DEVELOPMENT

 

A review is made of the history of education in Ecuador over the last 20 years, where the fundamental problem was concentrated in the lack of quality in education, low motivation of the teaching staff, the economic crisis and the almost null participation of governments in increasing the budget allocated to education. Poverty and the lack of public investment were also considered as factors that contributed to the low level of education and therefore its incipient contribution to entrepreneurship and the country's economic sector. It also includes the state policies that have been implemented by the current government and that have contributed to the development of education and the economic sector; seen from the objectives addressed in the National Plan for Good Living, evidenced in the construction of educational and university units of a high technological level, which contribute to the creation of new enterprises in the country's economic sector.

Ecuadorian education has undergone rigorous changes throughout history. The existing changes represent an educational revolution for the Ministry of Education of Ecuador, there is talk of the application of educational quality standards, of a new curricular adjustment implemented since 2016 for General Basic Education and Baccalaureate, which assumes that students will develop knowledge, skills and attitudes in concrete situations, in different contexts for problem solving. On the other hand, the University assumes that students who complete their baccalaureate studies will be ready to develop the competences required at this educational level and subsequently for their professional life.

TEACHERS' APPROACH

This information details teachers' perceptions of the conflicts or difficulties that students have in learning, as well as their conceptions of the current situation of education in Ecuador. In the course of our lives, we spend more than 18 years in the classroom, so the big question is: Why don't we have the necessary skills to be the best? Is it true that there is no real structural coherence between initial education, basic education, high school and university? Is it true that traditional education was more efficient than the current one? These and many more are the questions that citizens ask themselves when they realize that at present, they do not have the necessary tools to be, to know, to do and to undertake.

ECUADOR'S CHALLENGES FOR AN EDUCATION OF THE FUTURE

We often hear comments in our midst that it is essential to change education. Sometimes I get the impression that we see education as the beginning and end of all good or all evil. It is undoubtedly central, but the starting point we must define and agree on is where we want education to go, because for some it must go in one direction and for others in the opposite or inverse direction. We will hardly be able to build a new model if we are not clear about where we are going.

INTRODUCING TECHNOLOGY IN EDUCATION

I am not one of those people who demonize technology and see its penetration into homes and schools as a threat. Technology is a wonderful tool when used for human growth and education. To this day, I never cease to be amazed by all the information we can find on the web. However, we have some problems with this tool. For example, teachers in the classrooms have to compete for the attention of the students who are quick cybernauts. There are two important issues in this area. First, we must make a great effort to nurture the network with quality educational content. Today, junk information coexists in cyberspace with quality information, and the problem is that there are no formats, programmers or mechanisms for children, tutors or teachers to differentiate between them. Therefore, it is vital that we can adapt quality educational content to these spaces where young people are passing through, in a didactic and entertaining way, and hopefully with interactive mechanisms. In this sense, we should have an Ecuadorian mega-project for the use of these tools that involves national history, nationalities and interculturality, easy and digestible information and knowledge about our flora, fauna and environment, which support the maintenance of our particular and unique cultural identity. Only this will prevent the loss of important historical and cultural knowledge of our country, so that teachers can access it within these new spaces and, at the same time, reinforce the identity of our country so that we do not succumb to being erased in homogenization. This national challenge aimed at digital natives should be articulated with the work of teachers, so that both teachers and students can use, learn about and enrich these contents and methodologies. Secondly, there is the irruption of the digital world, which offers us unlimited information and leads us to rethink the type of skills we are asking our students to incorporate. Reciting data and information like trained pets is not going to lead us to develop the competences our young people need. Knowing the right answers by heart does not guarantee those skills. What we need today are children and young people who know how to ask the right questions, who are motivated to know, learn and investigate, and who can finally form informed personal judgements. This cannot be achieved with the current model. In this sense, the challenge for teachers, parents and educators is to help these young people to filter and use the large amount of information available with criteria that allow them to enrich their knowledge and their lives. Most likely, we have not yet discovered how to do this and, consequently, we should move towards the creation of learning communities that raise the collective intelligence to create these tools for discernment, filtering and productive use of the information available.

CRITICAL THINKING

It is inevitable to say that education in our country over the last twenty years has not changed, it has, but from my point of view in small steps and even these have favored us as students since we spend practically our first and middle years in the classroom with the desire to develop and exploit our potential to the maximum in order to create a better future both professionally and economically. I believe that the arrival and introduction of the internet and technological devices to education are of great help in the perspective of good use, facilitating the means of interaction of both educator and student, although it must be recognised that for some teachers and students the mastery of technology has become a challenge, there is no doubt that if good educational policies are managed in our country, we will have a better education.

ZOILA MAGALY VERA SARANGO