It's 8 am in Honduras; do you know where your teacher is?

As the operatic Honduran presidential standoff roils on, the side stories of the economic impact on ordinary Hondurans have begun to develop. To date, little has been mentioned however, of the ongoing education crisis in Honduras that has brought the entire sector to a very troubling standstill.

The major teachers unions, to which the vast majority of the country's 60,000 + teachers belong, have held strikes since before the June 28 ouster of President Zelaya (originally in support of his referendum, among other rationales) and now continue to leave the schools vacant until, union leaders claim, President Zelaya is rightfully and fully restored. Some schools reopened on July 13, but most others have stayed closed, making it difficult to gauge the scope of the ongoing national strike."The union has been, and will continue to be, a bastion in the restoration of democratic order," explained one union leader recently, who also claimed that the strike has not slowed.

Having followed education in Honduras for the past several years, it is hard to take he teachers' unions rationale at face value, given that they have held work stoppages against Zelaya and his string of hapless education ministers so often (I would estimate that over the past 2 years, nearly 30% of the school year has fallen under massive teacher strikes). The strikes don't help the cause for a productive 2009 school year after the nearly month-long closing of some schools earlier this summer due to H1N1 containment strategies.

To make matters worse for the cash-strapped Honduran government (interim or otherwise), the striking teachers are now demanding that they receive all salaries and benefits for the 30+ days that they have been on strike and in the streets. The education minister, was appointed vice-minister under Zelaya, has even called the demands preposterous. The measure of how this effects Honduran youth - in the inevitable increase in youth delinquency in the short term and stunted educational progress in the long term -- will likely be severe.

Sources: La Prensa, El Heraldo, Reuters, http://www.se.gob.hn/