Educator warns on priorities

[NewsWhore]

Father Jorge Cela, S.J., a noted educator and anthropologist, warned that all the talk about academic excellence is worthless if the government is the right investments are not made in education. He said that with poor school buildings, poorly paid teachers responsible for as many as 70 students in a classroom. "You cannot just talk about excellence," he said in a TV interview yesterday on the Orlando Jorge Mera Channel 9 program. He called upon all of society to work for better education and for a national pact that would unite the political parties and the government with the private sector and the educational institutions and churches. The goal would be better quality of education for all. Cela pointed out that although the GDP has grown steadily, the investment in education has not increased. According to Hoy newspaper, Cela pointed out that the so-called "Asian Tigers" achieved their astonishing economic progress by investing heavily to educate the people, while the average investment in education in Latin America is around 4% of the GDP, in the Dominican Republic it was less than 2% in 2006 and barely 2.5% in 2007. As a student of human behavior, Cela pointed out that those persons with a good education will find themselves living in a nation that is "badly educated" and will end up leaving the country for greener pastures.

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