La Jornada: Rosaura Ruiz: it is important that children form their knowledge from science

At the inauguration of the Doctor Matilde Montoya Master’s Chair, the head of the Secretariat of Science, Humanities, Technology and Innovation (Secihti), Rosaura Ruiz Gutiérrez, highlighted the importance of girls, boys and adolescents forming their knowledge from a scientific perspective, so that “they can distinguish what is scientific knowledge from what can be ideas, myths, legends and opinions.”

Gathered in the Baroque Room of the Carolino building of the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (BUAP), where the first session was given with a keynote lecture by Dr. Annie Pardo Cemo, cellular biologist and emeritus researcher of the National System of Researchers (SNNI), highlighted the importance of evolution, and the creation of its modern conception from the work The origin of speciesby Charles Darwin, who detailed his life and contributions to the advancement of scientific knowledge.

At the event, attended by the governor of Puebla, Alejandro Armenta, as well as academic authorities from the state and the local Congress, Ruiz Gutiérrez pointed out that for the humanities it is important to know where we come from as a species. “I think it is very important to teach that all religions have a place, or you can have none, but the knowledge that should be taught in schools is scientific thinking, and in particular, it is essential that children learn what is said about the origin of our species and life on earth, and how it is explained through science.”

When addressing the development of thinking about the evolution of species, he warned that enrollment in courses such as biology, mathematics and physics, but also in history and philosophy, has decreased in the country. “We have to study what is happening, because in Mexico we need many more scientists.”

For her part, Dr. Pardo Cemo, professor emeritus of the Department of Cellular Biology of the Faculty of Sciences of the UNAM, an expert in the study of the extracellular matrix, a process with which a wound is repaired and that forms a scar, before the rector of the BUAP, Lilia Cedillo, detailed the phenomenon of idiopathic fibrosis, a pathological process derived from an abnormal healing response, in which the excessive accumulation of extracellular matrix affects the structure and function of the organs.

It is, he said, a multifactorial chronic-degenerative disease, linked to aging, with a high mortality rate, as it usually progresses rapidly, affecting the lung capacity of those who suffer from it.

Pardo Cemo highlighted the importance of continuing research on these complete biological processes, particularly given the development of aging of the population in Mexico, which increases the risk that the incidence of this type of illness, still incurable, will increasingly affect the population.