P2/2

Okay. 4 is readily verifiable. 2* and 3 are the kind of claims that generally are best met by counter-argument from experience - i.e., a Mexican reader, or just a reader with relevant knowledge, reads this, and either sighs and nods their head, or they say "hang on a minute, I know lots of Mexicans who love to read!" I.e. if you are in a position to have an experience-based response to this sentiment, it will either strike you as true or not. Don't forget: this article was originally written in Spanish, for a Mexican newspaper. So the author was safe to assume his readers would be able to independently assess and respond to this claim - and hence, in submitting what confluence is arguing is inadequate substantiation, is not breaking the honesty criteria - because you and the other critics here were never the intended audience.

1, 6, 7, 8, and 9 form the bulk of the author's critique, which is cultural: i.e., that people in Mexico do not read for pleasure, are ignorant of the value of reading for pleasure, that the education system is run by and staffed with people who are ignorant of this value too, and produces graduates who are the same. Extended: people who are thus ignorant lack dignity, ambition, expectations, and imagination, and this malaise of ignorance is undermining any and all efforts to achieve true societal progress in Mexico.

Now, cultural critiques such as this are tricky things to justify. Most people have these sorts of feelings - intuitions, senses about the way society is, etc. These feelings are formed from disparate are substantiated through his depictions of schools, students and teachers in Mexico. Toscana, in this instance, offers these illustrations:

1) Perennial attempts to reform education (indicating that education is an acknowledged problem area for the country, but one which thus far has not been satisfactorily addressed.)

2) He witnessed thousands of striking teachers and found them bored and amusing themselves without exception with insipid distractions.
3) He talked to an audience of ~350 young people and only one would admit to liking reading.

4) A teacher whose attitude he found simple-minded expressed a focus on sticking to the script (which he also patently found unimaginative) and told a story which he found overly simplistic to that same audience.

5) A grand plan to encourage reading failed due to a lack of teacher training, and millions of books produced went unused.

6) The education secretary in his home state failed, in a manner he found simple-minded, to understand the distinction between basic literacy and engagement with books, and to understand the value of reading for pleasure.

7) His daughter's literacy teacher dismissed, again in a manner he found simple-minded, the value of fiction books.

So, to sum up, here are the observations he draws upon: his knowledge of the history of government attempts to reform education, his experience of the behaviour of striking teachers, his experience of an audience of schoolchildren, his experience of the behaviour of a teacher at the school where he addressed this audience, his experience interacting with a senior government education official, his observation of his daughter's school experience.

Are these experiences valid grounds for this sort of cultural critique? I would argue that they are - I myself am satisfied. I think, at the very least, the attitude of the Education Secretary is extremely worrying. I would be very concerned if an equivalent official in my government expressed such an attitude, and for my country I would surprised if there were not a spontaneous effort to have such an official removed from office. Anyway, even if you think this evidence is a little weak, they form a perfectly adequate basis for an initial argument. As I noted above, opinion pieces like this are intended to serve as a springboard for further discussion. So they do not need to be completely fleshed out, because they will naturally meet objections and generate further refinements and clarification of the social issue, hopefully generating some action and change, which is the real aim of this article.

A second issue here is this: can we accept the author's experiences as representative, or symbolic, of wider processes at play in Mexico? I am not sure what my response is to this issue - it's something I've thought about quite often in one guise or another, and I'm still clarifying my position on it. But my gut feeling is that we should listen to people's gut feelings. My gut feeling is that yes, the attitude of one audience of schoolchildren in Mexico can speak to a general attitude prevalent across the entire population. Yes, it does matter if an education secretary completely misses the point of literature. And I do think that culture is in some ways remarkably uniform within national boundaries. But all this is perhaps another issue. The worst possiibility I could see here is that Toscana is a bit of an idealist and a dreamer, and the education secretary was really being pragmatic, not foolish. That is possible.

Anyway, just to wrap this up: the real issue here is not whether the author provided enough evidence to justify his claims - I think the real issue is that confluence is acting in an incredibly presumptuous, arrogant manner in dictating that Toscana's opinions are not valid. I think this is a case of cultural imperialism.

Here's why. Confluence is, I assume, not Mexican. I would guess he is American. What he has essentially done is refuse to entertain the notion that the issue Toscana has identified as critical to Mexico is valid. Instead, confluence, an outsider, has imposed on Toscana the issue he knows the most about, and which he thinks is the most important - the narco-war. Toscana sees Mexico as a country in and of itself, and an issue like the imagination, courage, dignity and ambitions of the people of Mexico as of critical importance. Confluence wants to rubbish the notion that any of that could really be important - and instead force the focus back onto Mexico as a tributary of the United States. Perhaps confluence is upset, subconsciously, that Toscana neglects to even mention the United States?

Whatever. I find it insulting that confluence would try and take away a man's right to argue passionately for something he believes so dearly in. And I feel confluence and you both are displaying a lack of sensitivity on this issue. Perhaps you too would benefit from spending some more time reading for pleasure. You might benefit from developing a better understanding of the passions that drive people, and a little more flexibility and softness in reacting to your fellow human being.

*here assuming, I would argue reasonably, that the author is using the word illiteracy to refer not to technical illiteracy but to not caring to read, having no taste for reading, and no understanding of the value of, novels and books.