The Quarrel for Curricular Reform in Mexico

• In Event: Educational Reform and Policy in Latin America

Proposal

The Quarrel for Curricular Reform in Mexico
A paper proposal for the CIES Conference 2025
Envisioning Education in a Digital Society
Abstract
Jürgen Habermas (1986) explored the complex relationships of research with different conceptions of human interests, projects of change and modes of reflection that organize social science practices. Perhaps this approach helps to understand the relationship between politics and the 2022 Basic Education Curriculum proposal that the Ministry of Public Education (SEP) publicized in three working documents. (Dirección General de Desarrollo Curricular, 2022a, 2022b, 2022c) It was the wager of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) to shape educational policy in basic education and build a piece of new official knowledge to do the government designed a device called the New Mexican School (NEM). The SEP implemented the new curriculum in August 2023, giving it continuity in the 2024-25 school year. (Author, 2024)

Background
Since the beginning of his third campaign to win the presidency of the Republic, AMLO proposed to demolish the educational reform undertaken by President Enrique Peña Nieto. His obvious interest was to win the teachers’ vote, and he reiterated the criticism of the dissident teachers of the National Union of Education Workers (SNTE) that the change in education politics was a labor reform rather than an educational one. AMLO sealed pacts with two groups of teachers, both with 10 points. The first was with sympathizers of Elba Esther Gordillo (López Obrador & Guzmán, 2018). The second was with the National Coordination of Education Workers (CNTE). (López Obrador, 2018) In it, he highlighted his future scholarship program and composed the phrase that later became a ritual, the “misnamed educational reform.”
Points 7. To elaborate an educational plan that improves the quality of education where teachers, parents and experts participate and 9. To take up the educational proposal of each region and promote indigenous education with full respect for their forms of organization could be considered the background of the “Curricular framework and study plans 2022 of Mexican basic education” that the general director of Curricular Development of the SEP, Marx Arriaga, released in January 2022. The project has defenders but faces criticism from teachers and scholars; it is a matter of contention in the public plaza.

The problem
Based on a review of literature, documents and newspaper articles, this paper attempts to answer three basic questions and, along the way, builds an argument to highlight the relationship between politics (the technology of power) and the main actors in the education sector. The logic proposed by Habermas (1986) is their base:
1. Was there a genuine interest in the government’s improvement of education, or was there a proposal to strengthen the political power of President López Obrador and his party?
2. What was the outstanding concept in the project of curricular change? Does it reveal any pedagogical current?
3. Were any reflections on this change’s consequences on student learning and among teachers and their unions?

Argument
In the two decalogues cited above, candidate AMLO showed his interest in working with teachers and announced changes in educational policy. However, the SEP’s project of curricular change has no precedent in those proposals, neither in his Proyecto de nación: 2018-2024 (López Obrador, 2017) nor in the National Development Plan (Presidencia de la Republica, 2019) nor the Sectorial Program of Education (SEP, 2020). Perhaps it would be necessary to investigate a personalistic type of interest that affects the Mexican educational system.
Based on a historical examination, this paper argues that AMLO’s main purpose was to rebuild the imperial Republic (Krauze, 1997), and his politics of education was another instrument in this process.

This paper is relevant to the Latin American SIG since AMLO’s policy bets against neoliberalism and the currents of educational reform in Latin America, which align with what Pasi Sahlberg calls the GERM (Sahlberg, 2023). The framework of analysis is heterodox. It is based on classical authors such as Nicolo Machiavelli and Max Weber, in conjunction with contemporary authors to define the main concept: technology of power. It also takes thoughts from authors such as Martin Carnoy, Michael Apple, and Thomas Popkewitz, as well as scholars such as James March and Johannes Olsen from the neo-institutionalism realm. The concepts of ideology, hegemony and vocation lend themselves to define the Mexican corporate system and the imperial republic.

Author

• Carlos Ornelas, Universidad Autonoma Meropolitana