Narcomar. Chapter 54. The Educational Revolution in a Marine Reserve

The abandoned school in El Faro was proof for Máxima that in the villages hatreds, resentments, suspicions and outrages were more important than anything, in the villages where she worked.

The government changed the educational model and replaced the single-teacher schools and the old schools, by the so-called millennium schools, which were huge buildings where children and young people would study from 5 years to 18.

This new pedagogical model, which created great resistance in the indigenous communities and in many peasant communities, because the school was not only the place of study, since the liberal revolution of Eloy Alfaro, in 1895, the schools first and then the soccer fields, became the center of town.

There the children met, created lifelong ties with their neighbors, women shared problems and men grouped together to do collective work, parties, or games

The school organized, summoned neighbors, was a meeting place for local organizations, in short, it was the heart, brain and hands of the people.

Unfortunately the schools also became the haunt of bad teachers, many of them belonging to a political party, which had become an employment agency for its affiliates or members.

Her father told Máxima that when he made the rural school in 1982, there were good teachers who lived an apostolate in the fields and teachers who were salary collectors, who, together with the political lieutenant, rounded up their salary, which was very bad at the time. Unlike now, and to do so, they asked parents for fees for everything, they extorted grades from students, which included financial and sexual extortion.

Like private and religious schools, students did not receive grades and could not attend classes if they did not pay. In state schools and colleges, students who did not pay the fees for the party, or any other invention of the teachers, did not receive grades or grades. Those with poor grades could get through the year if they paid with money, gifts, or sex.

Teachers could give bad marks to those who were not studious, to those who did not know the answer, to those who did not have good behavior. The teacher defined what was good behavior or who did not know and could get money from them or also force them to have sex with him.

 The indigenous leaders of the communities became teachers and thus the CONAIE financed its leaders in each town. The PMLSM did the same, so that the teachers were not really, they were officials or party leaders paid by the government.

The problem of sexual harassment in public, private and church schools took on such dimensions that in 2017 a popular consultation was held to punish them.

The government thought that this education in the hands of political leaders and not true teachers would change, if it created an extraordinary educational infrastructure, trained and made periodic evaluations of teachers, if it changed the exams, so that teachers would not ask what they were given. It was desirable, but for students to study to answer an equal questionnaire in all schools and colleges, which accredited them as high school graduates, in addition to allowing them to win scholarships inside and outside the country, to study at universities. The degree they would study in the future depended on their grades.

But the students' grades, rather than depending on their qualities, their interest, their abilities, depended on the teacher's sympathy or antipathy for the student and, conversely, the student for the teacher.

There were students with artistic or sports skills who disliked their teachers, who repeated by heart in the exam to pass it, they dreamed of leaving school and college because for them that was torture.

For the millennium schools. Many of the schools were abandoned and Máxima asked her friend, the rector of the school, to assign them to create vacation camps, where students from the country could come for vacations, to be close to the sea and the tropical jungle.

On the day of the town festival, a young girl from the school who was the favorite candidate for town queen was extorted by a classmate.

-If you do not have sex with me, I will publish your intimate photos on social networks. and she showed him one of her.

Angela went into nervous shock and went to the health clinic.

-What's wrong with you, because they are trembling and crying? -Maxima asked the girl, who could hardly speak. How old you?

I'm 16

Are you chilling? Why are you trembling? Has anyone in your house had malaria?

No doctor, I'm very nervous.

Why?

Because a colleague whom I asked to help me fix my cell phone, stole some photos that I took naked and has published them on the Internet.