In some places around the world, children have already returned to classrooms. Summer, sea and pools, trips and camps are over; backpack on back and lunch box in hand, eyes bright with fear and excitement, the inevitable photo mom will share on social media. It’s time to go back to school: comfortable or chipped chairs, shiny desks or tattooed with the story of bored students who passed by, attentive or distracted, teacher creative and friendly or resentful and unmotivated, books, information, activities, homework, friends, bullies… It’s overwhelming, if we think (or remember) everything that children face every day at school.

I talk about “children” as if they all have the same opportunities, and we know that’s not the case. I had the privilege of attending a private school in Quito (which literally cost my father a tooth) and now I am happy that my daughters are growing up in a country with a public education system that, while not perfect, He constantly strives for. You have to be cruel and ignorant to argue that education should be privatized. There is no resource more necessary for the healthy, democratic and successful development of society, and if education is only available to children whose parents are already financially capable, well, it is obvious that social inequality will continue (to the joy of some).

I am afraid that we left the best players on the bench again, and this time (…) we are risking our lives.

If the quality of life in countries like Germany, Sweden or Finland is so high, it is precisely because the state guarantees equal access to opportunities: free public education, functional public spaces, financial and logistical support for subsistence and escape from unemployment, monthly bonuses for families with children (ensuring that children do not lack clothes, food or entertainment). Yes, gifted. Yes, for everything. Because? Because a country where there are a handful of happy and successful children while the majority barely survive without opportunities, is destined for failure and violence. A country where there are children who live in such a state of vulnerability that they end up being recruited by criminal groups or victims of sex trafficking, a home from which children have to flee through unsafe and dangerous routes to seek opportunities abroad, that nation must urgently reconsider its decisions and look for a new leadership. Unfortunately, the two options between which Ecuador is debating seem to me to be formulas destined to fail. Maybe education has failed us and that’s why we allow ourselves to be manipulated by the mirage of ideology. Let’s not be fooled: it’s not about the left or the right, it’s a matter of cleverness, strategy, honesty and a realistic and humanistic political view of the desperate situation in which the children are suffering. It depresses me when I listen to the nonsense that the candidates for president and vice president of Ecuador say. Both sides, equally. I am afraid that we have left the best players on the bench again, and this time we are not risking a place in the World Cup, we are risking our lives. (OR)