Together with other academics, the researcher exposes these arguments in the book educational regressionpublished in December by the Grijalbo publishing house and of which he is the coordinator.
The work brings together 14 essays on topics such as scholarships, the Benito Juárez Universities and the effects of the pandemic on education, and one of its central points is that the López Obrador government made it a priority to bring down the reform on the matter approved during the mandate of Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018), but after achieving it, he did not have his own plan to replace her.
“There is no educational project in this administration. Until the last few days it was made known that they want to change the study plans through assemblies, but what is being announced is a late effort,” says Guevara Niebla, who is a science teacher from UNAM and was part of the now-defunct Institute National for the Evaluation of Education (INEE).
In an interview, the researcher also warns that the budget for education is still insufficient and poorly focused. Also, that ignoring concepts such as “educational quality”, “skills” or “evaluation” will have negative consequences, and that if Mexico does not prepare its young people for the global technological revolution, it will leave them doomed to unemployment.
How was the disenchantment you experienced in the SEP and led you to leave the government?
I think that, as happened to many people, I was mainly attracted by Andrés Manuel’s speech that is aimed at social justice. That’s a powerful goal that appeals to a lot of people. When I accepted to work in the SEP, I thought that it was going to work in that direction, but I was surprised when I arrived. I noticed, first of all, that very drastic cuts were being made to the educational budget. And then, within the educational budget, programs were disappearing and most of the resources were being channeled to scholarships, in such a way that the areas that are of crucial importance for the educational task, such as teacher training, normal schools, education production of new materials or computer equipment in schools, instead of going there, the budget was going to scholarships.
