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A Word from the Editor This is bound to be a turbulent year. As many of you might have already learnt, 29 Higher Education institutions of tertiary level in the city of Buenos Aires, some of them duly validated by the academic excellence they have gained for over a century are now under the threat of closure and the promise (?) of being amalgamated into a new Higher Education institution, this time a University: UniCaba (for Universidad de la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires). There is no denying that a large number of graduates from our “profesorados” have long been fighting to attain University status for various valid reasons (the best of which, to my ken, is that there is no difference in the quality of the graduates produced by the “profesorados” and the universities of the city. This novel provincial university (as there is no hint that this has been conceived as a future national institution) of which very little is known so far has met with strong opposition by teachers, students and graduates of the 29 institutions decreed to be in danger of extinction, and the academic community at large. In our small world of ELT in the city, three highly reputed traditional colleges are facing the prospect of reshuffling : Instituto de Enseñanza Superior en Lenguas Vivas “Dr. Juan Ramón Fernández”, InstitutoSuperior del Profesorado “Dr. Joaquín V. González” and Escuela Normal Superior en Lenguas Vivas “Sarah Broquen de Spangenberg”. This, as I stated above, could only bring commotion and agitation. One special aspect that has caused justified alarm is the rumor that the curricula of the “profesorados” are going to be simplified to make it “more accessible” to the new generations of students and, thus, increase the number of graduates. In our case, teachers of English as well as teachers of any other subject cannot let so many years of hard work and devotion to go placidly down the drain as was the case when previous administrations in the province of Buenos Aires brought teacher education to shambles . A situation that still persists. My of us bitterly cried, but nobody would listen . But this is another matter that I promise to return to in future issues of SHARE. Dr. Omar Villarreal |