Students and teachers marched "more education and less marketing"

Hundreds of students along with teachers and professors, members of cooperators and teacher unions marched this Wednesday afternoon towards the headquarters of the Buenos Aires Legislature to demand a larger budget “in defense of public education”, and carrying banners with the motto “+(more) education -(less) marketing”.

“There are a lot of signs in the City saying that ‘the transformation does not stop’, but this transformation does not reach the schools“, said Florencia, 17, a member of the student center of the Manuel Belgrano School of Fine Arts, in Barracas.

“The budget gets lower and lower and the conditions are getting worse and worse, the roofs are falling on our heads, they send us rotten food that also doesn’t feed the kids and sometimes they don’t even come, we reach winter and our stoves are turned off,” explained the student.

And he added that, in the face of “all these concerns,” to the City Government “the only thing that interests them is to prohibit our teachers from speaking in an inclusive language“, which is why they demanded “a discussion table”.

The mobilization, which moved from the corner of Córdoba and Ayacucho to Peru 160seat of the Legislature, was led by students, teachers and members of trade union associations who advanced to the cry of “let’s see, who leads the baton, the students or the son of yuta government”, while drums sounded that accompanied the claims .

Organized by Union of Education Workers (UTE)the Ademys teachers union and the student centers, the claims demanded “a salary equal to the family basket, in defense of our labor rights, of ESI and the rights of diversities, in defense of teachers, against the reform of the statute, against compulsory internships, and for all our demands”.

#NOW | The educational march begins in unity.

Less marketing and more education.#EducationIsForTodes pic.twitter.com/7TgrtbMcJV

— UTE (@utertera) June 29, 2022

“If the present is struggle, the future is ours“, held one of the posters carried by the students, while another expressed “The budget was lucky not to fall into public education”, in reference to the sayings of the former governor of the province of Buenos Aires, María Eugenia Vidal .

“Today several demands from the educational community were brought together, such as the salary for teachers and the demand for reform of the statute, which converges with the request of students for food in schools, better infrastructure conditions and the issue of schools without heating in winter,” Mariana Scayola, general secretary of the Association of Middle and Higher Education Teachers (Ademys), told Télam.

“We have schools that literally the roofs fallthe problem of free and compulsory internships in the fifth years and the school cooperatives that come without receiving the necessary funds in a timely manner, and that also bring the structural claim of lack of vacancies in the City of Buenos Aires”, he added. .

Another of the posters held by the students pointed out “No to internships, no to yuta”, in relation to the initiative of pre-professional educational practices aimed at students in the last year of schools in Buenos Aires.

In this regard, Sofía, a fifth-year student at the Manuel Belgrano Higher School of Artistic Education, pointed out that although she still “doesn’t know what internship she is going to get, it will most likely not be in the arts, since we will most likely end up working at McDonald’s.

While marching, the protesters continued with the chants against the head of the Buenos Aires Government Horacio Rodriguez Larreta and the Minister of Education, Soledad Acunawhile Pablo Cesaroni, belonging to one of the convening cooperatives, blamed the Buenos Aires government “for the lack of response to the different demands from the schools”.

For her part, Julieta, general secretary of the Julio Cortázar school student center, who was leading the march, said that “we call on the government of Larreta and Acuña for more dignified conditions in public education, we want the schools not to fall to pieces or freeze to death when we go to study, and do it in a way that we can also enjoy it.

“We want them to listen to us and pay attention to us, because at the end of the day, education is made up of us and the educational community,” concluded the student.

Finally, among the schools and tertiaries that led the mobilization through the Student Centers, the Julio Cortázar school, the Rodolfo Walsh school, the Juan Pedro Esnaola School of Music, the “Juan Ramón Fernández”, the Theater School, the Sofía Esther Broquen de Spangenberg Higher Normal School in Living Languages ​​and the Raggio Technical Schools together with the Coordinator of Tertiary Students and the Coordinator of Base Students, among others.