As part of its shock doctrine and its war against public education, the government of Javier Milei announced the creation of the Assistance Program “educational vouchers”. According to what the resolution indicates, “it will consist of a temporary benefit in favor of families whose children attend public educational institutions of private management “initial, primary and secondary levels with state contribution.” This benefit “will consist of a sum of money” that “those who exercise parental responsibility” will receive.
During the electoral campaign and in various interviews, Milei systematically attacked public education and proposed vouchers as an alternative. Also in the platform of La Libertad Avanza, in its section on education, it proposed – in its first and second point – the voucher system and “decentralize education by giving the budget to parents instead assigning it to the Ministry, that is, financing the demand.” Milei is doing what she clearly said she was going to do. Concrete policies are confronting the arguments of those who justified her vote by saying that she was not going to do what she said she would do.
What are vouchers? Synthetically, we can affirm that it is the free market economics in education. It is a proposal created by Milton Friedman, one of the ideological fathers of the president. Ideally, it is a system that consists of Governments subsidize demand instead of supply. The money is given to parents or students – instead of funding the schools – so that they can freely decide which school to attend/pay for, whether public or private (I write everything in masculine because that is how it appears in the sources). In this way, public schools become financed by the payment of each student. The aim is to generate a educational and competitive market.
This process has several interrelated consequences. First of all, Education is no longer conceived as a right and is instead considered a commodity.. Beyond the fact that in the recitals of the program presented by Milei it is stated, within the framework of the National Education Law, that education is a personal and social right, the effect of the voucherization of education is its commercialization, The school is now considered a service provider company by business logic and students become clients to compete for. They build on the current legal framework to argue policies in favor of their educational political project of liberalization of education.
Secondly, it means an attack against what Adriana Puiggros called the State Centralized Public Instruction System (SIPCE), that is, the educational system that the Nation-State was able to build in the last 120 years, precisely the same number of years in which Milei considers that Argentina is in decline. It is a fundamental element of their cultural battle and shock doctrine that the government is applying.
The extraordinary book he wrote Naomi Kleinwhich analyzes this doctrine in depth, begins with the story of the Hurricane Katrina occurred in 2005 in New Orleans. In that context, an almost dying Friedman saw in that disaster an opportunity to apply his perverse program, particularly in the field of education. He wrote an article in The Wall Street Journal titled “The Promise of Vouchers”, where it begins by saying: “Most of the schools in New Orleans are in ruins as are the homes of the students who attended class. Children are forced to go to schools in other areas and that is a tragedy. It is also an opportunity to undertake a radical reform of the educational system.”
In this context of profound humanitarian crisis, the radical reform of the educational system that Friedman proposed consisted of “provide parents with substantial school vouchers” so that they are free to choose the education they consider best for their children. As Klein tells it, a network of think tanks and right-wing strategic groups echoed Friedman’s proposal and descended on the American city with the purpose of converting the schools of New Orleans into “charter schools”; That is, state public schools that would be managed by private institutions. The Bush administration supported these plans by financing the conversion. Klein tells how “the auction of the city’s educational system was carried out with precision and speed worthy of a military operation. In less than nineteen months, with most of its poor citizens still exiled to their homes, New Orleans’ public schools were entirely replaced by a network of privately run charter schools. Before Hurricane Katrina, the state board ran 123 public schools; Afterwards, only 4 remained. Before the storm, New Orleans had 7 charter schools, and after the storm, 31.”
I bring this story to show that This voucher program is the main focus of the political, economic, ideological and educational program of ultraliberalism.. The fear that the same or something similar will happen in Argentina as in the United States, or in Chile, with its processes of privatization of education, is not the product of speculations of those of us who fervently oppose the destruction of the public education system. It is the effect of the teachings that history teaches us.
* Cinthia Wanschelbaum is a researcher at CONICET IICE-UBA; She has a doctor and a degree in Educational Sciences (UBA).
