March 1997
·
15 Reads
Prospects
Most of those who take up teaching in Argentina today are women--very young women, living with their parents, who spend their free time listening to music, watching television and, in some cases, reading books for their personal development. The previous schooling of these young people reveals the deficiencies of our education system in regard to the acquisition of basic skills. Choosing teaching is for them a way of gaining access to the labour market and/or university (many of them take up teaching after a negative experience in some university course). It is therefore not surprising that only 39% of them intend to devote themselves exclusively to teaching once they have completed their studies. The data presented are taken from a research project ~ carried out with students in State and private teacher-training institutions in the federal capital and in greater Buenos Aires. 2 In each of these administrative areas, institutions were selected having regard to their location as well as their sector and the authority responsible. The survey was accordingly based on the replies to 1,097 question