Educational crisis in public chilean schools

Yes, I know I only write about bad stuff, but I can’t write about good stuff because I haven’t really seen any lately, if I ever come across a positive situation I’ll gladly write about it. Let’s get to the point now.

In Chile our education is divided in different kinds of schools: public schools, private schools and a mix, which are in part funded by the State and part funded by private sectors. That’s wonderful if all sectors are able to support and deliver similar level of education and the best quality possible. In reality, private schools are far superior than public/mixed schools in most cases, of course there are very good public schools but this are very small in number or percentage compared to the number of good private schools. What’s the difference between them? basically, price. They by law are forced to teach the same stuff in the same way. Private schools does cost money, the good ones cost even more than the minimum wage, some times way more than that.

Let’s look at some statistics:

– Minimum wage is at US $300 (this means $10 dollar a day, $1 is just above poverty line by international standards) [edited: stupid mistake, see comments 🙂 thanks!]
– 30% of the richest owns 65.7% of the money
– 30% of the poorer owns 8% of the money
– The rest has to split the 26.2% left.

This is very unfair, because the vast majority of the population is either poor or middle class and they can’t access to good private schools for obvious reasons. So, what’s the solution? Simple, make public schools better or equal to private ones. How? investing in infrastructure, funding the schools with best results, raising the teachers wage, test the teacher skills on a regular basis, fire bad ones, keeping and compensating good ones. Education is all about money folks, as most things in life, now get over it. If we really want to close the gap and raise our value as a country and grow faster we really need to think of education as the base to make things happen, of course it will take time, training anyone out of basic school takes 12 years, then 6 or more years to get college education, this is a long project but it has to get done.

So, what’s the crisis we’re having? well.. we really have idiots administrating the State’s money, which is really taxes sucked out of hard working people. Corruption is systematic and inserted into the bluechip of the Goverment, they do steal money from us every day and every second. How is it possible that the school books are still not delivered completely to all public schools after 3 months of classes?, and how is it possible that 40% of the children do not have the minimum required skills to their age?, this is awfully sad, I grew up naive and thinking everybody got the education I got back when I was at school (yes it was a private one), I really thought most kids really have similar oportunities and it’s upon them to make the difference even with little or no money at all, I’m an adult now, tomorrow I’ll be 24 years old and I’m deeply touched and concerned.

r.

evilution

A video from the creationist website [revolutioninchrist.com] which tries to prove that macro evolution is a lie, this is in all aspects so wrong and so unaccurate that I just couldn’t stop laughing. Enjoy!

If you really want to learn about human evolution I recommend you to go and watch the complete “Walking with Cavemen” series from the BBC.

MTV’s Exit Campaign

I just saw this video clip from MTV’s Exit Campaign to raise awareness about child exploitation.

Sad but true.

Massive apostasy in Chile

The postday pill controvery has started a massive movement against the catholic church in Chile leading to riots and more importantly massive apostasy!, yes!! you heard that right, that means people are so angry that they are quitting the church and making it clear that they won’t accept no one to take decisions for them, and that’s the main focus here, anyone has the right to belive in whatever faith they want as long as you don’t screw up anyone else that thinks different than you, effin catholic church won’t understand that.

I discovered that it was possible to apostatise a few months ago and I really wish to do it, my problem is I was born in Venezuela and I should write to the catholic church there to ask for my removal.

More information on pidamos la excomunión

Some riot pr0n below!

And a lot more riot pr0n in G’s flickr stream.

Bachelet and Human Rights

Today Michelle Bachelet was honored by the Truth and Justice Center in recognition to her compromise to the defense of Human Rights, that’s too funny because last week she was in bed with the chinese goverment signing economic agreements and when asked about Tibet she refuses to speak about it.

How can you accept such a distiction a week after signing an agreement with one of the most brutal Human Rights violator goverments in the world today Michelle, huh?

I guess those little girls are happy to remain ignorant about your schedule.

peace.

chilean postday pill controversy

This is why I’m independent and don’t vote and don’t even care about voting in this country any time soon, freaking chilean right-wing are way too conservatives for my taste, sure I like free market as much as almost the whole world, sure I think the socialist had been screwing things up too often lately and they suck when it comes to manage a country efficiently (at least in this country, can’t talk for other socialist parties), they had been in the adminstration for too long and that’s awful for any sane democratic republic, after nearly 20 years in power everyone gets greedy and corrupt, period.

The last few days we’ve been exposed to this postday pill debate again meanwhile the right-wing effectively blocked the free distribution of the pill in our public health system (FONASA) troughout a judgement in the Constitutional Court (Supreme Court).

What does that mean?, well, basically it means humble chilean womans won’t get access to the pill and rich woman will. The trick is, they just asked to be removed from the public health system, not from drugstores (yeah, business is business) and the alegation was that the pill is abortive and abortion is forbidden by law. There is one tiny little problem, most of the scientific evidence that everyone else have says that is not abortive, just 20% of the studies suggest that it may be abortive in some cases. That’s a huge difference.

I just can’t understand how this people get away with it, I mean, they are willing to forbid abortion and anticonceptive measures but at the same time they are all in for death penalty, they even want to forbid the copper T and that’s a huge step back and simply an epic mistake.

Why do conservatives really want to block the pill and other anticonceptive methods? well, the way I see it can be explained in two words: CHEAP LABOR. That’s right, you heard!. Let’s do some little math shall we?. The pill is OK to be distributed in drugstores and it cost $18 USD. On rich counties the average sales are up to 100 boxes sold in 10,000 citizens, if we move to poor counties (yes, the ones that actually use the public health system) we are talking of just 4 boxes sold in 10,000 citizens, that’s an outrageous gap.

If we take out anticonceptive methods (including emergency ones as the postday pill) what will happen is, poor people are going to have more kids, because they can’t afford access to anticonceptive methods like rich people does, not only that, teenagers are going to have more kids too and yeah, in a few years from now you can expect to lift a rock and find a plethora of cheap labor willing to cross the whole city in a crappy bus just to work for The Man and get payed the minimum wage, oh wait!, that is happening already!! they just want to keep it that way I guess.

One of the greatest things that the system had is that any girl from 14 years old could get the pill for free and without permission or concent of her parents. What makes me sick is that most conservatives are control freaks, they just can’t let other people take their own choices, make their own mistakes, correct those mistakes and grow as persons, that is ultimately what I think is the biggest flaw of the narrow-minded-conservatives they just can’t stop controling people, that is their thing and they are in bed with the church to dictate over what you should do and the way you should live your life.

Today our society needs the pill, needs the copper T, needs as much control as possible when it comes of having babies, I’m a young father, I was 22 when my son came a year and a half ago, I have no degree and no “secure” job, it’s hard for me to keep up, fortunately I do well, but what about that 14 year old girl? she has no freaking way to take care of a baby properly, when you let that happen you’re effectively ruining the life and the possibilities of 2 persons at the same time.

It’s me, again!

So I’m back (yay!), I pretty much lost all my previous 5yrs of blogging due to a misunderstanding with the owner of our dedicated server, it’s been more than a week and the dude just can’t be found, anyways, shit happens! and it’s my fault I didn’t had a good backup system.

So what did I decided to start all over again?

Simple, I love to write, specially rants, and just typing long blocks of text without making any point, I have that special ability since history class in high school.

So yeah, I’m back for good, hopefully this time I won’t lose all my data (again).

Let the fun begin.

r.