Clarín, August 12, 2007, Education Supplement
The Clarín.com note: here (includes a video interview.)
The note on paper: main note here and a couple of boxes of here. INTERVIEW WITH
DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNICAL EDUCATION, MARÍA ROSA Almandoz
"We need science and technology graduates are focused on the production"
To Almandoz, there querecuperar technical school and revive the industry dismantled. Ruben A.
Arribas
"The crisis of vocations in engineering is not a local phenomenon. If you ask in the U.S., Spain or Germany, will also tell you that his weakness is the lack of engineers. " Rosa Maria italics Almandoz, Director of the National Institute of Educational Technology (INET), aims to shed light on what understand the modern information society and knowledge of the profiles with fewer graduates in Argentina. According to her, the reasons lie in a cultural paradigm shift.
"Until 20 or 30 years, science and technology were almost separate areas. Research in Basic Sciences, Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Mathematics, was very independent of technological development applied to production. However, in recent decades, the knowledge attained such economic importance that this situation changed. Today much of the research in basic science feeds the technologists, and these for innovar necesitan a su vez conocimientos profundos en esas disciplinas”, continúa Almandoz. Y añade: “Por eso necesitamos egresados con una formación fuerte en ciencia y en tecnología, pero que además estén volcados al campo de la producción”. Es decir: el mercado ingenieril amplió su radio de acción y demanda nuevos perfiles profesionales, de ahí la escasez mundial de ingenieros.
Pero también existe un factor local. A pesar de la reactivación económica que vive la Argentina, el país todavía no se ha recuperado de la devastadora Década Perdida (1980-1990). En esa época cerraron más de 160 mil pymes —el gran motor de la economía and social support of almost any society, and large companies relocated their production plants to other countries. The industrial waste and unemployed technicians and engineers, technology education that was dropped almost a domino effect.
"The education policies of 90 accompanied this process deindustrializing and technicians left the band in middle school, a very traditional educational line, other than Mexico and Argentina, and in the decades from 40 to 60 generated foremen, chemists and agricultural technicians, always prestigious, "says the sociologist expert Methodology of Scientific Research. The Federal Education Menem guillotined the education sector strategy, and it blew the most important bridge between high school and engineering. The effects of this explosion are known: many technical schools were closed.
why the government is committed to a dual strategy: to revive the textile industries and naval dismantled, above all, and retrieve technical secondary school, an emblem of the country's glorious past. "Technical schools are those that best prepare students for engineering," argues the Director of INET. Why? "The future technicians attending school from 13 to 19 years, were enrolled full-time -6 to 7 clock hours per day," got a strong background in mathematics and technology-oriented. " Of course, where industries were also inserted, and that favored a virtuous circle: good education, good job, and vice versa.
That led to the decades of 40 to 60 boys knew what he was doing a technician or engineer, and today do not know. And if they lack this knowledge can not be thought of as future Mechatronics technicians and engineers in aeronautics. "The vocation is not spirits. You can not choose what is not known. Kids should choose a career where you will enjoy reading and learning about it, "says Almandoz.
It is also unstable country karma: "The curricula speak 5 or 6 years for engineering, but the actual duration of these courses is on average 9.5. How many families have economic oxygen to support a child that time? What girl can consider today a project to 9 or 10 years if it must also study and work? ". Hence, the Vocational Technical Education Act of 2005, the Government also wants to promote higher technical education as an alternative to college to ensure employability. To do this in 2006 spent 260 million dollars in grants, improvement plans and educational series that encouraged the link between government, universities and businesses.
Finally there are the shortcomings of high school students in mathematics, those who speak of the statistics. In what is a degree in Education says: "What we have to do is improve the educational training of teachers. About how knowledge is constructed in each discipline, a bad teacher of mathematics is more critical that a bad teacher of History. "
So to solve the problem vocational ... Yes, more training in mathematics and insistently demand from the adult world, all right, but a) first teachers to better explain and b) you'd think that adults are responsible for a society that has taken the boys to the indifference technical careers. Therefore it is in the hands of politicians, businessmen, parents and educators that the situation is reversed. Rosa Maria's words Almandoz, mother of a son who is studying Industrial Engineering, leave little room for doubts.
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technical education numbers
- invested 260 million pesos the government in 2006 to support various education policies in the fields of Science and Technology.
- rose 20 percent in 2007, enrollment in technical schools average.
- 55,736 graduates in 2006 left the middle-level technical schools.
- 31,815 graduates in 2006 went to technical schools of higher education.
- 164,224 graduates in 2006 went to vocational training centers.
Source: National Institute of Educational Technology, Www.inet.edu.ar .