The less we ask, the less they learn.

I recently attended a meeting at my workplace in which my colleagues and I were given instructions as regarding the begining of classes and what the authorities of the school expects from us for the new year.
It really caught my attention what the headmistress ask to the literature teachers: "Don't insist on students reading Garcia Márquez or Borges, just ask them to read magazines". Inmediatly, a discussion begun between the headmistress and some of the teachers attending the meeting. They all argued about what students should or shouldn't be ask to do.
The truth is, as one of the literature teachers said, that there are objectives already planned by the Minister of Education of our province as well as content for each subject already decided, to which teachers should adjust as much as possible. It is supposed that those contents and objectives were carefully planned and are what students need to handle after leaving school. So, if we don't adjust, and teach whatever we want, we are not giving them the necesary elements, or what the system considers to be the necessary elements to develop in our society.
The headmistress seemed not to understood, or care about this, and continue arguing insisting on another truth: we cannnot demand students to read those kind of literature, before they learn to read. This demostrates the failure that our educational system is going trhough in which studenst arrive secondary school without having learn all the basic contents that they are suposed to learn previously. Nowadays we can easily find in our schools students of the higher courses of tehn secondary school who cannot read or spell words, or who have no reading comprehension skills at all.
Both sides were right. unfourtunatelly, anybody could reach to the conclusion of which is teh ebst way to dela with thi reality ( or theses realities). Towards the end of the meeting, the phsycopedagogue of the school said that the situation is such because students are every time asked to do less and less, and that maybe is time to start asking them to read what they are supose to read at secondary school, and try to revertwhat was done wrong in the past. we all left the meeting thinking of that words.....