Thread: CIS: Jerry Kammer blogs on Education in Mexico

http://www.cis.org/kammer/dresser

Denise Dresser on Education in Mexico
By Jerry Kammer, November 13, 2009


Those who are concerned about economic development in Mexico and the country's ability to provide job opportunities to keep its people at home will find a sobering analysis by Mexican political scientist Denise Dresser in the current edition of the Mexican magazine Proceso.

Dresser has written a powerful critique of her country's educational system, which "does not allow Mexico to compete and talk and relate to the rest of the world." She writes that the public schools produce "apathetic young people, trained to obey instead of act, to memorize instead of question; trained to accept problems instead of solve them." She laments that Mexico has become "incapable of constructing trampolines for the social mobility that would permit a jump from the tortilla factory to software design." In the face of such a systematic failure, the result of political forces that the government has been unable to reform, one has to wonder how much could be accomplished by the massive foreign aid that some immigration analysts want the U.S. to provide.

Mexico needs to have the DREAM Act candidates return there to help accelerate development. We have financed their education and the best most generous thing we as Americans can do is send them home.