ABSTRACT
Neoliberal international organizations and government officials seem to have agreed on an extremely negative diagnosis of modern public educational systems. They have characterized these systems as inequitable and of low quality, and they have blamed teachers as those primarily responsible for short-term profits that are insufficient to justify the enormous economic investment in education. In many Latin American countries, particularly Argentina, the close relationship between neoliberalism and education has been possible because it was an official policy of governments that enjoyed broad electoral support. Neoliberalism has broken sharply with this historical tradition despite the fact that it uses some historical slogans to gain legitimacy. The rationale of neoliberalism is the opposite of the rationale of liberalism. Its strategies contradict the theory of development that the United States disseminated in Latin America in the post-war period. Neoliberalism has intelligently carried out a plan that generates consensus regarding its own educational policies by contrasting them with the actual results achieved.
