NEM design left out rural pedagogues: Luis Hernández Navarro

Nezahualcóyotl, Mex. Although the New Mexican School must have had as support and reference the contributions of the great pedagogues of the Mexican Rural School, such as José Santos Valdés, Rafael Ramírez and Raúl Isidro Burgos, it was left out of the design of the educational proposal. Great people like Amelia were ignored, said the journalist and writer, Luis Hernández Navarro.

Luis Hernández had a meeting with reading neighbors from this town on Wednesday night, on the second day of the Neza 2024 Book Fair, a cultural event in which he presented his most recent book The Painting on the wall. A window to normal schools and rural normalistas.

In a talk full of anecdotes that went from the founding of these spaces of knowledge, to the failed attempt to disappear them by their orchestrators: the political and economic power and the charrism of the teacher union, is how the author offered a review that narrates the essence of normalism in the fight for the democratization of our country.

He is also the coordinator of the Opinion section of the newspaper. The Conferencetells the life stories of the normalista teachers, their popular leaders and the schools where they were trained.

The editorial journalist assured that the protagonists of this story died without being recognized (except by the normalistas themselves) as the promoters of the social movements, the conservation of the original towns and the pedagogical project on which the NEM is based today, model implemented by the Ministry of Public Education (SEP), in which the importance of involving the school with the community and a more marked ideology predominates, contrary to that established by the current neoliberal model.

“All of them are the great builders, the true builders of the NEM. Not those who arrive many years later presuming that they are discovering warm water,” in the SEP.

During the talk, Hernández Navarro described how, from its very origin, the first rural normal school was demonized by the Catholic Church; passing the attacks perpetrated by businessman Claudio X González who described the normal schools as a nest of guerrillas and grillers; the stigmatization campaign to distort the disappearance of the 43; until the murder of 11 other normal students from Ayotzinapa; among these, the murder of Yanqui Kothan, a student at the Raúl Isidro Burgos normal school in Ayotzinapa.

“It has been said time and time again that rural normal schools are a burden of the past and that they must be put an end to.”

And precisely in his book, “it is conclusively demonstrated that, on the contrary, rural normal schools are a seed of the future” that have contributed to the slow process of democratization and their protagonists “have changed the history of this country from top to bottom.”

Luis Hernández regretted that in Guerrero, “the governor, because it is no longer known who governs in that state,” have rewarded the heads of the prosecutor’s office and security, responsible for the latest murder of a normalista student.

He demanded that not only the perpetrator of the murder of Yanqui Kohan be punished, “but all those involved in that plot must be investigated and punished” that protected and allowed the escape of the police officer apprehended last Tuesday.

In one of the passages in the book by the La Jornada columnist, this smear campaign against the normalistas and normalistas is described.

“Faithful to their usual mission, rural normal schools are no longer accused of being devil’s schools, Bolshevik kindergartens, communist dens or guerrilla nests. Now they are accused of being corrupt and they want to put an end to the boarding school and the soup kitchens.

The boarding school is the backbone of rural normalism and student political organization. To disappear it is to denature its pedagogical specificity.”

The author invited us to learn more about the history of rural normal schools, their founders, teachers and students in this work published by the Economic Culture Fund.