High School Education in Tijuana

The Mexican American border in Tijuana has long been known as a chaotic, tangled and deeply stressed frontier between not only the United States and Mexico, but between the first and the third world. Metaphorically speaking, Tijuana is the door of Latin America. This city is the most legally and illegally crossed land border of the 1951 miles long perimeter shared by Mexico and USA, and its constant flux of goods and people moving trough the city is the origin of all the virtues and vices it faces. Educating teenagers in this context is a huge task. As anyone can guess, there are lots of challenges for high school educators in this border, but three of them are the most appalling: her explosive mix of México’s best and worst characteristics, her dark and corrupt history and her huge and illegal drug traffic.

 Mexico is a country of disparities and Tijuana is a good example of Mexico´s good and bad. This city is known as a city of superlatives: holding the national lowest unemployment rate, Tijuana is a paradise for many manufacturing companies or “maquiladoras”. Thousands of job seekers from around México come every day to this promised-job city and most of them start soon working on a low but sure paying maquiladora. Easy-to-find jobs have made Tijuana a national population magnet and, as a result, Tijuana has become Mexico’s 4^th largest city with a permanent population of 1 million and 300 thousand people. The years of economic bonanza had made possible the growing of a strengthened middle class. These people look for higher quality services and goods and are willing to pay well for them. This status-setting trend has developed a deep difference between social classes in Tijuana and a whole world of high class oriented services, such as schools, churches, clubs, sports, etc. set them apart from the large poor population.

Tijuana is also known for having outstanding doctors and excellent hospitals. With a growing set of services addressed to uninsured Mexican Americans of southern California looking for warmer and Spanish speaking services whose health needs are unattended, Tijuana´s private health system is ready to fulfill those needs with high quality and dazzling facilities. Doctors are among the most politically active groups and an appealing target for kidnappers.

Nevertheless, economic prosperity and a steadily growing medical industry coexist side by side with not so good features. Tijuana has to struggle with a long list of evils: random street shootings, a high rate of homicides, a growing rate of kidnapping, and a whole world of violent crime. All this violence has a terrible impact on schools and especially on teenager’s psychological development.

In addition, Tijuana has to face a very well documented dark and sinful history. After a humble foundation phase as a stop little village for cattle owners on their way to San Diego, Tijuana knew a great development on the 20´s and early 30’s because of the US prohibition. In a few years, thousands of Californians started continually visiting Tijuana seduced for legal drinking and gambling. Prostitution and drugs came along, and the dark legend of Tijuana was born. Most of it has stayed as part of the city’s identity and has a negative impact on teenagers self image as citizens of sin city.

Among all the harms Tijuana has to face, there is one that is omnipresent and hard fighting: the drug traffic. In recent years, Tijuana has become the battlefield of two major drug cartels fighting for the juicy and high profit market of drug crossing to the Californian side. The US government has reinforced their border crossing policies and now it gets a lot of corruption to cross drugs to the USA. Drug flux has to find its way out anyway, so a new and diversifying drug market has developed among the rich young people of Tijuana. The results are tragic. Young people from all over Tijuana are being pushed into drug consumption every imaginable way.

 Educating young people in Tijuana is really difficult, and the multiple issues related to this frontier context are countless. Many high schools have very aggressive anti-drugs programs, but most of them have turned out useless. There is always the classic option of using sports as a way of keeping kids off drugs, but very often sport people are the main target of drug dealers since they can use them as potential indoor links to the rest of the teammates. Other schools try more creative models like a blend of social commitment, adventurous traveling, religious activities and community building. All these approaches help their own way to protect young people from the many risks the social context offers.

However, no matter what type of solution high school faculties try, the core of the problem’s solution is within families. When a kid or a girl start taking drugs or having frantic sexual behavior they are, in fact, showing the lack of proper parental attention. It’s very common to find a great deal of family non-spoken problems behind an abortion or drug dependency crisis. These unattended needs easily turn teenagers on easy game for predators and drug dealers.

Elucidation amidst this setting is not an easy task, but a multi-aspect approach seems to be the smartest way to go for high school educators. In other words, it´s necessary first of all, to have a well informed opinion of the big social issues in Tijuana. Second, to try creative multi-level solutions regarding all possible ways to keep kids safe and finally, an intense work with parents and families so they can detect early possible misconducts and learn to accompany the normal crisis teens have. Until educators achieve a balance among all these factors, kids will be able to get better test scores, be successfully in any academic field and finally find happiness on the way.