Focal Country Essay – The Dominican Republic

September 23, 2010

The Dominican Republic was discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1492, becoming an important colony of the Spanish government and a springboard for Spanish expeditions to colonize the rest of the Americas. Economically, the country has traditionally been an exporter of agricultural products such as sugar, coffee and tobacco. However, in recent years there has been a growth in the service industry, including tourism, which now accounts for over 66% of its GDP. This change has been beneficial to the Dominican Republic’s economy which has grown steadily since the 1980s, having an average economic growth rate of 5.43% from 2007 to 2009 and a Per Capita GDP of $8,300 (CIA, 2010). Neo-liberalism and free trade policies have led to the improvement of aggregate economic statistics for most Latin America countries including the Dominican Republic. Through tariff reduction policies and the positive effects of globalization including the increased exchange of ideas and products, most countries may in the future obtain a level of economic development only previously achievable by a few western states (Sachs, 2005).

Yet, the vestiges of colonization, including the poor educational system developed by European colonists within most of their colonies, has made increasing economic prosperity and reducing inequality a difficult challenge for most colonies to overcome. While the country’s economy has improved in recent years, its low educational achievements by world standards can be linked to its history as a resource extraction colony. The Dominican Republic and neighboring Haiti had in place a plantation system in which only a small number of whites, constantly fearful of a revolt, controlled a much larger black slave population, who were constantly monitored and whose education was not encouraged (Moya Pons, 1992). As argued by Rodney (1972), the colonizers were fearful of educating slaves as it would make them more difficult to control.

Colonization in Latin America was sustained primarily through the use of force and fear. Various authors, including McMichael (2004), have argued that colonization in Latin America was a “colonization of settlement, which often eliminate indigenous people” (p. 4). Similarly, Frank Moya Pons argues that to a great extent in the Dominican Republic, the native population was annihilated during colonization. While there may have been up to 400,000 “taino” natives when Columbus discovered Hispaniola, by 1508 only 60,000 remained (Moya Pons, 1992). The Indian population was further reduced to 11,000 by 1517 and only 3,000 by 1519 (p. 29). Most of the natives died from epidemics as well as from the harsh treatment to which they were subjected by the Spanish colonists.

To continue the economic production and “development” of the island, the Spanish crown quickly began to import slaves from Africa and organized the island’s economy along various agricultural plantations. According to local documents, by 1546, black slaves accounted to around 12,000 individuals and which were controlled by a white population of only 5,000 (p. 34). During the colonial period, there was limited internal trade as a result of lack of roads and low levels of production. The main trading partners were the colonial powers, more specifically Spain, and the country experienced high military expenditures as various colonial powers attacked and attempted to control the island (OECD, 2008).

Today, 84% of the population considers themselves mixed or of African ancestry (CIA, 2010). As such, part of the “achievement gap,” is undoubtedly linked to the purposeful perpetuation of ignorance among the black and taino populations during the colonial era. The Dominican Republic attempted to address this and other problems through the General Education Law of 1953, and while there were noticeable improvements, the country continues to lag behind in educational achievements in comparison to other Latin American countries (Murray, 2005).

Recent demographic trends as well as a transition to a service economy have increased the challenges. The rapid urbanization of the Dominican Republic and the growth of its population contributed to government difficulties in developing the human resources needed to deal with the demands for new skills from the changing economy (OECD, 2008). In 1950, the Dominican Republic had a population of 2.134 million inhabitants of which 23.8% were urban dwellers. In 2010, according to CEPAL, the population of the Dominican Republic is calculated to be at 10.169 million inhabitants with 68.54% of the people living in urban areas (CEPAL, 2010).

In order to increase the quality and access to primary and secondary education in the country, a number of reforms have been implemented to develop a more complex and dynamic educational system (OECD, 2008, p. 92). In 1992, the country approved a major education reform through a 10 Year Plan (Plan Decenal) which promoted: 1) modernizing the educational structure, 2) the introduction of new technologies, 3) the promotion of literacy, 4) strengthening vocational education, 5) increased investment in education and 6) increasing community involvement (p. 104). [E1] Implicit in these reforms is the belief that integration into the world economy will benefit the Dominican Republic and contribute to its development. This is more consistent with the views of many modernization theorists than theories of development such as Dependency Theory, which are far more critical of the way in which the international economy and globalization functions and how developing countries are integrated into systems of international trade.

Plan Decenal (1992-2002) was seen as a possible solution to most of the country’s educational problems and as the greatest educational reform since 1953. It has since functioned as the basis for a number of important subsequent educational reforms, most notably in 1997 and, more recently, in the creation of the second Plan Decenal (2006-2016), which addressed some of the problems following the implementation of the Plan Decenal (Gajardo, 2008). Plan Decenal reforms yielded various positive results. Among them, the literacy rate increased steadily from 60.8% in 1980 to 70% in 1990, 78.5% in 2000, and 81.6% in 2008 (World Bank, 2010). Through Plan Decenal, the number of children between 6 and 17 that were attending school increased from 71.3% in 1991 to 86.4% in 2002 (p. 10).

However, despite moderate success in some areas, several indicators remain below expectations. By 2006, the average enrollment rate for Latin America and the Caribbean at secondary school was 87.2%, while in the Dominican Republic enrollment was only at 58.7%. The literacy rate remains below the world average of 88.2% and total public spending on education (% of GDP) is low, at a level of 2.2% during 2007, compared to a world average of 4.6% in 2006 (World Bank, 2010). In addition, according to a 2001 study by PREALC, urban children in the Dominican Republic performed the worst in an assessment of education of all of Latin America, and rural children performed only better than children in Bolivia and Peru, where Spanish is to many children a second language (p. 23).

Private education has increasingly grown in the Dominican Republic as a result of the inefficiencies of the public system. While there were only 24 private schools in 1961, there were at least 2,500 by the year 2000 (Murray, 2005). In the aggregate, Plan Decenal resulted in another limited attempt to solve the educational problems facing the state, partly as the result of the high levels of partisanship within the government administration and conflicts with the teacher’s union (Murray, 2005). According the Murray (2005), the educational system has been detrimentally impacted by an “obsessive” centralization, periodic teacher strikes, violation of the law by educators, and a high level of clientelism within the education ministry. Unless some of issues problems are addressed, the impact of future reforms may be also be limited.

Bibliography

CEPAL. (2010). CEPALSTAT | Base de Datos y Publicaciones Estadisticas. Retrieved from CEPALSTAT: http://www.eclac.org/estadisticas/

CIA. (2010). The World Factbook. Retrieved from Central Intelligence Agency: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/dr.html

Gajardo, M. (2008). Education for All Global Monitoring Report: Dominican Republic – Country Case Study. New York: UNESCO.

McMichael, P. (2004). Development and Social Change: A global Perspective. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.

Moya Pons, F. (1992). Manual de Historia Dominicana. Santo Domingo: Caribbean Publishers.

Murray, G. (2005). El Colegio y la Escuela . Santo Domingo: Fondomicro.

OECD. (2008). Reviews of National Policies for Education. Paris: OECD.

Rodney, W. (1972). How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. London: Bogle Le’Ouverture.

Sachs, J. (2005). The End of Poverty. New York: Penguin Press.

World Bank. (2010). World dataBank: Dominican Republic. Retrieved from World Bank: http://data.worldbank.org/country/dominican-republic