Brazil & Southern Cone - May 2006 (ISSN 1741-4431)

The government of President Néstor Kirchner presented a proposal for the comprehensive reform of the education sector in May. The most striking feature of the proposal is the government's plan to do away with the military's role in education. 

At present there are nine military secondary boarding schools in seven provinces in Argentina - Buenos Aires, Mendoza, Córdoba, Comodoro Rivadavia, Tucumán, Misiones and Santa Fe - and the Capital Federal. The first military college, General San Martí­n, was founded in 1938 in Buenos Aires. There is an emphasis on discipline and physical education, including some military training. More than 9,000 pupils attend the various colleges and when they leave they are awarded the rank of second lieutenant in the reserves. The defence minister, Nilda Garré, said that the colleges were outdated and there should be a far greater focus on the humanities and inculcating a vision of democratic and human rights. "We do not believe in military education at that age," she said.

The timing of the government's proposal is also revealing. It will be opened to a public debate over the course of the next six months before a draft bill is sent to congress early in 2007, shortly before Kirchner is expected to stand for re-election. Kirchner said that education had to be considered a "national priority". He wants to replace the 1993 federal education act, under which Argentina's school system was decentralised, passing responsibility for financing and the content of syllabuses to the provinces. 

Kirchner claimed that the government had been inspired by the actions of the teachers' union Confederación de Trabajadores de la Educación de la República Argentina, Ctera, which erected a "white tent of dignity" in front of congress between April 1997 and December 1999 to demand education reform.