Above a busy intersection, a tally of funds wasted since the first day of school last month.
An excellent article by Damien Cave in the Sept.1
New York Times:
Billboard Drives Home Extent of Corruption as Schools Suffer. Here's an excerpt:
Mexico budgets more for education, as a proportion of gross domestic product, than Brazil, Spain and even Switzerland. So where does the money go?
According to one calculation now appearing on a new “abuse meter” — a giant electronic billboard hovering over a busy intersection here in the capital — about $2.8 billion annually goes into the pockets of 298,174 no-show teachers and administrators who collect pay without working.
So, Claudio X. González Guajardo decided to address this problem head-on. He put up an "abuse meter" billboard at a busy intersection in Mexico City.
González' efforts to improve education in Mexico go well beyond a billboard, however. He makes effective use of the internet and social media, and similar efforts by other activists in Mexico are making a difference.
The article contains one bit of suspect information, that the money wasted each day could be used to build 24 schools. According to my arithmetic, this would make the average cost of building a school $275,000. That's a bit low, so OK, let's say 15 new schools. That's still staggering.
Mexicanos Primero site (in Spanish)