By Andrés Ferreira.Through the Urgent Consideration Law (LUC) the councils of Initial and Primary Education, of Basic Secondary Education, of Upper Secondary Education and of Technical-Professional Education (UTU) were eliminated. The disappearance of these councils, which will become addresses with the absence of teaching representation, began to rule yesterday Friday. For this reason, CAMBIO interviewed Elena Galeano -Integrante of the Union of Teachers of the Institute of Teacher Training- to have her opinion on the matter and to know how the teacher is affected from now on.
-What do you think about removing the tips?
-It will be complicated. The CEIP is an organism that was created in 1918, what it does is form a collective direction for education. With the law Nº18437 of 2008, the integration of a worker to these collective directions is enabled. That allowed the voice of the workers to be represented, the territory, the needs, many times because we were in Montevideo or in an office we lost contact with that, having a worker representative included we had someone who was in contact with us to raise and suggest things that were not being contemplated. These councils worked for more than 100 years, this goes beyond thinking about tradition and continuing to do so, they worked exceptionally except in the dictatorship. The councils demonstrated throughout all this time that they worked well, from now on, for example Primary, which is a very large organization, it will no longer have 3 people dividing tasks to cover all the needs and realities of the country, 3 people who exchanged ideas with workers, discussed issues, and listened to workers’ voices. From now on, there will be a single person directing the entire system and that leads to a concentration of power as well as decision-making.
-Does this make it difficult for the teacher to work?
-It makes work difficult since the schools are run by a single person, teachers, children and non-teaching officials as well, without a doubt it will be complicated because there is only one person to make all the decisions. Teachers limit and cut short a job that had been done from the point of view of the unions (FUM-TEP), it was very important that teachers have a voice in decision-making because they provide realities and needs always with In order to add for the best, that has now been eliminated and therefore from now on all we can do is take orders. It is one of the many complications of the Law of Urgent Consideration, education is being directed as if it were a company, the concept of thinking about education was lost, it is not what public education needs. For this reason, a campaign is being carried out in favor of the repeal of the 135 articles of the LUC from the FUM-TEP, Magisterial Association and PIT-CNT, because it is up to us teachers, families and education, we have to defend our rights, we invite people to come and sign so that the new voting process is enabled and exercise citizenship, because in 90 days there was not enough discussion and the whole of society was not listened to about what it had to say to the respect.
