“Mexican Mediocrity”

How many times we have complained about the government, corruption, insecurity, education and many other things of our country? The most important question we have to ask ourselves is how many times we do something to solve all these problems?
When we talk about a mediocre person, or in this case of a mediocre country, we are talking about a person or group of people who has a negative andordinary attitude towards life and they do nothing special to be distinguished from the others or to solve the problems that affect their society, country or world.
It is important to emphasize that I am not generalizing that all Mexicans have to be mediocre because I would be making a huge mistake. Like any other country Mexico has good and bad people. People who work every day to make adifference in the world and the other type of people who prefer to do nothing and complained about everything.
To make myself clearer about this situation I would like to talk of the different branches where we can find this defect that is affecting our country, but more importantly that is affecting the people who live in it.
I would like to start with the mediocre mentality that many of ourathletes have. The perfect example of this statement is the soccer team that went to the World Cup which took place in South Africa. It is amazing how they started this tournament. Many of the Mexicans who saw the game Mexico vs. South Africa could not believe the result, because one week before, the team had beaten Italy who was the world champion of the last World Cup. As time went by the teamimproved and had acceptable results. But why couldn’t they be good since the beginning? The reason is the conformism and the mentality that the athletes had at that moment.
On the other hand, Mexico also has very good athletes who make their best effort from the beginning to end of a competition. A person who did it is Juan Ignacio Reyes, a Paralympics athlete who won a gold medal in Beijing.It is amazing how he could reach that goal having no arms. You could say it was luck but the reality is that this achievement was the result of many years of hard work and effort. Therefore, he is a great role model.
Another branch where we can found mediocrity is in the education given in this country. In 2007, Mexico was in place 48 of 129 in the field of education1. Nowadays ournation is last in mathematics knowledge2. Who is responsible for this? The answer is everyone. It is the fault of the government because it didn´t provide the money necessary to improve the education. It is the fault of the teachers because they didn’t make their best and they didn’t ask more from their students, and finally, students didn’t care and did the minimum effort in everything they hadto do.
The other day, I was talking with my uncle who is a teacher in the IPN (Instituto Politecnico Nacional) and he told me: “Today, many of the students are lazy and they don´t like to think. Also, they are mediocre and the only things they are thinking about are parties and vacation. With this mentality, where is our country going?”
A country that could be a role model in the educationfield is. Cuba. It is a fact that in Cuba all the people know how to read and write 3. Considering the fact that Cuba is poorer than Mexico, it is unbelievable that almost all the people have basic education. Why is that? Because in Cuba, the government is worried about education so they spent money on this cause. But not everything is flower bouquet considering that this nation is communist,the lifestyle of the people is regrettable. Here many of the individual guarantees are violated and the government oppresses the people. They have good education at expense of losing their freedom. Our leaders should emulate the good things of Cuba and leave aside the bad things of it.
1) www.elsiglodetorreon.com.mx/.../314584.mexico-ocupa-lugar-48-en-desarrollo-en-educac.html -
2) www....