Education Denied

Last week, a new school year began in Honduras. My once-quiet morning walks are now punctuated with the sound of children shouting to their friends as they clamor to get to school. It should be a hopeful sound, but I know that there are many young faces absent from the blue and white uniform clad masses this year. Some are in the fields, working to help feed their families; others, after years of overcrowded classrooms and insufficient attention from teachers, have simply given up, resigned at age ten to years working in the fields under the hot sun. The Honduran government has failed these children and allowed them to complete a cycle of poverty that an adequately funded education could have broken.

In no situation is the government’s failure more evident than in the case of Marisol. Marisol is sixteen years old and she is the hope of her community. When she completed sixth grade, a feat in itself in her village, she convinced her skeptical parents to allow her to continue her education. Because the cost of transportation to and from the nearest high school was more than she could afford, she enrolled in an alternative, self-directed program called “El Maestro en la Casa.”

Anxious to share her educational good fortune and help her community, Marisol started teaching kindergarten, as there was no official post for the position in her village. She wasn’t paid much, but she saved what she could. She had high hopes of becoming a teacher one day and she knew enrolling in a bachillerato program would be expensive. In December, she completed ninth grade and she had a stroke of luck: an American volunteer in her community agreed to help Marisol pay her school fees. She was one step closer to her dream of becoming a teacher.

Then, she had the door slammed in her face. On enrollment day, Marisol arrived at the front of the matriculation line, after hours of waiting, only to be told that the school was full. She was devastated. Marisol overcame long odds to even consider standing in line to matriculate that day, but despite having done everything right, Marisol was denied the educational opportunity that she deserved.

Who deserves the blame in this situation? The school? The teachers? The government? It’s true, strings could be pulled and another student could be added to the already swollen student body, but what would that accomplish? Marisol was one of many turned away on matriculation day and the school barely has sufficient resources to educate the students already enrolled. To ask teachers to take on more responsibility and expand their class sizes even further would do little more than lower the overall quality of education for everyone. No, it is not the school, nor the teachers, who must take responsibility for this educational crisis: it is the Honduran government.

It is a sign of progress that more Hondurans are reaching secondary school, but getting them to the door is not enough. The Honduran government must guarantee that there are enough qualified teachers and secondary schools available to meet the educational needs of every young Honduran like Marisol. To do this, they must inject sufficient resources and funding into secondary education. By denying an adequate education to its most promising youth, the Honduran government is disabling its citizenry’s most powerful tool for sustainable, long-term development.