%0 Journal Article %T El maestro y la ense£¿anza de lengua materna a principios del siglo XXI (Primera parte) %A J¨¢imez %A Rita %A Fern¨¢ndez %A Betsi %J Letras %D 2010 %I Scientific Electronic Library Online %X it is no secret that our national socio-political scenario is characterized as critical. extreme stances are found in almost all aspects of our national life. but regularly, we find the same protagonists: on one extreme there is the government; on the other, the opposition. in this wide scope there is one issue of our direct concern: the education of today and tomorrow¡¯s venezuela. hence, in this essay four concrete aspects of the problem are summarized: (i) students without command of reading and writing skills enter the university; (ii) teachers graduate from the upel, main teacher training university, without command of reading and writing; (iii) a transformation of the curriculum of the upel is compelling; and (iv) the teacher¡¯s pertinent education should comprise not only their language mastery, but also their ideological competence. this essay makes allusions to the i national meeting upel-med: transformation and modernization of the curriculum for teacher training at undergraduate level. two objectives lead this work: to evaluate some of the government¡¯s proposals, certain actions and conceptions at the upel; and to retake the "must be" of the teacher in general, and that of the language teacher in particular. this paper concludes by establishing the importance of linking issues related to linguistic competence and power instances. %K national socio-political scenario %K teacher formation %K curriculum transformation %K language. %U http://www.scielo.org.ve/scielo.php?script=sci_abstract&pid=S0459-12832010000100008&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en