C’mon diegomonlava@gmail.com . . . even MND has an article about this election year being the MOST VIOLENT . . . even in Chiapas a town of locals fled for their safety from Cartel violence, and with the Mexican military not convincing the people that the town folks will be safe . . .

with all due respect, yet you left off the noun CARTEL in your elequent quote . . . subject violence is sourced directly from Cartel expansion, and thanks to “Fast & Furious” USA weaponry . . . just my opinion

Yes!

I love your intelligent response! You made some very important and good points.

I’ve lived in Mexico for 50 years. I was a teacher and school director here for many years. Actually, all Mexican children are mandated to attend school through secundaria (grades 7-9) but many do not get that far because they need to work to help support their families. Let’s talk about public schools.
Teachers in primary school (grades 1-6) are usually “normalistas”, i.e. they are prepared to be teachers in normal schools, which give the equivalent of a high school education. So a primary teacher starting out is probably not even 20 years old and probably not that much older than their students and definitely not well-educated or trained enough to be able to properly teach. Add to this the enormous class sizes of 40, 50 and even 60 kids, lack of teaching materials, poor salaries, inadequate physical plants and a watered down curriculum and it is no wonder that so many Mexican students are poorly prepared for any form of higher education such as preparatoria (high school- grades 10-12) or university. Many normalistas go on to become secundaria teachers and specialize in a field, i.e. social studies, math, Spanish language arts, etc., and must have a BA or BS in order to teach at that level. Many of them teach while getting their degree, which can take a while as they are studying part time. So again, they are underprepared and underpaid for what they are teaching and again are faced with huge class sizes, a watered down curriculum and thousands of physical plants in dire need of repair. On the preparatoria level, most teachers are professional people but not necessarily professional teachers, so you’ll find lawyers teaching social studies and Spanish; engineers, some with their own businesses, teaching science and math courses and english teachers who have a university degree but are not only not native English speakers but don’t speak it well enough to teach it. Again, add to this poor salaries and a poorly designed curriculum and the result is less than optimum which is why if they can afford it, most Mexican families send their kids to private schools where the results are better.

Might be a good idea to address Mexico’s poorly performing educational system. Of course, keeping the majority of Mexicans undereducated benefits AMLO’s political party. One of his first acts was to tear up a long sought and hard fought educationial reform. It seems it was too much to ask that Mexico’s teachers be expected to be able to read and write. I live in Mexico and have for 20 year, prior to that I’ve been a regular vistitor since 1974. By law, Mexicans must go to school for 6 years. Many, many times, I’ve seen adult Mexicans need help identifying their seating on airplanes because they could not recognize letters or numbers. My wife has frequently come to the aid of befuddled passengers staring at their boarding passes and the informational displays in airports. I love the Mexican people (or I wouldn’t be living here) and have always found them to be quick witted, intelligent and creative. it has been my opinion for many years that the maing thing holding Mexico back is the educational system.

agree