only one could be able to pursue a decent life with education, what happens with the rest? Well, one more time, being pulled by reality’s gravity. Sadly, not every school in Honduras has all the commodities for a prosperous educational life and my school was not the exception. Rural and urban schools have a significant gap between them. A low education is pervasive in those areas. Teaching is like when the stone age. kids don’t even know how to turn on a computer because they have never given one. In the opposite side, urban schools still face the lack of resources but this type of education is only accessible for those in rich families, or if they have a change, middle-income families. If we deep even more on this issue, we can find the hiding part of this fake education given to the poorer people.The education system in Honduras is unfair and biased, depriving teenagers of their rights to education, so there must be an education curriculum reform in Honduras.
Poverty itself is the real cause for the lack of education that thousands of teenagers have to face. According to Fernando Yitzack, 60.2 percent of the population live in below the poverty line with 35.9 percent in extreme poverty. This data is troubling because it means that half of the people are living under difficult conditions. How does is this connected with the lack education? This means that most of those people cant even be able to afford public schools for their kids. Families who aren’t able to give their children a decent education because they barely have money to buy their food. The cost of accessible education, the poor quality of education are the reason why parents don’t send their children to school. Another factor that is pushing this issue to be more difficult to understand is the embarrassing salary that teachers are being paid. Let’s have in mind that 1 Lempira=0.06 U.S.$. Teachers from public schools work 31.50 hours per month, giving them a monthly salary of 718.27 Lempiras. Whereas teachers from private schools work a total of 30.90 hours and receive 599,37 Lempiras monthly. What this reflects is that the education system is not meeting teachers exigencies. Bad wages could reflect the reason why kids are receiving a deplorable education quality. Curiously, based on the GDP website, Honduras spends 7.3% of GDP on their education, more than any other country in Central America. This means that additional public spending on education will not improve learning
To diminish lack of education, Honduras education curriculum needs a reform. As you may know, poverty comes from social inequity which is disparities among the wealthier and poorer. Discrimination is the result of these differences. 60 percent of the population is being discriminated by those in power. As consequence, education is the one being affected, educational inequity begins. There is a bigger percentage of rich people; this means there is an unequal distribution of academic resources. This is the reason why schools don’t have enough fundings and have to hire inexperienced teachers. Those communities are known for such disadvantages and oppression. I know that with education we will not escape poverty but at least we will fight it. An education reform will prove the people what the education reality is, there is not a good progress. In order to achieve the effectiveness of education, the reform must: assess teachers teaching standards, analyzing whether the students are learning and developing the right skills to succeed by looking at their improvement in standardized testing scores. The reform should also meet teachers exigencies such as a salary increase and better academic resources. Teachers form part of how well students perform and they should be paid more for their job. The last but most important goal that an education curriculum reform should achieve is making school access more affordable, reducing the high cost of public schools. We don’t want our kids to grow illiterate or barely literate instead of we should offer them unlimited opportunities to learn. Making schools more affordable will make look life changes as a proof of merit and ability. The whole idea here is to give more educational opportunities, to increase productivity. To provide kids, teenagers access to knowledge they should make them feel part of the country wealth creation and the opportunity to prosper.
Even though I have a nice life in the U.S, I don’t like the idea that I was forced to look in another place what my country denied me and for the rest of teenagers working long hours under the sun for a miserable payment. I hope that the right people will take responsibility for repairing the country and give education the best investment they could. Education reform will give such improvement to the thousands of life, acquiring the skills and knowledge, but something that I wish still remains on them is hope for their future.
