Colombia exports its 'new school' blueprint

UNESCO Courier, June, 1999 by Asbel Lopez

The programme in Colombia has its critics, however. Noel F. McGinn, Professor of Education at Harvard University, notes that in its early stages, the Escuela Nueva programme "was closely monitored and nurtured by persons who were highly committed and highly talented". But as the programme expanded, it "became the responsibility of people who had only received brief training [and] may not have been fully convinced about the concept."

Some teachers may have needed training, while others, even though they grasp the new methods, are not willing to include them in their daily teaching activity. An Ecuadorian teacher, Rosa M. Torres, observed during a visit to several "new schools" in Colombia in 1992 that many teachers were still attached to old ways. "The ideal of progressive education coexists with conservative and outdated practices," she said.

It is hard to say how many genuine "new schools" there are in Colombia. Twenty years after they first appeared, many of them are "new" only in name. The "Volvamos a la Gente" Foundation, in Bogota, reckons there are about 12,500 schools operating according to the original principles. The number of teachers who have had some training and still apply what they learned is thought to be around 10,000, a big jump when you think there were only 150 at the end of the 1960s and just 500 in 1975.

The programme survives, despite the ups and downs of Colombian government funding, because of the tactics of the New School movement's organizers. Over the last couple of decades, every new education minister has been taken to see a "new" rural school and a traditional one. Official support for the new model has usually followed (even though it costs 10 per cent more than the traditional one) because it has the clear merits of improving the quality of teaching and reducing the numbers of teachers needed.

But to introduce a new way of educating children, "which aims not to mirror society but to change it," according to Schiefelbein, means top officials and individual teachers all have to be persuaded of its value. This is an enormous task, but a very vital one.