MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
One fifth of youngsters don’t study or work but still may have a chance
By Jorge Familiar (*) - One out of every five Latin Americans between the ages of 15 and 24 wakes up every morning with no school to attend or paid job to do. Bogged down by economic constraints, early pregnancy, violence or low expectations, they are the so-called “ninis” — ni estudia, ni trabaja (neither studying nor working) — and they are more than 20 million strong. Read full article
Comments
Disclaimer & comment rulesNo surprises here, only the low number of them.
Jan 23rd, 2016 - 11:24 am - Link - Report abuse 0In Argentina less than half of the pibes don't finish secondary school at the normal age these days. They say it's only about 43 percent that finish in the normal time, but it only comes up to about 50 percent if you count those who eventually get re-enrolled and repeat.
Jan 23rd, 2016 - 05:24 pm - Link - Report abuse 0The recent stats are interesting. Paraguay, Bolivia, Mexico,... a long list of countries that do better than Argentina in this regard. Chile leads the way with about 68 percent graduating from 'cuarto medio' - which is the equivalent of high school, at the normal age, while in Argentina that is 43 percent. One interesting difference: in Chile, parents typically pay a lot of money to send their kids to secondary school while in Argentina it's “free.” Implications?
Sounds like their parents need a good kick in the ass along with them.
Jan 23rd, 2016 - 10:56 pm - Link - Report abuse 0I should have mentioned, before someone else jumps at the issue, that both Chile and Argentina have a significant number of “private” secondary schools. But no matter how you run the numbers, Argentine children in large numbers are not completing this level of education, and they are failing to do so in much larger percentages than most other nations in Latin America.
Jan 24th, 2016 - 12:05 am - Link - Report abuse 0A sign of failures in the education system and rigid labour laws.
Jan 24th, 2016 - 07:38 am - Link - Report abuse 0An education system that fails to skill people for the modern world economy.
And labour laws that attempt to 'protect' workers and jobs.
If you can't sack someone who is incompetent or you can't retrench someone when you want to reform or reorientate a business, then how are you going to bring in better educated and younger talent?
@ 5 Skip
Jan 24th, 2016 - 05:54 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Your post is Uruguay to a 'T'.
It is so frustrating to meet intelligent youngsters being misled by the education system to the absolute frustration of the teachers that only a complete branch and root shakeup at 'government' level could succeed.
The problem there of course for Uruguay is that (with a very few exceptions) the members of 'government' are as illiterate and innumerate as the worst of the population.
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