BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA – It’s 7 p.m. on a Tuesday in July. It’s already night in Buenos Aires when Gustavo Santucho, 38, walks through the doors of the Atlanta football club, where a “Bachillerato Popular,” or “People’s High School,” called Dignity, operates. Chairs surround a rectangular table and will soon be occupied by students in their third and final year of school. Santucho’s movements are slow, as is the voice that tells of the journey that brought him here.
“I quit school when I was 16,” he says. “Then I got a good job, and I didn’t see the point in continuing studying. I always had good jobs. Well, if a good job is one in which you make money.”
He reflects with his hands folded on his legs. His hands don’t tell of a tough job. The smooth skin and clean fingernails open the question about his occupation that kept him away from his studies for so long. He says he worked with refrigerators in the seafood industry, but that eventually he decided he needed his diploma.
“I think what made me change was having a son,” he says. “I felt that I couldn’t tell my son that he had to study if I hadn’t been capable of doing it.”
He says he even inspired his wife to go to school, too.
“Today also my wife decided to come to the school, and it is good because this changes your mind,” he says. “We couldn’t continue together if she didn’t accompany me. To be sincere, I’m not the same that I was before I came here. I see life differently.”
There are eight students around the table, and class is ready to begin.
The teachers welcome the students, and a round of mate – tea traditionally enjoyed in groups to create a sense of community – begins to circulate.
Dignity is not your typical school. But, as one of 30 People’s High Schools across Argentina, it is quickly altering the school system here.
A group of Argentinean teachers have developed a new model of schools – called People’s High Schools – to educate youth and adults who have been excluded by or dropped out of the traditional school system. The new schools face funding challenges and just half of the schools are formally recognized, as education officials say the schools must follow certain guidelines to be able to award nationally accredited degrees. Teachers walk a delicate path as they aim for recognition but actively encourage students to question the government and social systems. Teachers in this new breed of schools aim to expand the new model so that they can become their own system, independent of the government.
In Argentina, 75 percent of men and 84 percent for women are enrolled in secondary school, according to UNICEF. But less than half – 43 percent – of students who enroll in high school graduate, according to a 2011 report by the Torcuato di Tella Institute, a nonprofit foundation that promotes Argentine culture.
In order to combat this rising dropout rate, a new school model has emerged here that serves both youth and adults. Disenchanted by the state system, teachers have already established 30 People’s High Schools throughout the country. Though small, these schools are already serving thousands of people excluded from the system.
In these schools, teachers and students sit together at one table in order to build a collective knowledge. They clean the classrooms together, build new spaces brick by brick and together raise flags in political demonstrations, where they demand degrees of official recognition for their work.
The People’s High Schools started in the city of Buenos Aires in 2004, and today they hold classes in many areas across the country. The schools grew from the initiative of a group of teachers who say the state education system has left out thousands of youth, in large part because of financial reasons. The schools in this new system quickly multiplied and settled into borrowed spaces, such as soccer fields or factories, to conduct class.
The Argentinean Plastic and Metalwork Industries, IMPA, a factory that closed and was later reopened by its employees, was the first of these schools to open its doors. There, 217 students ages 16 and older take classes at the high school level.
After climbing three flights of stairs in the factory, students arrive at the cultural center of the “Bachi del IMPA,” as members of the school call it. The machines, desolate courtyards where workers used to rest and the semidarkness of the first two floors form the lobby of the school.
On the third floor, students and teachers circulate between the faculty room and the four classrooms. With no heat in the factory and plastic windows replacing missing windows, the school is cold and students must wear jackets and scarves during the winter.
Fernando Santana, coordinator, teacher and cofounder of IMPA, says the premise of the three-year program is to “generate critical consciousness” in order to make each student a deep thinker who knows how to question imposed concepts instead of repeating pre-established content.
The teachers refer to the students as “compañeros,” or “partners,” in the learning process. They treat each student as an individual person with a unique situation that many times requires different academic routes, different schedules and different learning speeds.
“We have a ton of pregnant students in the third year,” Santana says.
Many times, these women need a different plan for their studies, he says.
“For this reason, we talk about circulation, not about dropout rates,” he says. “With this idea, we concentrate the materials into four days and leave Fridays for recuperation and support. We try to take into account the individual we work with, and that taking them into account involves considering the reality of that individual.”
He says the teachers prompt students to redefine what society considers true.
“We continually seek to deconstruct certain constructions that appear as imposed, as only valid,” Santana says.
He gives a classic poem in Argentinean literature, “Martin Fierro,” as an example.
“For example, in a literature class, one analyzes why ‘Martin Fierro’ comes to stand as a national text, responding to a particular political context in the decade of 1910, and why this work continues being reinterpreted throughout history,” Santana says.
In addition to the core courses, like languages and mathematics, seminars are also offered on other topics, such as human rights, self-sustaining cooperatives, the history of Argentinean education and popular education. These alternative courses, developed outside the traditional education system, aim to question the existing order.
Although IMPA is among the accredited schools and gives graduating students official high school degrees with national accreditation, it does not receive a subsidy or other economic help from the state, nor do its teachers earn a salary for the work that they do. Since students attend for free, the people’s high schools organize cultural activities to raise funds while advocating for government support.
IMPA teacher Guido Riccondo is organizing a July protest for his students to protest the lack of funding.
“Thursday we march at the Plaza de Mayo,” he says, referring to a central zone in the city where the national government, the legislature and the Ministry of Education occupy a few blocks. “Why do we have to be here in the cold? Why can’t you receive help from the state to study? If we are many, we can be made heard.”
At his right, a student, with her sleeping son in he arms, confirms that she will attend.
Despite the fact that this new system encourages students to question the government, it also relies on the government to recognize its diplomas so that its students can continue studying beyond high school. But in exchange for approving these diplomas, the government demands the right to supervise the content of the material and the facilities where they hold classes, in addition to having certain say in the appointment of the teachers, a point the faculty resists.
Because of this debate, there are schools that are still not officially recognized. Of the 30 People’s High Schools, 16 are currently recognized and can award nationally accredited degrees. The other half is still fighting for recognition. The negotiations are strained and dotted by periods of demonstrations.
“It’s true that these schools are reaching a population that the formal education system does not, but the reality is that this is a system and I cannot sign a degree if I do not know what goes on inside the system,” says Sergio Siciliano, Educational Politics coordinator for the government of the city of Buenos Aires. “They [the teachers] do not want the state intervening in the schools, but if they want the degree, it will have to comply with minimum standards.”
The conflict stems from the fact that these new schools aspire to deviate from the historical dichotomy that marks Argentinean education: public schools versus private schools. Students study for free at state-owned schools, where resources are increasingly scarce. At private schools, students have to pay monthly dues that range from 415 pesos, $100 USD, to 4,140 pesos, $1,000 USD, while the basic salary of a worker here is just 1,820 pesos, $440 USD, per month. The People’s High Schools want to forge a third option: popular education.
“Popular education is an emancipating project that aims to contribute to future social change,” says Laura Bitto, a People’s High School teacher. “By this definition, the popular education cannot be part of the state.”
Bitto says she willingly goes without a salary for her work as a teacher at her school, which operates in a soccer stadium in Villa Crespo, a Buenos Aires neighborhood.
“To be paid would mean to become part of the system,” Bitto says.
The association that represents her – The Network of People’s High Schools – aims to expand the new school system to build people’s preschools, elementary schools and universities.
“When this happens, we are no longer going to need the state to officially recognize our diplomas,” she says.
Though just in its seventh year, the new system reports many students who volunteer to continue with the program even after graduation.
“I can’t imagine no longer coming to Bachi,” Santucho says. “When I entered, I did it for the degree. It cost me greatly to tell my son that I had not finished high school. Today I feel that this changed my life. I no longer look at things in the same way, and I want others to have the same experience.”
Santucho will receive his high school degree from Dignity at the end of this year.
