Buenos Aires students and scientists stage sit-ins to protest unpaid internships, cutbacks
Students from over 30 public high schools in Buenos Aires, Argentina, have been staging sit-in strikes this month to protest municipal educational reform proposals that would force high school seniors to participate in unpaid internships.
Budget cutbacks have also prompted over 330 laid-off fellowship holders at the National Research Council (CONICET) to do likewise at the Ministry of Science and Technology, in Buenos Aires' upscale Palermo neighborhood.
President Mauricio Macri's right-wing administration has repudiated the sit-ins, with Justice Minister Germán Garavano calling them “illegal” despite a court ruling last week that authorized them.
Students are mainly protesting proposals to have senior-year students spend “50% of their time in businesses and organizations, applying what they learned based on their talents and interests.” They argue that this is in fact a cover to provide companies free labor, while leaving little time for their studies.
The proposals, moreover, were not submitted to public comment from teachers, students, and educational NGOs, as current law mandates. Student leaders note as well that the unpaid internship clause was left out of the city's original draft - but discovered only because it had been accidentally published in the city's own website.
High school representatives met with municipal Education Minister Soledad Acuña last week; but negotiations failed. No further meetings have as yet been announced.
The Macri administration has come under fire from teachers' unions and much of the nation's progressive political spectrum for attempting to impose curriculum changes by decree and for cutbacks of 20% in real educational spending since taking office two years ago.
Former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, currently running for the Senate, sided with students. She encouraged students to fight for what they consider right, arguing that “everyone has a right to express their views.”
“You don’t have to say 'yes' to everything,” she said in a rally last Friday. “It’s not democratic, and don’t let yourselves be pushed over - because they (the government) will try to.”
At: http://www.thebubble.com/education-reform-justice-minister-says-occupying-schools-is-illegal-as-students-begin-fifth-week-of-protests/
No to "high schools of the future" - the euphemism used by the city government to describe its educational reform decree.
