All stories in El Jalapeño are satire and not real news. Check out the original story here.
MEXICO CITY — Education Minister Mario Delgado announced Monday that Mexico’s school year will end on July 15 as planned, reversing last week’s decision to finish six weeks early, while also confirming that the six weeks in question are a waste of everyone’s time but that children must attend them anyway.
“Classrooms are kept open without a pedagogical purpose, just to comply with a count of school days,” Delgado told reporters. “School becomes a forced stay.” He said this at a press conference called to announce that school would continue.
Reporters present did not ask Delgado why, if the final six weeks of school are a purposeless indignity to teachers and students alike, he had just spent four days in a national controversy to reinstate them. It is possible they were still processing the opening statement.
To be clear about what Delgado said: the Education Minister of Mexico, addressing the nation on the subject of the national school calendar, described the final weeks of the Mexican school year as a bureaucratic box-ticking exercise with no learning value, in which teachers are stripped of their dignity and children are held in classrooms for no reason beyond satisfying a number on a government form. He said this. Out loud. At a press conference. Having just made the preservation of those weeks the central policy achievement of his week.
He did not appear to notice.
Last Friday, Delgado announced school would end June 5 — six weeks early — for the World Cup and hot weather. President Sheinbaum heard about this the same way everyone else did and said publicly that it was not a final decision. A review was called, which concluded that July 15 stands. This decision was described as unanimous, a word applied to a decision Sheinbaum had already reached on Friday and that Delgado arrived at four days later via a national controversy and two contradictory press releases.
The plan had been pushed by the governors of Mexico City, Jalisco, and Nuevo León — the three states hosting World Cup matches — who were worried about traffic. Their solution to traffic problems in three cities was to close every school in all 32 states of Mexico for 40 days. The other 29 states, which will not host a single match and have also previously experienced summer, were included anyway.
It has since emerged that the 185-day school year is a legal requirement. This means Delgado’s original announcement was not just poorly timed and geographically incoherent but also, technically, illegal. He has not addressed this.
Children across Mexico will return to school tomorrow for eight more weeks of what their own Education Minister has publicly confirmed is a purposeless, forced stay with no pedagogical value. Their teachers, whose dignity Delgado noted is detracted from by the exercise, will be present.
Working parents who had been facing 40 days of unplanned childcare at less than a week’s notice expressed relief at the reversal. The traffic problem in Guadalajara, which started all of this, remains entirely unsolved.
El Jalapeño is a satirical news outlet. Nothing in this article should be treated as real news or legitimate information. Check out our Jalapeño archive here!
Got an idea for a Jalapeño article? Email us with your suggestions!
