Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0042/00421.txt

Text File | 1991-06-24 | 46KB | 751 lines

$Unique_ID{COW00421}
$Pretitle{266}
$Title{Bolivia
Chapter 6B.   Secondary Education and Higher Education}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Thomas E. Weil}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{schools
school
university
students
higher
rural
education
teachers
universities
secondary}
$Date{1974}
$Log{}
Country:     Bolivia
Book:        Bolivia, A Country Study
Author:      Thomas E. Weil
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1974

Chapter 6B.   Secondary Education and Higher Education

Secondary Education

     Education at the secondary level is offered in general or academic
schools designed to prepare students for university entrance, in vocational
schools, and in normal schools for training teachers for schools in the rural
primary system. On the basis of the shortened four-year course of study, the
1971 enrollment in secondary schools of all kinds was about 102,000. Between
1960 and 1968 (before the course was reduced from six to four years)
enrollments almost doubled, and the four-year program registered an enrollment
increase of about one-third between 1969 and 1971.

     In 1968 virtually all of the school units, with the exception of the
rural normal schools, were located in cities and towns. Girls made up about
two-fifths of the total enrollment, and about one-third of the students were
in privately operated institutions. About one young person in five of
secondary-school age was enrolled in the system. As in the primary school
program, students were primarily occupied in note taking and memorizing
predominantly theoretical course material. Laboratories, shops, and libraries
were few.

Academic Schools

     In 1971 nearly 86,400 students, or 86 percent of the secondary level
enrollment, were engaged in academic or general studies, a proportion
slightly higher than the 83 percent recorded in 1960. Boys' schools were
called colegios and the schools for girls, who constituted about one-third
of the enrollment, were called liceos. Most of the students at the secondary
level come from urban families with, or aspiring to, middle class or higher
status.

     Coupled with the social and intellectual prestige associated with the
academic courses of study, this circumstance does much to explain the
continued strong show of preference for the preuniversity academic
curriculum-to the frustration of the efforts of administrators who sought
to put greater emphasis on practical career studies in the vocational
classrooms. The academic school curriculum was aimed essentially at
university matriculation and the primary school facilities available to most
rural children offered nothing above the third grade. From the fourth grade
onward, the educational system was geared largely to the objective of placing
young people in universities, which were already producing graduates at rates
beyond the economy's absorptive capacity.

     Private academic schools, with about one-third of the total enrollment
during the 1960s, are of particular importance because of the quality of
education that they offer as well as because of the number of students that
they attract. Their retention rate and their record of securing university
admissions for their graduates are substantially higher than those of the
public sector. Most of the institutions are located in La Paz and in the
larger provincial capitals.

     A provision of the 1955 Code of Education requires that private schools
give scholarships to poor children in proportion to their enrollments, and
additional scholarships are sometimes offered by schools operated by Roman
Catholic orders. For families of limited income, however, the cost of
supporting children in their late teens even in the tuition-free public
academic institutions is a severe one. At this age most Bolivian children are
already working to help contribute to the family support, and parents of
children in academic schools must look forward to the possibility of years of
university attendance.

     In 1968 the students graduating from academic schools represented 26.8
percent of those who had matriculated six years earlier; the proportion was
moderately higher than the 24.2 percent registered in 1965. Attrition was most
serious-one-third of the total-at the end of the first year.

Vocational Schools

     In 1971 a little less than 11,000 students, or about 10 percent of the
secondary-level student body, were enrolled in vocational school classes.
The rate of enrollment increase since 1960 had been a high one but not quite
as high as that registered in the academic schools. About two-fifths of the
students were in privately operated institutions. So large a proportion were
in the commercial schools devoted largely to teaching office skills to girls
and in home economics schools for girls that the vocational school system was
predominantly a female one; girls and young women made up nearly 80 percent
of the 1968 enrollment.

     The retention rate, varying considerably in the various kinds of study
courses, had a collective average about the same as that for academic schools
but was not readily comparable because of durations varying from two to six
years. Most courses required a completed primary education, but some
admitted students after completion of four primary years.

     The home economics schools for girls, with over 3,200 students in 1971,
and the commercial schools, with over 3,800 students, represented about
two-thirds of the total vocational enrollment. The four-year home economics
program consists of some academic courses plus training in such fields as
dressmaking, cooking, and nutrition. Commercial courses vary in length and
offer studies ranging from instruction in dictation and operation of office
machines to bookkeeping and accounting. Secretarial schools operate in all of
the major cities and towns-even the remote Oriente town of Riberalta has its
school for secretaries-and the Institute of Higher Commercial Studies in La
Paz has sections in commerce, accounting, customs procedures, and business
administration. The commercial secondary schools are the only ones in the
school system in which the enrollment in private units predominates.

     Industrial schooling for boys is offered in a four-year course at the
Pedro Domingo Murillo National Industrial School and in a six-year course
at the Don Bosco school operated by the Roman Catholic Church. The 1971
industrial enrollment was a little more than 600. The limited popularity of
industrial courses is in part explained by the inability of graduates to
find suitable jobs. According to one study, in 1968 only a minuscule
percentage of the graduates receiving the technician (tecnico) diploma had
been able to find employment in their fields of specialization; employers
had almost invariably preferred to give on-the-job training to unskilled
personnel.

    In 1971 over 1,000 students were enrolled in secondary schools of arts
and music, which offered courses of up to six years. In addition, more than
2,000 students were trained in a variety of vocational courses conducted
under the independent school program maintained by the national mining
corporation.

     A public agricultural vocational school, the first in the country, was
established with United States assistance in 1958 at Muyurina, near the city
of Santa Cruz. In 1960 its administration was assigned to the Roman Catholic
order of the Salesian fathers. Statistical tables appearing during the late
1960s and early 1970s, however, included no figures for agricultural
enrollment in secondary level schools.

     During the early 1960s a system of labor secondary schools (colegios
laborales) was established outside the regular school system to give
instruction to young people in agrarian and artisan techniques and at the
same time to give them some grounding in academic studies. By 1967 about
thirty of these entities had been established, and more than 1,600 students
were receiving instruction in a nine-month course of study. A majority were
public in