“The dream of the parents here is that our children continue their education after the age of 15,” my host mother in rural Ramón García, Nicaragua told me. She didn’t have the opportunity to attend school but benefited from the adult literacy campaign after the 1979 revolution.
Alfebetización, or the literacy campaign, was launched in the early 1980s by the Sandinistas, members of a socialist party in Nicaragua. University students paused their studies to travel to rural areas of the country, teaching literacy to adults. As a result, 400,000 adults learned to read and write in 1990, according to Revista Envío Magazine, and the literacy rate rose from 49 percent to 87 percent in five months, according to a 2005 UNESCO report. In 2009, nearly 30 years after the literacy campaign, the US Department of State puts the estimate at just 81 percent, which shows that Nicaragua’s education system has much space left for improvement.
In 1990, with the election of conservative Violeta Chamorro, neoliberal policies were introduced and social programs were privatized. More than 370 teachers and school principals, Envío reported, were fired or transferred. The guiding principle for this campaign was well articulated by the education minister, Sofonías Cisneros: “We don’t want wise teachers; we want loyal ones.”
New textbooks replaced the old ones, erasing the propaganda of the revolution, along with history. The new books, Envío observed, depicted “blue-eyed children, references to Santa Claus and sentences about ‘riding a bicycle to market.’” They also told the stories of “mothers who cook, wash and use sewing machines, fathers who work and bring home money and children who run errands”—images foreign to the Nicaraguan children, especially those who live in the countryside, start work in the fields at a young age and never expect Santa Claus to visit their homes. A Christian element was also added to the texts, teaching the children about the meaning of the cross among other religious beliefs, contributing to the power the Catholic Church exercises in the country.
The new government spent more on education than during the 1980s when war expenses swallowed the majority of a budget strangled by sanctions and poverty. However, parents were also required to pay a monthly fee and other expenses in a country where 80 percent of the population lives on less than two dollars per day. The principal of a public primary school in Managua, told me in an interview that the intent was to decentralize education and undermine the power of the ministry of education. According to Yamileth Pérez, my advisor, health promoter, community organizer and mother of four, during the 16 years of conservative government, parents had to pay one dollar monthly per child, plus money for supplies, exams and food. For many parents, the costs were too steep, and their children were prevented from receiving an education.
As soon as the Sandinistas assumed power in 2006, they developed a new literacy program called ¨Yo Si Puedo¨ (Yes I can) and an accelerated primary school program for adults called ¨Yo Si Puedo Seguir¨ (Yes I can continue). But problems still persist. In February, La Prensa, a conservative newspaper in Nicaragua, reported a shortage of desks, a deficit claimed to affect 60,000 children, especially in rural areas. In the primary school I visited, there is no playground, only a few sad-looking swings, there is no air-conditioning in the sweltering classrooms, and the principal uses her own income to help buy textbooks. The teachers are paid a pittance of around $250 a month, although over the weekend an increase in salaries puts the figure at $257.50.
For people in rural areas and the Autonomous Regions on the Atlantic Coast in particular, the situation is grave. In Ramón García, the community fought for 14 years before the government constructed a primary school, which receives little support from the central government. Parents I talked with said that education is still not free in middle and high school, located in the larger town of San Ramón—they pay for transportation, food and books. There is no library in Ramón García and the students who live there often cannot complete assignments.
The indigenous and afro-descendents of the Atlantic Coast, who were colonized by the Pacific Coast, have even more problems with the education system. Besides lack of funding, a major problem is that the textbooks are written in Spanish, a second or third language for people of the Autonomous Regions. The books teach the history of the Pacific Coast, which in many respects is distinct from the history of the indigenous and Creole populations.
But even in Managua, Nicaragua’s capital, it is not uncommon to see children selling fruits on the streets, washing windows during red lights or simply begging. When I climbed the mountain of trash that is La Chureca, the municipal dump, children as young as five or six were helping their parents search for bottles and trash that they can sell, in the smoke, dust and sun. The hope lies in new programs and grassroots organizers that try to increase accessibility and help parents who, although not educated themselves, begin to see education as an imperative for their children.
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