Recent national and international assessments of secondary education in Argentina have highlighted three serious and fundamental shortcomings in our students: They have trouble reading, writing, and solving math problems.

In 1999, the then rector of the University of Buenos Aires, Guillermo Jaim EtcheverryHe published a controversial and devastating book entitled The educational tragedy, one of whose main theses is the same as that these distressing facts illustrate: that one does not learn in our current school system.

However, we would be missing the point if we thought that the educational tragedy is limited to the educational sphere. Unfortunately, this structural deficit that we carry has profound consequences for civic life.

The fact that over 40% of our teenagers struggle with reading doesn't mean they are incapable of syllable by syllable, or even pronouncing words. It means they are unable to understand texts, develop abstract thinking skills, identify the main ideas, distinguish between secondary and main points, uncover fallacies, and connect different texts and authors. The staggering seriousness of Not knowing how to read means, in short, not knowing how to think.

Something similar happens to the more than 40% who have difficulties with writing, which is not a matter of poor handwriting, or a lack of knowledge of the principles of grammar, spelling and syntax, although that may very well also happen, it means that they do not know how to express what they feel and what they think, that they do not know how to dialogue, argue, reach agreements and disagreements if necessary, all of which are decisive matters in their lives as free citizens. Not knowing how to write is, at its core, not being able to account for oneself and the world in which we live.

Finally, secondary school students demonstrate serious deficiencies when it comes to solving mathematical problems. We may naively think, or they may think, that this knowledge is completely unnecessary in a world where computers solve these kinds of problems, forgetting that

that computers are unable to define is What problems Specifically, they must solve mathematically, on the one hand, and on the other hand, which problems out of all that exist can be solved in that way and not in another, that is to say, that They lack the foundations of logical thinking, the only one that warns us against the manipulation of 'fake news' or the totalitarianism of some ideologies.

Without thinking, without being able to express ourselves, and without logical thought, we are completely defenseless against the manipulation of consciences and hearts characteristic of magical thinking from which all forms are essentially made populism And throughout the world, regardless of their political leanings: messianic movements that propose simplistic, quick, and harmless solutions to complex problems.
That defenseless 40% are part of the Argentine citizens of the future; they already are in the present. an educational tragedy with civic implications In whose diagnosis 23 years ago the brilliant and always lucid Jaim Etcheverry seems to have sadly fallen short.