Mexico needs schools

Opinion: June 15, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

I don’t know whether the flow of illegal immigrants is bad in enough places to justify President Barack Obama’s decision to send more National Guardsmen to the border. But I do know that if Mexico doesn’t better educate its students, all the Guardsmen in America won’t stop it.

The reality is Mexico is locked in a vicious loop. Miryam Hazan of the Migration Policy Institute put her finger on this when she told a recent conference at Southern Methodist University’s John Tower Center that Mexico has a “low-wage path to development.”

In other words, it has banked on lower-skill jobs to keep its economy going. Not a smart approach, to say the least, in today’s world. Not when you look at emerging nations like India and China, which are progressing by producing more engineers and scientists.

Mexico hasn’t taken that path, and, therefore, it has a hard time retaining its people. Not only has Mexico lost low-wage workers seeking better jobs to the north, it can’t provide enough jobs for its educated workers.

Interestingly, Hazan and nearly every panelist at the SMU forum pointed to a better education system as the way for Mexico to break free. That can’t happen overnight, but Mexico — and the United States — can take steps now to move ahead.

For starters, investing in schools along the border can help. Mexican President Felipe Calderon went to Ciudad Juarez recently to announce his government will finance more schools in the violence-riddled border city.

Shortage of schools

That’s exactly right. People I’ve talked to say Juarez has long lacked sufficient schools. In fact, about 70,000 Juarez youths 14 to 19 years old don’t go to school, Zulma Mendez reports from the University of Texas at El Paso.

Call me naive, but why couldn’t U.S. foreign aid help Mexico here? We certainly have a national interest in seeing that Mexican children have enough schools, particularly at the high school level. Without that access at home, they’ll end up searching for better jobs here or turning to the drug crimes that could spill over into our streets.

Yes, many middle-class Mexican families send their kids to high school, but Juarez loses far too many low-income students to the drug gangs because they lack a reasonable alternative.

So here’s a second area that needs attention: Mexico needs better-prepared teachers. Some get their jobs because unions hand them out, not because these teachers know their subjects.

This is mostly Mexico’s responsibility, starting with its leaders challenging the education unions.

But why can’t our education department work with Mexican leaders to send teams of U.S. educators to consult with Mexican peers about best practices?

We have delighted in sending Peace Corps volunteers around the world. And young American entrepreneurs and financial experts made their way to Eastern Europe after communism’s fall. Why not do the same in Mexico, only this time with educators talking to educators?

William McKenzie is an editorial columnist for The Dallas Morning News. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.