For a Country Within Reach of the Children

An excerpt translated from the Gabriel Garcia Marquez essay “For a Country Within Reach of the Children”:

We believe that the conditions exist now more than ever, for change in our societies, and that education shall be the master organ. An education, from the crib to the tomb, that is nonconformist and reflexive, that inspires us to a new way of thinking and incites us to discover who we are in a society that loves itself more. That takes advantage to the maximum extent of our tireless creativity and that conceives an ethic, and possibly an aesthetic, for our unbridled and legitimate thirst for bettering ourselves. That integrates the sciences and the arts to the family breadbasket, in agreement with the designs of a great poet of our time who called for not loving the two separately like two estranged sisters. That canalizes toward life, the immense creative energy that during centuries we have pilfered in depredation and violence, and that opens in the end a second opportunity over the earth that the disgraced lineage of colonel Aureliano Buendía never had. For the prosperous and just country that we dream of: within reach of the children.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Fecode Ends Strike

The Colombian Federation of Educators (Fecode) announced an end to its 10-day-old strike on Friday. The union hopes to start negotiations with the government over planned funding for public education and has threatened to resume the strike if the government refuses to negotiate. Meanwhile, the 280,000 teachers, professors, and staff in Colombia’s public education system are due to return to work on Monday. El Tiempo’s story.

Colombian Educators on Strike

The Colombian Federation of Educators (Fecode) went on strike on May 23, to protest education cuts in the new “Ley de Transferencias”, a proposed law which funds public education in regions outside the national capital Bogota. The director of Fecode, Witney Chávez claims that the law falls “20 trillion pesos” (roughly USD $10.4 million) short of the amount mandated by the 1991 constitution. President Uribe, claiming the new law actually increases spending for public education, has threatened to suspend the educators’ salaries if they continue their strike.

The following Flash presentation describes one of the largest protest marches in Bogota in recent memory, which took place on May 30 in support of the strike. Here is a detailed story from El Tiempo.

Fecode website.