'Normalistas' fight changes in Mexican education
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The students have demonstrated against eliminating the practice of allowing retiring teachers to sell their jobs to the highest bidder.
8:11AM EST December 9. 2012 - MORELIA, Mexico — College student Eduardo Díaz considers his participation in protests to be as much a part of his higher education as classwork.
For weeks, Díaz and other students who are going to school to become teachers in rural Mexico occupied the historic center of this colonial town — along with a bevy of farm animals, a tractor and a foosball table — to protest attempts to modernize their courses.
"The social struggle, along with basic education ... we learn both," says Díaz, 22.
New President Enrique Peña Nieto says one of his priorities will be the overhauling of Mexico's education system to promote skills needed for the 21st century. But to do so he must confront the rural outposts of the Normal schools, the colleges where professors have for decades