Greetings, Steemit community.
For nobody is a secret the current situation in my country, Venezuela, which has basically changed our entire social dynamic in various areas, one of them is education where the level of desertion has reached alarming levels.
According to José Angel Ferreira, who is the administrative vice-rector of the University of Carabobo, student enrollment in the primary and secondary education has decreased by one and a half million of students. Font!
There are many factors that have caused discouragement in classrooms, not only at the university level where I can speak with experience because I´m working as a teacher at a university, but also at all educational levels. One of those factors is the economy, in the case of the university so many prefer to stop studying so they can work and thus collaborate with the maintenance of their family, since with a single salary in a home they can not supply all they need to live; others have preferred to look for new horizons in another country that can give them the stability they require. In the case of schools and high school, many times the family can not afford the studies of the child / adolescent, there are occasions where if there are several children they can only help one, it is a very sad reality that we are living where even the adolescents themselves or childrens decide to leave their education to collaborate at home in some way.
It is not only the high cost of school materials that makes it difficult for us to provide the best education for our children, but also for food and transportation.
The reality inside of the classroom change, as a teacher you try not to generate much expenses and you need to have a little extra flexibility to understand that sometimes students will not be able to get to the classroom for things like they did not get cash for your tickets or the university route did not work out or you could not do the activities because there was no electricity or internet, you want to avoid almost at all costs that the students leave, although it does not always depend on you.
In the case of the career where I am a teacher, we usually a projection is made on the sections that will be opened in the year (more than all annual work is done, the career is quarterly). When the inscriptions of this cycle were made, we was worried because there was just a few students checking in the career, we even had to give one more week for them, so the laggards could register and then we would know how many people would be in total. The academic loads had to be modified since where we calculated that there would be 3 sections, only enough was enrolled to fill only one section, and even then it would not be the amount with which it was normally working.
Another source of discouragement for the students is that the desertion is also present in the teaching area, where many teachers have decided to emigrate, and those who are occupying these positions are mostly assigned thanks to influence peddling but not because the necessary profile is fulfilled. This means that the classes are not taken as they should be, the students may think that they are wasting their time, effort and investment so they decide to desert. Because the traffic of influences is booming another thought that students have is: what will serve me to strive to obtain my university degree if the position, will be for those who have friends inside any institution that i`m going to apply for working? A question that increases discouragement and demotivation. Most are waiting for their degree to emigrate if they have not done it before.
The situation has become so worrisome that the main indication given to teachers is to maintain the enrollment we have, something that escapes our hands in some cases. Our work schedules were made so that we do not have to go the 5 days since that implies expenses, in some cases we have had to reach agreements regarding the schedules with the students to avoid that they also have to go the 5 days and helping them to minimize their expenses a little, for this we have availed ourselves of the help of diverse technological tools that we have at hand.
Every time there are more empty seats in our classrooms, which makes me think about the future: what will happen when there is no one left? What will happen when we need our Venezuelan`s professionals?
If you are currently a student and you have considered abandoning your studies I will tell you a phrase that my husband usually repeats:
"Education is the best investment you can make in your life"
Thanks for read the post!