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Comment by Alex3917 | Hacker News Reader

"Peru made the single biggest order to date -- more than 272,000 machines -- in its quest to turn around a primary education system that the World Economic Forum recently ranked last among 131 countries surveyed."

The reason Peru has such a terrible education system is because of Christianity, or at least their implementation thereof. They don't let the boys and girls go to school together, so the boys go in the morning and the girls go in the afternoon to prevent intermingling. Thus each student gets only half the instructional time as students in any other country. Merry Christmas.

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I'm Peruvian, I don't know why you think that here boys and girls can't go to school together. I know the public education is not good enough here, but it has nothing to do with Christianity, it has more to do with teachers getting paid the lowest salary you can imagine. So, if a teacher gets paid so low, who wants to be a teacher? That's the main reason why most Peruvian teachers suck.

Hey, do you live in Peru? Can you share any more observations about the situation? I'm very interested in this topic.

Sure, some months ago there was a teachers strike, they did it because the government was going to evaluate their skills, and I'm pretty sure they're scared of not passing that test. I'm talking about public schools here, private ones generally have a much higher level of education.

Again, let me tell you that it has nothing to do with religion. It's all about politics.

I don't know the American school system, but that kind of sounds like it here: low wage, strikes to resist strict policy changes for the better, politics driven. I guess it's not so much about education either, then.

Thanks for sharing.

No problem man, Peru has a lot of problems in public education and health care, but it's also a great country to visit, if you need anything else just contact me. Mail in profile.

When I was down there this summer I heard that this is how most of the Catholic schools worked in the smaller towns. I'm not claiming it's national policy.

I really don't think that is the reason. Where I grew up 99% schools had two shifts, and sometimes even three shifts. Boys and girls were not separated, although my country is one of those where >80% peple are christian.

Our school day was up to six hours long (7 school hours (45 min each) + 5 min breaks in between). We received generally the same quality education as many other Central/Eastern European countries. Btw., the reason schools introduce extra shifts is to be able to accomodate more pupils in same classrooms.

Merry Christmas!

Wow. I wish the U.S. were a Christian nation then. School half-days were a rare reprieve... those lucky kids get 'em all the time!

I aPERUve.

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