Berkley Center

Background: As part of the Education and Global Social Justice Project, in June 2011, undergraduate student Codie Kane interviewed Mauricio Trejo, head of the Education Department at José Simeón Cañas Central American University (Universidad Centroamericana José Simeón Cañas, UCA). In this interview, Trejo discusses disparities in education and the varied challenges facing urban and rural students, in addition to the role of UCA as a prominent research institute raising awareness of such issues.

Tell me about your experience in the field of education in general and in UCA in particular. How did you begin working here? How did you become head of the Education Department?

I originally studied psychology, but I’ve almost always worked in education. I got my first real job at a Catholic school in San Salvador as a music teacher. While there, I began working with the UCA on an educational reform project. It was intended to prepare teachers to use the new national curriculum created under the government’s Educational Reform in Progress Initiative. It was a strange experience because I often found myself giving workshops to my old high school and college professors.

When the project was over, I began teaching educational psychology at the UCA. I later took on the job of coordinating the various majors in the education department. In 2005, I was appointed department head.

What motivates you in your work?

I fell into the field of education. When the music teacher job was offered to me, I accepted it without thinking. But over time, I came to see some of the problems that the country’s education system faced. I came to feel that, though I could do little to change them, I could at least try to do something. Working at the UCA has been great because it’s given me the power to do just that. The university has a lot of influence in El Salvador. It’s allowed me to have greater impact than I could ever hope to alone.

On a more basic level, I’m committed to education because I love working with people. In a classroom, I don’t feel tired. As one of the professors in the distance learning program for education students in Morazan, for example, I hold five hour classes. I drive there and teach for the entire period without even realizing it because I love it so much.

Describe to me the current state of education in El Salvador, particularly in rural, underprivileged areas.

Education has come a long way in comparison to where it was when then country began its educational reform process a few years ago. There’s more coverage. There are more students in school. Nevertheless, it still has a long way to go.

Right now, rural and urban areas face slightly different challenges. In rural areas, education continues to suffer from the effects of the civil war. Communities have yet to fully recover from the 12 years during which they had no services, institutions, or official education as a result of the fighting. Today, this is complicated by the fact that many teachers who work in these regions are from the capital and don’t fully understand what happened and, thus, how to help. We have one project at the UCA that’s working to improve this situation—the distance learning program for education students. It allows students living in Morazan and Chalatenango to get their teaching degrees without having to come to San Salvador. They take classes online with UCA professors. Once a week, the professors travel to their region and hold live classes. It has produced many teachers who otherwise wouldn’t have been able to get degrees because of their location and financial situation. These teachers generally stay and work in their communities, contributing to local development.

Urban areas, in contrast, have security issues. They are subject to gang violence and youth delinquency. Schools are now unsafe places. There have been cases in which teachers stopped working because they had received threats from students or their families. Some are afraid to discipline children because they may have parents involved in a gang who will retaliate.

I think these issues are due to larger structural problems. The present education system, first, consists entirely of uncoordinated, disparate programs controlled by different departments of the Ministry of Education. It has no broad, strategic plan. It lacks universal goals and agreed-upon steps with which these goals can be achieved.

The ministry is also very political. Its current programs are not based on research but instead on partisan decisions. If you read the current national education plan, for example, you’ll notice that there are no references to investigations. There are only references to authorities, mostly from Italy. This is not an effective way for the country to move forward.

Education in El Salvador, furthermore, is significantly supported by international aid. This is not sustainable. In order to make the government truly accountable for educational results and ensure that the system has a future, education funds need to come from our own country.

What is the UCA’s role in national education?

The UCA’s major role is that of research. We investigate what’s going on in terms of education in El Salvador and then make our results public. This allows the government, NGOs, and foreign institutions to get an idea of the situation that they face and how they can best help. In a sense, it is a form of whistle-blowing—it highlights what sections of the country have been denied their right to learn.

We are able to do this because we are relatively powerful. As a result of our particular history, our opinion has weight. Since the six Jesuits were killed here during the civil war, we’ve been famous for denouncing injustices.

What is the future of education in El Salvador?

The thing about this country is that the people continue to have hope. They have hope that education will improve and, with it, living conditions in general.

Nevertheless, as I mentioned before, I think that education in El Salvador needs three things. First, the Ministry of Education must develop a true national education plan. Second, they must make decisions based on research and investigation. Third, the educational community must be strengthened. Right now, it almost doesn’t exist. It still hasn’t recovered from the period during the war in which teachers were killed and schools were disbanded on a large scale.

UCA is involved in a variety of education projects. Could you tell me more about them, particularly those in which you’ve had a role?

What the UCA tries to do, in general, is improve conditions for those sectors of the population that are excluded or marginalized. Most of what I do in the education department has focused on the disabled. Disabled and handicapped people represent one of the most marginalized groups in the country. Those who live in rural areas are the marginalized of the marginalized. My work with them began in Limon, a small rural community in Chalatenango. I knew a Jesuit who lived and worked as a parish priest there. He had also graduated from the UCA and had a background in special education. One day, he began telling me about the handicapped children of the community whom he had met through his work in the church. He had noticed that there were quite a few with Down syndrome. He asked me to come and check out the situation. I visited a number of houses where the children lived. There weren’t only kids with Down syndrome, but also with a variety of other conditions. Many of them had been neglected. Some had never left their houses; one was even tied up with a leash so he couldn’t leave. We decided to conduct an investigation and implement a project to try to help them. We began giving them classes and working with their families. After a few months, we did something that I’ll never forget. We had a Mass in their honor. They were the first ones to show up. They sat in the front row and sang in the choir. We had intended to bring them into the public’s eye, and it was a big success. Later, we constructed a special education center in the town. It currently houses teachers and specialists that offer special education services.

What impact do the UCA’s Jesuit identity and your personal faith have in your work in the field of education?

I’m Catholic, but I’m not a fundamentalist. My faith developed after many years. I attended a religious school growing up, I worked in a Catholic school, I now work at a Jesuit university, and I’m part of a music group in my Catholic church. From all of this mix, I’ve taken a few lessons. I know that religion is a social construct. I’m not very concerned with rituals, hierarchies, and formalities. I’ve learned, above all, to love others. In this sense, I think that my faith structures how I live my life. It motivates me to try to accompany other people in their lives and their struggles. It is the reason that I am committed to helping those less fortunate than myself.