The Legendary Life of Saint Maurus. Tuesday, November 22nd, 2022: Teacher's Day in Costa Rica. Parents need to know what's coming for their children.

The Legendary Life of Saint Maurus.  Tuesday, November 22nd, 2022: Teacher's Day in Costa Rica.  Parents need to know what's coming for their children. San José de Costa Rica, Central America.

 

Teachers' Day is a special day for the appreciation of teachers and may include celebrations to honor them for their special contributions in a particular field area, or the community tone in education. This is the primary reason why countries celebrate this day on different dates, unlike many other International Days.

To commemorate the onomastic date (Saint Maurus born in Africa on January 1, 512) of Mauro Fernández Acuña (November 22nd,1843), a reformer of Costa Rican education. 

 

Our Costa Rican great-grandfather, son of Nicaraguans, Jesús Trinidad Vega Noguera, was responsible for establishing Teacher's Day in Costa Rica, published in No. 87 of the Gazette Corresponding to 10-10-1915, for 11-22 of each year.  

 

St. Maurus appeared in the late 9th century, supposedly composed by one of Maurus's 6th-century contemporaries. The bishop of Le Mans, in western France, sent a delegation asking Benedict for a group of monks to travel from Benedict's new abbey of Monte Cassino to establish monastic life in France according to the Rule of St. Benedict. The Life recounts the long journey of Maurus and his companions from Italy to France, accompanied by many adventures and miracles as Maurus is transformed from the youthful disciple of Benedict into a powerful, miracle-working holy man in his own right. According to this account, after the great pilgrimage to Francia, Maurus founded Glanfeuil Abbey as the first Benedictine monastery in Gaul. It was located on the south bank of the Loire river, a few miles east of Angers. The nave of its thirteenth-century church and some vineyards remain today

Parents NEED TO KNOW What's Coming For Their Child BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE
— Yuval Noah Harari https://youtu.be/r7YDc8PQPDM.

The problem today is that parents don’t teach their children enough about how to deal with failure. Kids today, including parents, become so offended and upset even by everyone else’s differing opinions.

 

Education in Costa Rica is divided into 3 cycles: pre-education (before age 7), primary education (from 6-7 to 12-13), and secondary school (from 12-13 to 17-18), which leads to higher education. 

 

Mauro Fernandez Acuña studied law at the University of Santo Tomás, from which he graduated in 1869. He reached several positions in the Supreme Court of Justice of Costa Rica and was a university professor at the College of Lawyers. He was a delegate in the Costa Rican Constituent Assembly in 1880 and again in 1885, 1892, and 1902. He was President of the Congress, Minister of Property and Commerce, advisor of State, and Director of the National Bank of Costa Rica.

In 1885, he was named by President Bernardo Soto Alfaro as the head of the Secretariat of Public Instruction, where he initiated a reform in Costa Rican education, which triggered the closing of the University of Santo Tomás (at which he studied) and put more funding into Secondary Education. He helped found the Colegio Superior de Senoritas, Costa Rica's first secondary school for women.

Fernández was responsible for hiring his wife Ada's sister, Marian Le Cappellain, to found the Colegio Superior de Señoritas in 1888.

He died in San José on 16 July 1905. He was declared a Benemérito de la Patria, a title that was given to honorable Costa Rican persons in history, by Executive Decree 109 on 18 June 1955.

Costa Rica's education system was ranked 54th in the "Global Competitiveness Report 2013–14", and was described as of "high quality". The literacy rate in Costa Rica was 97.9%. It is 2 points over the average for Latin American and Caribbean countries.

There are five public universities in Costa Rica: Costa Rica Institute of Technology (TEC), Universidad de Costa Rica (UCR), Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica (UNA), Universidad Estatal a Distancia (UNED), and National Technical University (UTN).

Public universities offer degree programs according to their specialty and by law, and manage their own central and regional campus. By Costa Rican law, two different public universities may not offer the same degree program.

Public universities publish a number of journals where students and academics can publish their research, and access international research publications freely. There are also several private universities:  Texas Tech University - Costa Rica, Universidad Latinoamericana de Ciencia y Tecnología (Costa Rica), Universidad Latina de Costa Rica, Instituto Centroamericano de Administración de Empresas (INCAE), Universidad Adventista de Centroamérica (UNADECA), United Nations University for Peace, Universidad de Ciencias Médicas (UCIMED), Universidad de EARTH, Universidad de Iberoamérica (UNIBE), Universidad Católica de Costa Rica, Universidad Empresarial de Costa Rica (UNEM), Universidad Santa Paula, Universidad Veritas, Universidad Cristiana del Sur, Universidad San Juan de la Cruz (SJDLC), Universidad Americana, Universidad Hispanoamericana, Universidad Fidélitas, Universidad Empresarial de Costa Rica (UNEM).   

 

Unfortunately, primary, secondary, and university education in Costa Rica does not stop getting worse every year. The last three rectors of the UCR, the best university in the region, Dr. Henning Jensen, Dr. Carlos Araya, and Dr. Gustavo Gutierrez, have been accused and investigated for corruption and multiple crimes.  The judicial system in Costa Rica is so perverse that they have not been called to make a preliminary statement by the Public Ministry.

 

For years, politics has destroyed a good part of the foundations established with blood, sweat and tears by Don Mauro Fernández and hundreds of thousands of Costa Rican teachers like our great-grandfather Jesús Vega-Noguera (1869-1925), Higinio Vega Orozco (1892-1940), my grandparents Jesús Vega-Orozco (1908-1997), and La Niña Angélica Rodriguez-Arias (1908-2012) and her sister La Niña Mercedes "Ditas" (1911-1985) both graduated from the Colegio de Señoritas.  

 

This year 2022, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights is analyzing the complaint of several Venezuelan students whose rights have been recklessly violated by Costa Rica from 2015 to 2022.   

 

Meanwhile, in our family we continue to educate people, siblings and cousins like Dr. Jorge Cháves-Camacho (1925-2002), Virginia López-Rodríguez, Flora León-Rodríguez, Elizabeth Longhi-Carvajal, my sister Emilia Vilagut-Vega, and the undersigned.

San Jose Costa Rica, Tuesday, November 22nd, 2022: Teacher's Day in Costa Rica, by MSc Rafael A. Vilagut-Vega, rafaelvilagut@gmail.com.