Traditionally the educational system in Colombia has been something that wasn’t accessible to all the population due economic, geographic or ethnic reasons; usually the education was headed to medium-high to high classes and was based in the Roman Catholic tradition; in addition the educational system didn’t offer any kind of motivation or support to its students on the contrary was a coercive system that instead of having high expectations on its students always prevent them to develop its abilities in order to make them fit in a system that was looking to create a big labor force. Also the corruption in the political class in the country hampered the development of the educational system for years.
All that creates among the common Colombian a feeling of inferiority and tendency to think that they aren’t good enough to compete with people who has had traditionally more access to luxuries and education; besides that the roman catholic tradition raise a lot of generations with perception of towards the poorness and to the conformism teaching to their followers that everyone has to continue through the path that God put on their lives and if they were supposed to be poor and ignorant that’s the way that they should live.
Now at days the things have changed a lot, the country is secular and step by step the corruption in the educational system had decreased; public and private entities are changing the traditional way of thinking of the students trying to help them to reach higher goals based on high expectations despite of their economic, geographic or ethnic conditions; finally the teachers and the society are accepting that a motivated person in which the people of its immediate environment believes in, can be better than everyone expected.
A great example of this is how SENA (Servicio Nacional de Aprendizaje) supports thousands of people that haven’t end high school to join the educational system by putting greater expectation upon them, increasing their productivity and their input to the society. All this not only by giving them a technical title but also making them feel useful and helpful.
On the private sector universities like EAFIT wants to take the traditional point of view of the educational system that was created to develop labor force, and transform it in to a developer of entrepreneurs that would help the country to progress and would generate jobs to the people that are qualifying themselves in the technical knowledge; all this through a group of professors that encourages the creation of ideas and the belief that high expectations on well educated people would lead to great progress.
We can see how the educational system and specially the expectations that a group of professors and directives have on a generation of students can shape the direction of the development of those human beings and with it the progress of a whole country.
The SENA HYMN ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF HOW THIS PUBLIC ENTITY ENCOURAGES ITS STUDENTS
References:
www.sena.edu.co/
Even many things still need to be done in order to improve our educational system, i think is very impressive the work the goverment has done to promote the technical education at all levels in our country, even more the idea of developing an integrative institution where students can be motivated to be productive and to achieve high goals..after being discrimated for different reasons
ResponderEliminarIt is very interesting how the pygmalion effect works on the educational system. Expectations over the students may lead them to succeed or to fail, so a lot of things must still change in colombian education specially the public one in order to encourage people to be productive and successful.
ResponderEliminarI really like this point of view about Pygmalion effect because we all are experimenting it by studying in EAFIT, in the moment we start studying we also start shaping our future, due to the fact we are studying in one of the most recognized universities in Colombia, we will feel like one of the most prepared professionals in Colombia, so the university indirectly applies the Pygmalion effect.
ResponderEliminarI agree with your example, i think the educational system of colombia has to change the peoples mind to be entreprenurs and more competitive if we want to participate in the global economy
ResponderEliminar