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Nicaragua Education
When the Sandinistas came to power in 1979, they
inherited an
educational system that was one of the poorest in Latin
America.
Under the Somozas, limited spending on education and
generalized
poverty, which forced many adolescents into the labor
market,
constricted educational opportunities for Nicaraguans. In
the
late 1970s, only 65 percent of primary school-age children
were
enrolled in school, and of those who entered first grade
only 22
percent completed the full six years of the primary school
curriculum (see
table 4, Appendix A). Most rural schools
offered
only one or two years of schooling, and three-quarters of
the
rural population was illiterate. Few students enrolled in
secondary school, in part because most secondary
institutions
were private and too expensive for the average family. By
these
standards, the 8 percent of the college-age population
enrolled
in Nicaraguan universities seemed relatively high. Less
surprising was that upper-class families typically sent
their
children abroad for higher education.
By 1984 the Sandinista government had approximately
doubled
the proportion of GNP spent on preuniversity education,
the
number of primary and secondary school teachers, the
number of
schools, and the total number of students enrolled at all
levels
of the education system. A 1980 literacy campaign, using
secondary school students as volunteer teachers, reduced
the
illiteracy rate from 50 percent to 23 percent of the total
population. (The latter figure exceeds the rate of 13
percent
claimed by the literacy campaign, which did not count
adults whom
the government classified as learning impaired or
otherwise
unteachable.) In part to consolidate the gains of the
literacy
campaign, the Ministry of Education set up a system of
informal
self-education groups known as Popular Education
Cooperatives.
Using materials and pedagogical advice provided by the
ministry,
residents of poor communities met in the evenings to
develop
basic reading and mathematical skills. Although designed
for
adults, these self-education groups also served children
who
worked by day or could not find a place in overcrowded
schools.
At the college level, enrollment jumped from 11,142
students
in 1978 to 38,570 in 1985. The Sandinistas also reshaped
the
system of higher education: reordering curricular
priorities,
closing down redundant institutions and programs and
establishing
new ones, and increasing lower-class access to higher
education.
Influenced by Cuban models, the new curricula were
oriented
toward development needs. Agriculture, medicine,
education, and
technology grew at the expense of law, the humanities, and
the
social sciences.
One of the hallmarks of Sandinista education (and
favored
target of anti-Sandinista criticism) was the ideological
orientation of the curriculum. The stated goal of
instruction was
the development of a "new man" whose virtues were to
include
patriotism, "internationalism," an orientation toward
productive
work, and a willingness to sacrifice individual interests
to
social and national interests. School textbooks were
nationalist
and prorevolutionary in tone, giving ample coverage to
Sandinista
heroes. After the 1990 election, the Chamorro government
placed
education in the hands of critics of Sandinista policy,
who
imposed more conservative values on the curriculum. A new
set of
textbooks was produced with support from the United States
Agency
for International Development (AID), which had provided
similar
help during the Somoza era.
Despite the Sandinistas' determined efforts to expand
the
education system in the early 1980s, Nicaragua remained an
undereducated society in 1993. Even before the Contra war
and the
economic crisis that forced spending on education back to
the
1970 level, the educational system was straining to keep
up with
the rapidly growing school-age population. Between 1980
and 1990,
the number of children between five and fourteen years of
age had
expanded by 35 percent. At the end of the Sandinista era,
the
literacy rate had declined from the level attained at the
conclusion of the 1980 literacy campaign. Overall school
enrollments were larger than they had been in the 1970s,
however,
and, especially in the countryside, access to education
had
broadened dramatically. But a substantial minority of
primary
school-age children and three-quarters of secondary
school-age
students were still not in school, and the proportion of
students
who completed their primary education had not advanced
beyond the
1979 level. Even by Central American standards, the
Nicaraguan
education system was performing poorly.
Data as of December 1993
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