Ley de Educacion Superior

Bueno,

Here's the deal. I'm at school right now. There's a raging thunderstorm outside and I'm soaked from it. I just got out of a school wide assembly, one of the most attended in the history of the school says the chancellor.

(The power just went off in the school, so I had to restart my computer)

There's a lot of tension in this country right now. The government (which basically equals the president) is proposing new laws to go with the constitution, Ecuador's twentieth, by the way. However, a huge part of the country is accusing Correa, Ecuador's president, of turning into a dictator. One of the laws, Ley de Aguas, spurred widespread indigenous revolts that included marches and blocking highways-we were advised not to travel that weekend. This assembly focused on the Ley de Educacion, which would basically centralize education, clump public and private education into one messy blob, require exams for specific careers that everyone would have to take to be able to apply for a job, determine a "country development plan" that would exclude the opinion of academics, and change the face of education in the country for good. Scary. How would you feel if the government determined what your education would be! We were told that with the new law, students would not be allowed to double major. What if someone told you: "You can't study what you want to study."

Tomorrow, there is going to be a peaceful march through the center of the city against this law. Hundreds of thousands of people are expected to participate. My program director says I shouldn't go because I will get arrested or attacked. But I really want to because I believe that education can't look like this law. Especially because the law is so vague and contains so many loopholes, Correa would be able to do whatever he wants. Should I go?