Mexican Education Secretary Emilio Chuayffet says he faced an impossible choice in the weeks leading up to the reopening of Mexican schools this Monday: halt the printing of 235 million flawed textbooks for elementary school children so a long list of errors could be corrected, or go ahead with the printing so that at least the kids would have books on their first day of school.
The 117 errors found in the textbooks -- words with a "c" where an "s" should be, excessive commas, misplaced accents, and in one case, a city located in the wrong state -- have embarrassed Mexico's Education Department. Chuayffet has attributed the errors to the previous administration and called for an investigation into who is responsible.
"How are we going to nurture minds with grammatical mistakes?" Chuayffet said earlier this month as he signed an agreement with the Mexican Academy of Language, which has been tasked with reviewing textbooks in the future to avoid such errors. The secretary has called the errors "inexcusable," but added that "it would've been a bigger error to keep it quiet."
But according to the Associated Press, his department has not been particularly transparent about the problem -- it hasn't released a list of errors to the public or to members of the language academy. A number of the errors, however, were investigated and reported on by Animal Politico last week. Perhaps the most egregious came in a geography book, in a chapter entitled "Natural Diversity in Mexico". The town of Tulum -- a famed tourist destination for its Maya ruins and pristine Gulf beaches that lies in the southeastern state of Quintana Roo -- is incorrectly listed in the chapter as located in the state of Yucatan.
The scandal has returned the spotlight to Mexico's failing education system. Only 47 percent of its children graduate from high school. Teachers are overburdened with classes that swell to up to 40 students, curriculars that promote rote learning over interactive kinds, and a lack of state money for maintenance -- this despite the fact that Mexico spends a greater share of its budget on education than any of the other 34 nations that make up the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Mexico scores the lowest in standardized tests out of all the OECD states.
The Mexican Academy of Language says it will also seek to correct some 300 errors that appear in murals and engravings on the exterior of the Education Department's building in the historical center of Mexico City. It says those spelling errors -- mainly missing accents -- were made by the original painters and architects over 80 years ago.
RELATED: AeroMexico, Mexican Airline, Apologizes For Racist 'Nobody Dark Skinned' Casting Call
© 2024 Latin Times. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
