Democracy, latin america Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Democracy, latin america - Essay Example Lagos notes that, â€Å"†¦low levels of trust in other people constitute a defining feature of Latin American political culture† (Lagos, pg. 142). Latin Americans are characterized by a chronic passivity, where they develop the naive expectation that their problems will be solved by someone else, turning to the state, and democracy, to do so. The statistics show that as individuals move away from institutions such as political parties and government, and toward more domestic issues like television or church, levels of trust increase. These low levels, although not new, are relatively low compared to other regions of the world, and make it almost impossible for the liberalization which democracy entails. Lagos concludes: â€Å"†¦declining levels of interpersonal trust thus constitute an important barrier to†¦ the development of a civil society†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Lagos, pg. 144). Right now, the support for democracy in Latin America resides at about 62%, which masks wide differentials between countries like Brazil which have moved progressively farther to the Left. Lagos reports there has been a sharp decline in support for liberal democracy, which has been motivated almost exclusively by economic and political failures in certain countries. Although 62% of Latin Americans favor democracy, â€Å"only 37 percent of the public are satisfied with the way that democracy works† (Lagos, pg. 141). Thus, the situation in the region is that the public perception of democracy remains mixed, and the initial short-lived enthusiasm about democratic change has faded through the years. The lack of public trust in institutions and public perceptions about failures in democratic countries has fueled this ambivalence toward the form of government. In their paper â€Å"Democratization Backwards: The Problem of Third-Wave Democracies†, Richard Rose and Doh Chull Shin propose a distinction between â€Å"first-wave† and â€Å"third-wave† democracies, the

The quality of education Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 1

The quality of education - Essay Example ation as it started to take steps at commercializing accomplishments with affordable mass accessibility, which led to disproportionate number of academic resources to serve each learner and poor ratio between scarce number of teachers to the growing student population. This according to W. Brown was the consequence of mismanagement of both the financial and political systems in their failure to balance priorities with state budgeting and marketing education with impertinent models that had mostly been strategically business-oriented. With the facts briefly yet sufficiently presented, W. Brown devoted the second half of her address to enhance her claims from an informative level to a more persuasive and dynamic rate of appeal she occurred to bring her audience to not only listen but empathize on acting with urgency as she encouraged the listeners to advocate the thoughtful conviction that the consequence of education with poor quality is dangerous ignorance in the sense that an improperly educated mass could possible run the risk of yielding to certain self-governing incapacities toward personal development as well as impaired discernment of democracy in the future. Based on the author’s knowledge of the prevailing situation both of the cause and experienced reality of the effects thereafter considering how effectively she delivered concrete examples by comparing the past and current conditions of public education in California, Wendy Brown did acquire unquestionable grounds for summoning authorities as well as concerned parties to take this matter seriously. Her arguments are clear enough that it sensibly establishes a good critique of the problematic systems and factors that essentially determine the measure of quality in public education so that this is channeled across to every individual understanding with a sense of direction and commitment towards proper resolution. It is quite significant and interesting to be involved with the aforementioned issue,