Educating for the 21st Century (Part II)

From a respected diversity is born a respectable unity, and education has a great deal to do with this. The Mexican writer argues in the second part of his article that a public project is needed with support from the private sector and motivated by society.

Not by geography, race, size, history or population can Argentina and Bolivia, Mexico and Ecuador, Haiti and Brazil be considered equal. But these differences do not diminish or expand in and of themselves, nor do they forcibly separate us, if we know what to make of the differences, virtue: virtue of propositions that are pluralist, varied and appropriate to different nations and, very often, at great distances within each nation.

Brazil is ‘Belindia’ (a bit of Belgium, a bit of India), the provinces of northern Argentina are not Buenos Aires, and the impoverished and indigenous south of Mexico is not the industrialized and mestizo north that forms a border with the United States. Classic wisdom tells us that from diversity is born true unity. Contemporary experience tells us that respect for differences builds strength, while its denial leads to weakness. And historic memory confirms for us that the crossing of races and cultures is at the origins of the great modern nations.

There is no France that is purely Gallic, nor a Britain that is nationally content because it is inhabited only by druids. Latin America does not have the intelligence or the will necessary to integrate and strengthen its nations by protecting and promoting its cultural pluralism! That this, in the end, should be integrated in the general current of our mestizo identity, and strengthen it and confirm it, furthermore, as the precursor of what will be the mixed and migratory societies of the 21st century. We have an advantage. By this I mean that there is no Latin American education that does not attend to the national and regional idiosyncrasies of the continent.

We can trust that from our respected diversity will be born a respectable unity. The conceptual uniformity for heterogeneous societies has hurt us, has slowed us down and has prevented us from taking advantage of the experience and of the wisdom of alternative cultures in the agrarian, indigenous and, now, urban world of Latin America. United because we are enriched by our differences. The basis and purpose of a Latin American education for the 21st century, it requires, furthermore, a public project that supports it. In its absence, the explosion of demand leads to a low-quality sub-market for the population, one that is highly profitably for its owners. But the public project requires the cooperation of the private sector, which without a public project would end up lacking consumers, as long as it is not conceivable in any part of the world to have greater production without greater education, nor higher levels of purchases without both. But it also requires the support of the third sector, which includes a good part of a country's human capital, and which could be as important as the education it receives and the culture that is valued.

At times, where the bureaucracy is blind, civil society identifies the problems of the ignored village, of the woman who is both a mother and a worker, of the urban neighborhood where "the forgotten ones" of Luis Buñuel live: the 'favela', the shacks, the misery village, the lost city…

And other times, when the private company only warns of the absence of entities, the social sector discovers or invents ways of employing local resources, including the resources for supporting the school where there is no school, for teaching door-to-door if necessary.

Latin American education must be a public project supported by the private sector and driven by the social sector. Its foundations are primary and secondary education, such that no Latin American aged 16 or younger shall leave an empty desk. Its goal is life-long education, that no Latin American shall ever stop learning.

Modern education is a never-ending process. The more educated a Latin American is, the more education needed throughout that person's life. The proof is to offer an education inseparable from the future of work, in a world where technological advances can create unemployment in spite of education. This problem must be resolved through policies of employment redistribution and retraining. This will require novel educational techniques.

But Latin America, a continent of shortages and of fragile foundations, can still provide an example of education for work based on the necessities of the "second nation" of poverty and marginalization. Homegrown education, for the demands of the village, the neighborhood, the isolated area. Education for infrastructure. Education for loans. Education for savings.

All of this requires us to provide the social foundations of Latin America. And education, ultimately, for democracy and in democracy. We have to activate citizen initiatives, municipal life, local solutions to local problems, and all within a formal framework of the division of powers, transparent elections and the accountability of the authorities.

Let us educate Latin Americans to exercise power – not power over others, but rather power with others.

* Carlos Fuentes is a Mexican author and member of Tierramérica's editorial board. This text is the first part of the prologue Fuentes wrote for the book ''Education: Agenda for the 21st Century'' (UNDP/TM).