BA's private schools , compared to LA inner city public schools, are not bad, if that is your benchmark. But if you are comparing BA's nice schools with US nice schools, there is no comparison. In terms of overall quality of primary and secondary education, Argentina now ranks behind both Mexico and Brazil (!), which is no small feat, considering that neither are role models by any stretch of the imagination in terms of quality in primary and secondary education.
Don't forget to mention that BA's (and I believe most of Argentina's) public schools are worse than most of the worst private schools
And of course, Counting Matias has to hold up the national public schools as an example against poor public schools. Let's see, a little math (which I'm not really going to do) tells us that millions of kids trying to fit into three schools doesn't leave a whole lot of opportunity...
One of the biggest reasons I wouldn't raise kids (again) in BA is the way kids in BA act and are allowed to act. When we lived out in Garin, things were significantly different, and there may well be large sections of the city away from places like Recoleta, Retiro, Microcentro, Palermo, Belgrano, Balvanera, Tribunales, Congresso, Nuñez, Saavedra, Colegiales (well, you get the drift) that are not quite as wild and problematic.
Our oldest went to school in Tortuguitas for a year and I am seriously regretting having taken her out of there and having moved into the city because it has been a constant battle here to keep her, as a teenager, in line and concerned about things like school and not to be overly concerned about things like partying. Kids out there were respectful and much calmer, not allowed to do many of the things that kids here take for granted (like partying all night from the time they're 15, or even sometimes 14!). There, she was immediately accepted by her classmates. Here, she was constantly given problems by her classmates for being a "Paraguaya sucia", for not speaking the same as the local kids and so on (and at two different schools our other two face the exact same problems). Here, the very first week that our oldest went to her new school, I was waiting for her to get out and walk her home and watched a young lady leave the front entrance of the school and before she'd hit ground level coming down the steps, she pulled a wine bottle out of her purse and started swigging (private Catholic school). Not to mention the way the boys act - they're often uncontrollable little sh_ts who act like they're five years old at the age of sixteen. I had to finally tell her that her male friends were not welcome in our house any more, no more than one at a time, because they
always tore something up before they'd left.
BTW - not all parents here let their kids run wild and I've actually known a couple of very well-behaved young gentlemen. Our youngest (just about to turn 15) is friends with three young ladies at school whose parents worry about them as much as we do about ours. I like them quite a bit, in fact
But she has been bothered by a boy that has followed her around all school year trying to get her attention. When she told him she was too young to date (or at least to go out late at night alone with a boy) but would love to be friends with him, he started treating her like many others of his classmates, even spreading rumors about the sexual proclivities of Paraguayans in general and hers in particular. In one of the most amazing things I've seen since our girls started going to school here, the preceptor at her new school actually suspended the little turd for three days for the way he started treating her.
Stargatefix, I was here for about a year, really enjoying life, before I started feeling oppressed by things. The more I integrated into society and had to deal with many things everyone here has to deal with on almost a daily basis, when I started having to buy furniture to fill my long-term apartments and saw how crappy was the quality for such a high price, when I had to start replacing worn out clothes, dealing with services (or the lack thereof) and other things, when my computer (which I need 100% for my work) failed and I had to try to get it fixed or even buy a new one and realized how out-of-date most things available are and pricey to begin with (along with many other things), I started wondering what I'd gotten myself into. When our oldest came to live with us and we moved into the city a year later, I started seeing more of real Argentine life at the personal level and inside families and such and it gave me a bit more of the willies. Not everyone either sees or feels what I do, and you may not, particularly if you don't have to raise kids here as well.
I still like living in Argentina on balance, but it's gotten to the "just barely" side of things in the last couple of years. We now have such relatively deep roots here that it's hard to imagine leaving, to tell the truth. But just last night my wife and I were talking about moving to her native Paraguay. We probably won't do it because our oldest can't find a good enough university in Paraguay for the career she's chosen and we can't afford to live there and support her here at the same time.
But if Scioli continues to screw things up here - well, I'm not really a glutton for punishment, it just takes quite a bit to move me off my ass sometimes...
