Mexican Teachers and the Educational Reform: Scapegoats of the Neo-Liberal Discourse?

Since 2012, Mexico is undergoing an unprecedented process of educational reform. The newly elected government has managed to reform the Constitution and pass several laws concerning the educational system. Basically, this reform intends to regulate the teaching career through high-stakes exams, which will be used to make decisions on hiring, promotion, and eventually firing.

The reform has gained support among public opinion, powerful economic groups and the media. The latter, in particular, tends to present teachers and teachers’ Union (SNTE, for National Union of Educational Workers) as corporatist, uneffective and even lazy: workers who enjoy undeserved privileges and do not hesitate in endangering childrens’ education to keep them. This view has spread among the population.

Nowadays, the reform faces considerable opposition and mistrust from many teachers. Some fractions of the SNTE have taken the conflict to the streets of Mexico City. They organize impressive meetings, block main avenues and routes, and elaborate radical discourses, thus enabling mass media to reproduce prejudices against teachers and ask for harsh repression. One of the results of this conflict is the deterioration of social trust between citizens and teachers.

In this paper, I intend to analyze and identify the main views around this conflict in the mass media, and the different images of teachers that are so constructed. I would also describe the ways teachers react against dominant discourses and build a narrative of their own. Finally, I will explore if this confrontation reaches the local level and affects the relationship between families and teachers in specific schools.

For this, I will perform analysis of the main written media in Mexico City, as well as interviews with intentionally selected teachers from the primary and secondary levels.