Another Thing about Schools in Mexico

Building on Schettino's comments about elite schools in Mexico, I think it's worth noting that the ability to develop first-rate English skills is the vital quality for most of the elite private grade schools in the nation. In my experience, science and math skills are waaaaaaaaaay down on the list of priorities, and don't figure into the schools' marketing much at all. The focus on English is not a bad thing in and of itself, and it reflects the needs of the local labor market. But developing a cohort of professionals perfectly able to translate mediocre skills into a foreign language is not a country-reshaping achievement.

In tangentially related news, a quartet of evidently quite gifted Mexican students have founded a group called Telegenio to encourage similarly talented youngsters. That's good news, but the fact that the article uses as its hook the students' similarities to the characters from The Big Bang Theory, which implies that only a tenuous connection to a third-rate sitcom will make readers care about such a topic, is less heartening.