El docente de secundaria ante las reformas educativas. De apóstol a empleado desechable [Middle school teachers and education reform: From advocates to expendable employees]

Abstract

This article is about the work conditions that teachers are facing as a result of the last education reform of the Mexican public middle school (2006, 2011, 2013). A qualitative study is carried out using a semi-structured interview with 18 teachers of this schooling level in Mexico City. The objective is to describe and interpret the feelings and meanings teachers have ascribed to these changes and to explore some of the elements that have caused them. The analysis reveals how middle school teachers have seen their work becoming less autonomous and therefore more alienating. The concept of alienation is fundamental to understand what their feelings are in these days of reform implementation, which have generated feelings ranging from disenchantment to discomfort. This study reveals that teachers put the blame on the indifference and indiscipline of their students as a central problem; their loss of power to fail students regardless of the students’ performance; their loss of prestige due to recent media campaigns justifying the new and recent reform, which affects their conditions of job stability and gives them a sense of uncertainty and discontinuity. The alienation, as a loss of control over their actions and loss of certainty in their understanding, is posed as an important factor to be considered when understanding the critical situation of the middle school in Mexico.