Story

There was a little boy named Jose. He lived in a small village in Honduras. Jose was a very curious and creative boy who loved to play with many materials. He spent hours everyday drawing pictures in the dirt with sticks and was curious by anything new that happened around him.
One day, Jose was walking to from town and saw a new colorful building. He was immediately curious about the building and wandered in. Jose was in awe of the consolations above him. He then began peeking into each room. One room was like a paradise including trees and plants. Then he saw thousands of books stacked on shelves. Jose looked through some books with colorful photos of strange places in the world. All of a sudden, Jose saw the most beautiful place he’d ever seen; a room with walls he could draw on and large spaces to draw and paint.
Jose went to the Hands- On Community Center everyday for hours. He used all of the resources offered and his creativity to create thousands of drawings. Jose began to use the computers to learn about marketing artwork. Years later Jose used the tools he learned at the Hands- On Community Center to market his art. As an adult, he traveled the world selling his drawings.

Success Factors

- a child that goes to the community center becomes successful in life through the resources provided by the community center
- the community becomes closer to each other and becomes a thriving village
- the next generation becomes more educated
- center is successful in the community and is put in other villages

Performance Criteria

- Community Center
- Permanent
- Easily accessible
- All ages
- Populated village in Honduras
- Promote education and creativity
- Free
- Provide better understanding of world outside
- Create more open-minded views
- Productive use of time
- Corporate sponsor
- Group of people live community to learn about culture and community
- All weather
- Art/play room in one room, kitchen, library, computer lab, and agriculture room in separate spaces
- One main curator

Links

http://fab.cba.mit.edu/
http://www.ideapaint.com/
http://www.ssbx.org/

Honduras Education

EDUCATION

Honduras Table of Contents

Honduras lacked a national education system until the late 1950s. Before the reforms of 1957, education was the exclusive privilege of those who could afford to send their children to private institutions. The government of Ramón Villeda Morales (1957-63) introduced reforms that led to the establishment of a national public education system and began a school construction program.

The Honduran constitution states that a free primary education is obligatory for every child between the ages of seven and fourteen. The reality of the Honduran educational system is much more grim. Because of a lack of schools, understaffed schools, the high cost of materials needed for these schools, and the poor quality of public education, a good education is still largely the privilege of the few who can afford to send their children to private institutions.

Statistical information shows that the state of the public education system remains poor. Figures cited by the Ministry of Education suggest that Honduras suffers from widespread illiteracy (more than 40 percent of the total population and more than 80 percent in rural areas). A significant percentage of children do not receive formal education. Especially in rural areas, schools are not readily accessible. When they are accessible, they often consist of joint-grade instruction through only the third grade. Schools are so understaffed that some teachers have up to eighty children in one classroom.

Only 43 percent of children enrolled in public schools complete the primary level. Of all children entering the first grade, only 30 percent go on to secondary school, and only 8 percent continue to the university.

The quality of instruction in Honduran public schools is greatly impaired by poor teacher training. The situation is worsened by the extremely low wages paid to teachers, lack of effective and up-to- date instruction materials, outdated teaching methods, poor administration, and lack of physical facilities.

Because of the deficiencies of public education, the years since 1970 have seen the proliferation of private schools. With few exceptions, however, private education is popularly viewed as a profit-making enterprise. Great skepticism remains regarding the quality of the education that private schools offer.

The National Autonomous University of Honduras (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras--UNAH) is the primary institution of higher learning. Located in Tegucigalpa, the UNAH was founded in 1847 and became an autonomous institution in 1957. The university has approximately 30,000 students, with branches in San Pedro Sula and La Ceiba.

Honduras counts three private universities, none of which is yet considered a credible educational alternative to the prestigious UNAH. One is the extremely small José Cecilio del Valle University in Tegucigalpa. Another private university is the Central American Technological University, also in Tegucigalpa. The third private university is the University of San Pedro Sula.

Education System - Honduras

Education in Honduras

		Esta Página en Español

Honduras has the most backward educational system in Central America (Date of Publication: 6/20/04)

The educational system in Honduras is the most backward in all of Central America; hardly 32 of every 100 students finish primary school without repeating grades, indicate statistics from the United Nations.

Data from the Program for the Development of the Organization of the United Nations (PNUD) reveal today, moreover, that 51% of the matriculates finish primary school, in an average of 9.4 years, and that the number of dropouts increases each year. The acutest problem is that the basic educational system only covers 86.5% of school-age children, while the remaining 13.5% cannot get access to an education.

Although the Honduran Constitution formally stipulates that minors have to have their educations taken care of, many arrive at adulthood without learning to read or write, while the state tries to justify this by the insufficiency of resources at its command. Illiteracy encompasses more than half a million people in this country, which is the equivalent of the entire population between 15 and 40 years old.

Sources add that the problem is becoming more acute due to the scarcity of public resources and an insufficient and slightly equitable offer in the educational order, both in quantity and in quality. Also, the necessity of increasing the family earnings forces many children to leave school for work, usually permanently. For similar reasons, this connects the low level of education reached by many parents with the precarious living conditions for more than 80% of Hondurans. In 10 of the 18 departments in which Honduras is divided, the second poorest of Central America, more than ninety percent of the students need to repeat grades.

The statistics collected by the ministry reflect that no department in Honduras reaches, on average, the six-year minimum of primary education. According to recent data indicating educational efficiency, for every thousand graduates of the first grade in 1990, only 292 (29%) complete primary school in six years and 468 (46%) never finish. The situation with universities is much more worrying, since only 20% avoid failing out in universities such as the National Autonomous University (UNAH).

President Ricardo Maduro is attempting the change the educational system, but at the current rate of reform it would take at least 23 years to reach the level of the educational system in other nations in the area like Costa Rica and Panama. Evaluations performed by international organizations denounce the backwardness of the state's investments in the sector with respect to the majority of countries in the region, and that the current educational model has reached its limits after more than a decade in Honduras.

http://www.globalexchange.org/countries/americas/honduras/Education.html