The reflections on education of Cecilia María Vélez, with her great experience in Bogotá as Secretary of Education in the first Mayor’s Office of Enrique Peñalosa and then eight years as Minister of Education in the two terms of Álvaro Uribe, are more than valuable. She was invited to Harvard University to work on a comparative matrix on educational reforms in the world and now she is a consultant on the subject; There is a lot that she knows and a lot that she is analyzing.
JMO: A good part of your time both in the Secretary of Education of Bogotá and in the Ministry of Education, eight years, the two governments of Álvaro Uribe, you dedicated to advancing educational coverage, now is the time for quality. How much progress has been made in Colombia.
CMV: It is a topic that is currently the order of the day in Colombia. We still have coverage problems, obviously, limitations, but we would say that we are already at reasonable levels, even streamlining coverage a lot led us in many, many moments, to sacrifice quality. But at this moment, for the career of the boys who have to be at the center of the entire system, quality must be guaranteed from the moment they begin their training until it ends. Many fall by the wayside.
JMO: You went all out for the coverage, and now we are undoubtedly entering a second moment, in this long process of developing a comprehensive education. A national education has elements of continuity. This breaking each becomes their own. As someone among your close friends and mentors, Antanas Mockus, would say, build on what has been built. cHow do you see these new scenarios, new challenges, those new possibilities that have been opening up and the educational process, we are able to adapt to this is changing profoundly.
CMV: There are very good educational levels in the country, but at the mass level, important steps must be taken. Mass education was greatly forged with the industrial revolution, but when these components of technological development are already present, the importance of knowledge for any type of thing, for any development, then a very big question arises.
If that educational model is appropriate. And when it comes to quality, there are many ways to see it. Does quality mean that we have good infrastructure? Let’s pay teachers well? May we teach what they taught us? Or it is more about teaching them to think and teaching them to develop in life.
JMO: And the global stage, standards and international evaluations come into play.
CMV: Yes. And there you can’t evaluate resumes; capabilities are evaluated. And we got involved in Latin American evaluations and when I arrived the OECD evaluations were already beginning. And I insist, on the competitions. It is the ability to think, to understand what they read; to solve problems through mathematics, which is very different from knowing operations and formulas; ability to formulate hypotheses and reach conclusions, which is scientific thinking.
We also emphasized citizen competencies, that ability to live and respect others that I believe must always be taken into account. 50% of boys do not understand what they read. And less about solving mathematics problems. And that means that they are not able to formulate hypotheses, reach conclusions. And in all this lies the power to develop the ability to face the world. Such a changing world, a world where technological advances and the development of knowledge go at such speed. What it is about, and I insist, is developing in children the ability to understand, to read, to draw conclusions to be able to position themselves in front of the world.
JMO: I understand you, it is a balance between knowledge, technical skills and the ability to understand realities.
CMV: And another element comes into play there, relevance. We have to conceptualize the knowledge, but also give the boys technical skills, for example, so that they can go out and be able to find a place in the labor market, especially when they come from very complicated conditions. It is much easier when people know how to think when people know how to evaluate problems. And there, obviously comes a very, very big questioning of the way we teach. (…)
JMO: Breaking with those deep-rooted ways of teaching is not easy at all.
CMV: It is very complicated, because this implies changes and they are such long processes; change of mentality in the faculties of education, and this has to be done with a lot of conversation. The sector has to be talking all the time to be able to digest this entire process because this is not done with laws or mandates.
JMO: This is a collective and progressive construction. And well, you have to let reality invade the closed space of the academy, which usually goes one way and reality moves on the other.
CMV: I have been criticized a lot for going against the curriculum. That it is not a curriculum of contents. I insist on competencies.
JMO: It is essential that teachers understand the importance. I imagine that there are many who do, but there is a bulk that remains attached to the past, tied to a conventional vision.
CMV: Because it gives them security, that is, that I know this, I come to class and I am the one who knows and the others listen and repeat the same thing from 30 years ago. And that gives security. Clear. The problem is that now they are moving the floor for all of us, in this changing world. And if we think about the university, not to mention. That is where interdisciplinarity is important. And the need to develop the capacity to integrate the different disciplines and to link what is seen in the university with the problems of real life.
JMO: And the research; that also has relevance. Back to the same. But that gives rise to another topic, the future of universities, not only the economic future, but the great decline that we are seeing not only in Colombia but in the world of university enrollment. The growing disinterest in what is offered. The incentive that was the job opportunities that they opened are no longer, nor is it the guarantee of a better income and etcetera, etcetera.
CMV: The one and the other are linked. I prefer not to talk about higher education but about education after high school. The university has the challenge of not only being in a very formal matter of developing professionals, but it also has to open itself to all those other ways, so to speak, of developing people’s capabilities. Not only so that they go out into the labor market but so that they recycle. In life, we all have to recycle.
I think there are two factors that are weighing: one demographic change that is really the limitation of people who are able to go to university and in Colombia there is the space, we still have a lot of capacity to expand that coverage for those who have not had the opportunity. opportunity to access it. And on the other hand, the problem is the validity of the current university.
And if we don’t want children to finish high school because they don’t see added value, what to think about university. We must think about alternatives such as introducing technical skills in the last two years that allow these boys who have no possibility of financing their studies or who have to quickly generate income for their homes.
JMO: Breaking the myth of the professional title. And develop skills from high school.
CMV: In Manizales we have an experience that has impressed us a lot with boys who were given the possibility of doing a technological degree in the last four years of high school. The result is impressive. Universities have to become very flexible.
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