In 1967 an interesting book appeared published by the Nomos publishing house (Baden-Baden, Germany), entitled “Characteristic features of the Latin American university” that compiles the most important works of the First Overseas Scientific Colloquium of West German universities. Rectors of many Latin American and German universities participated in it. The text addresses the main problems that afflicted Latin American universities in that year, the same as now, and emphasizes the complexity of the university panorama in our continent that has to do with historical, geographical, philosophical, scientific, sociological situations without throwing minus the contamination of sectarian politics. At the same time, it emphasizes that all these problematic situations can be overcome through the powerful intensification of scientific research within the universities, a factor that would fundamentally decide on overcoming backwardness and underdevelopment. The Latin American university is spoken of as a historical reality that, since its inception, has experienced various evolutionary stages, but has failed in its intention of becoming a true promoter of science. When referring to the stages of development, he establishes three historical-philosophical phases: The stage of professional preparation of the traditional phase. At this stage, the university assumes the preponderant role of professional training. They are authentic producers of professionals and teachers personalize a prototype of a teaching teacher.
The reformed phase professional preparation stage. The university has slowly climbed the dome of culture and science, without fully realizing it. But the need for a university with its eyes set on research is already in sight. There are research projects but the investigative work is not permanent or ordered. Some units stand out in research functions and many professors come to stand out in isolation, but the academic predominance is teaching as the main function of professors. On the other hand, investigative actions are generally emulations of science in other universities or centers and teachers disseminate knowledge that comes from other latitudes, without there being experiences of the teaching staff that they have not discovered, created or published. Knowledge is imported without its own local production. This stage is a scientific and ideological colonialism that threatens intellectual and academic freedom. The beacons of wisdom and knowledge are in the developed world.
The professional training stage of dynamic phase. It is at this stage that the university definitely reaches the heights of science and culture. The academy is made up of professors who eagerly seek the task of establishing a symbiosis between scientific research and organized and institutionalized university teaching. There is production of new knowledge and it teaches students in a living way and through them they constantly update and a student thought is newly formed destined to make them seekers of new knowledge and new truths through their own effort. The knowledge that is disseminated does not come from foreign productions and is predominantly pedagogical in nature: the academic function is creative through its maximum expression: the productive scientific capacity of the true research university professor. Bernardo Alberto Houssay, a prominent Argentine physiologist, Nobel Prize winner, proposed the following guidelines: “Progressively discard routine, dogmatic teaching, which only seeks to memorize, pass exams and obtain diplomas that are believed to confer magical aptitudes and grant privileges. Develop knowledge of the unscientific method in students and in all university students, the notion that knowledge is incessantly transformed and advanced: the fundamental role of basic and applied research in science, professions and industries, as the basis of life modern and current and of the well-being, wealth and power of every country.” It is important that science prevails in the academic activity of the UNAH and that underdevelopment in education is, hastily, history of the past. Rudolf L. Mössbauer, Nobel Prize, called for science to take root in universities and warned “The weight of the international competition of peoples shifts more and more towards the spiritual plane and towards a contest of scientific creative capacity ”. That is where the Unah should go.
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The steps that Unah has not taken