Education in Argentina
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Template:Argentina main topics Education in Argentina has a convoluted history. There was no effective educational plan until President Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (1868-1874) placed emphasis on bringing Argentina up to date with practices in developed countries. Sarmiento encouraged the immigration and settling of European educators and built schools and public libraries throughout the country, in a programme that finally doubled the enrollment of students during his term. In Argentina, Teacher's Day (on 11 September) commemorates his death.
During the rule of Juan Domingo Perón (1945-1955), public education was used to further the president and his wife's personality cult (pictures of Perón and Evita were prominently displayed in them, pieces of their writings were used as reading materials, etc.). After the military coup d'etat of 1955 deposed Perón, all these books were removed, and the very mention or depiction of Perón and Evita was forbidden. The ensuing weak constitutional governments and short-lived military regimes each employed censorship and propaganda in education after their own ideological biases.
Public education, like the rest of Argentine culture, greatly suffered the economic crisis of the 1990s. While the economy has steadily recovered since 2002, most public educational institutions (schools and universities) are chronically underfunded, and often suffer disruptions due to teacher strikes.
Achievements
In spite of its many problems, Argentina's higher education managed to reach worldwide levels of excellence in the sixties. The country can claim three Nobel Prize winners in the sciences: Luis Federico Leloir, Bernardo Houssay and César Milstein.