Education In Latin America Essay

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Education in Latin America Education is defined by Prof. Drever as “a process in which and by which knowledge, character and behavior of the young are shaped and molded” (Samuel, 2011). The definition gives as the context that education is very important, as early as toddler years, for this will merely help young kids to know what is right or wrong, moral or not. Education is a fundamental human right, preserved in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). Despite of it being a fundamental human right, millions of children are still being denied of their right to basic education. Barriers to their right to education includes inequalities and discrimination against …show more content…

Thus, studies from the three century Spanish rule (1500-1800) is focused mostly about their teaching role, both with the native population of Latin America and the descendants of the European colonizers. Jesuits, for example, concentrated on rhetoric, logic, history, natural philosophy, metaphysics, theology, poetry and Holy Scripture on secondary and university level education. Horacio Cabezas also analyzed the university education during the colonial era in “Creacion de la Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala y la consolidacion de los sistemas de explotacion colonial” and discussed that “people shouldn’t treat colonial universities as cultural icons but rather treat them as dynamic institutions with positive and negative effects to the nation” (Rosof, 1982). By 19th century, newly-independent countries of Latin America established new educational systems. This establishment brought secular public education into light. Argentina, for an example, founded its first public schools in 1871. Lorenzo Maria Lleras, the headmaster of Colegio San Bartolome in New Granada (presently known as Colombia, with some parts of Panama and Nicaragua), strives to have a more balanced curriculum, since half of the books in the library holdings dealt with theology and Church law while the other

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