Mexico: a televised back to school

Audio 02:29

By: Alix Hardy Follow

The little Mexicans returned to school on Monday. But coronavirus requires, the students stay at home, because at the start of the year, lessons will be given on television. Teachers and presenters will jointly teach 30 million students through six small screen channels and classes are scheduled until December in a country where the pandemic is still very active.

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In Mexico, the start of the school year was different this year for some 30 million students. To leave no one behind, the Ministry of Education has chosen to provide teaching through the small screen, in an improved version of the televised courses given since the closure of schools at the end of March. Unlike the Internet, 92% of Mexican households have a television. For the others, textbooks have been distributed, and lessons will be given on the radio in 20 indigenous languages.

But in practice, children cannot be left alone in front of the TV, explains Mariana Arriaga, who has been teaching her 9-year-old daughter since the start of the pandemic. “  The little one will have lessons from 9 am to 11 am every day. I'm thinking about changing my working hours to start after eleven o'clock. I have to stay next to her because the TV program is going too fast. Even I can't keep up with the questions, so we film the screen so we can see it again. And there is the subject of homework. She's received so much in recent months, we send her something to occupy the week and we find ourselves doing homework at completely undue hours.  "

To support the students, teachers are expected to send exercises based on concepts seen on television and assess students each term. However, only 7 out of 10 households have access to the Internet and 4 to a computer, recalls Sulem Estrada, a Spanish teacher at a college in Mexico City. “  Of my students, only 30% are equipped, I saw this when schools were closed during the pandemic. What does that mean ? That only 30% of children will be able to progress this year ? It amounts to creating inequalities between the students. We teachers find it hard to understand the government's rush to continue the curriculum when they know that a majority of students will be left behind.  "

José Luis, for example, is 12 years old, and his mother, Norma Molina, cannot help him as she would like. “  I learned things at school but now the program is very different, we don't know all that… Sometimes it's my eldest son who helps the little one because I am dumped. And then the school wants to do everything online, but listen, I don't have internet at home ! You don't know how to use a computer, so have the internet ! We don't have the means for all that.  "

Mexico is consistently at the bottom of the table in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (PISA) PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) benchmark survey, but in recent years, figures show that the country was gradually eating into the gulf that separates the good from the bad, thus reducing inequalities. A fragile advance that risks disappearing with the pandemic.

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