Education: It's not a lack of knowledge that's a stake, but a lack of power

30.08.08

Joanne Crouch
International Peace Observatory

Education in Colombia is one of the many rights written into Colombian law. It is supposedly free and is obligatory for all children up to the age of 16. The state is supposed to enforce this law and ensure access. In much of rural Colombia, however, the state is absent and fails to fulfill its obligation to provide an education to all. The right to education is not just a human right – something to benefit the individual –– but a means of social change, of power. In all societies education has been of paramount importance, one of the most basic aspects of both one’s personal development and the development of society at large. The consequences of the Colombian government’s shortcomings are not just a population with a lower level of education and capacity, but the perpetuation of the unequal distribution of power.

With 20 – 30 percent of the Colombian population living in rural communities, a substantial part of its society is being deprived of a formal education and, more importantly, the capacity to participate in the political process.

Lack of access, limited resources and often a lack of teachers are the major reasons for rural Colombia’s limited education system. If a community has a school, often it is only up to primary level, and the buildings are in a poor, dilapidated condition. Many times, communities themselves take responsibility for maintaining the buildings and furniture, taking money away from what little funds they have available. The money often comes directly from the parents of the children who use the school.

Should a community be fortunate enough to have a school building, that is not necessarily to say that there will be a teacher. In the Catatumbo region of northeastern Colombia, for example, we passed numerous schools where there was either no teacher, or where the townspeople themselves paid the teacher directly.

In nearly every rural area where the International Peace Observatory works, children’s education depends on the initiative of the communities themselves to organize and implement some form of school system. In the Magdelena Medio region, the Campesino Associaction of the Cimitarra River Valley (ACVC) carried out an exhaustive study to determine how many communities were lacking schools and teachers. They were then able to successfully petition the local government to fulfill it’s obligations. Without the ACVC’s work, who knows how much longer the campesinos would have gone on without access to one of the most fundamental rights.

Just getting to school can be difficult. Some children have to walk an hour or more to reach school in the morning. The environment there is challenging, with children of all ages and capabilities in the same class. The teacher has to divide his or her time between them. The schooling process is therefore slow with many children at the age of 11 still in the third grade. In Colombian cities, 11-year-old children would usually be at grade 6.

Even if a child has the opportunity to attend and graduate from primary school, the progression to secondary becomes even tougher. In all of the rural communities I have visited, the presence of a secondary school is virtually unknown. Only in the larger towns far from the farming communities can we find secondary schools. As such, sending a child to obtain a secondary education becomes a significant challenge. Many families rely on extended family networks in the urban centers to accommodate their children if they do get sent. Those who do go are part of a privileged few.

From here however, the prospects of progressing to university are close to nil. Places in public universities are in high demand, as there are so few of them. University is furthermore a huge financial expense. The rural communities are already immensely poor; to have sufficient funds available to send a child to university is a luxury virtually unheard of. When the immediate benefits of a high level of education in the farming communities are so few, higher education is rarely given priority over the basic necessities of providing for one’s family.

But despite these challenges, there is a far greater obstacle preventing access to education in rural communities. The lack of teachers in rural regions is a consequence of the violence perpetrated against them by illegal armed actors and the Colombian state itself. Their profession is the second most persecuted in Colombia following agricultural workers. (http://www.gpn.org/media/other/assassinations/Informe_de_derechos_y_libertades__libro._Ingles.pdf)

Teachers are often seen as civic leaders and are a central part of a community. Their level of education puts them at risk and right-wing paramilitaries have often viewed them as guerilla sympathizers and considered them legitimate military targets. There were 310 teachers assassinated between 2000 and 2006 according to “Education Under Attack,” a report published by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 2007. (http://www.ei-ie.org/en/article/show.php?id=76&theme=rights). Only last month, the Colombian Federation of Teachers (FECODE in its Spanish initials) denounced the assassination of Haly Martin Mendoza Cariño, which took place on 9 July, 2008 in the municipality of San Jose de Cucuta, department of Norte de Santader. http://fecode.edu.co/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=503&Itemid=31

Julio Roberto Meier, the representative of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in Colombia, said in an interview with the organization Education International: “It is a vicious circle, teachers are forced to displace because of the internal armed conflict, but the absence of a teacher makes the children even more vulnerable and perpetuates the cycle of underdevelopment and violence.”

And so it is no surprise that there is a huge vacuum in the education system in rural communities. But the significance of education (or lack of it) has far greater implications than simply the inability to read and write. Education is one of the most important keys to peace here in Colombia – not just because it develops the intellect, but because it gives access to the power structures that can bring about peace.

Only through a formal education can the seats of power be accessed. By this I mean positions in local government, national government, lawyers, judges, and other such offices. As in most countries, the people who have the power to make decisions and implement them are people in professional roles. To access these roles one must have a formal education. The campesinos are deprived of this by the absence of the state and its failure to fulfill its obligations in rural communities. In this way, they are kept in a subordinate, role battling for justice in a struggle unfairly weighted against them. They are forced to beg for change rather than being able to implement this change directly. They are unable to obtain the power to effect change by themselves for themselves.

It is appreciated that the lack of representation of rural Colombians is not solely due to a lack of education. A substantial part of their marginalization is due to the pseudo-democracy that characterizes the Colombian electoral system. Rural communities have limited access to voting, and anyone who speaks out against or seeks to challenge the right-wing regime faces intense, violent repression. However, the absense of education does form a major part of the causes that creates and maintain subordination of the rural population.

A lack of formal education, however, does not equate with a lack of independent though or lack of capacity. We only need to look towards the likes of ASCAMCAT, the Peasant Farmer Association of Catatumbo, the Campesino Association of the Cimitarra River Valley (ACVC) in Magdelena Medio and the numerous other campesino movements and organizations to see clearly that with or without a formal education, they are capable of organizing themselves, analyzing the political dynamics, understanding their position in the globalised society in which we now live, the need for self determination and how to implement it, amongst so many other things. It is obvious when speaking with campesinos that they are fully aware of the political dynamic within which they sit.

It must be recognized that there are a vast number of groups and organizations, lawyers collectives, international organizations and human rights defenders that work on behalf of the campesino communities.

But the campesinos should be able to represent themselves. It is not sufficient to have others act on their behalf. They seek self determination, to create a just society fitting for themselves. A dependency on others to act on their behalf is not what is needed, but rather the ability to act on their own.

It is not possible to say if the absence of a proper educational system in the rural communities is simply the result of government neglect, or if it is a strategic practice aimed at maintaining power in the hands of the wealthy, whose interests run in direct opposition to the rural communities across Colombia. Irrespective of the motivation, the benefits to the government are still the same: the continued subordination of the Colombian rural communities.

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