Three nights ago, while I was relaxing on the porch outside of my room, I received a surprise visit from a young man who I had met on several occasions but never actually spoken with. Without telling me why, he asked me if I could follow him. Naturally, I agreed.
He led me to another young man, though slightly older, who was standing in the dark holding a notebook. The youth holding the notebook timidly asked me if I could help him with his homework. I said of course and followed them to one of the village’s five lampposts. The three of us sat together on a stone bench and the man with the notebook told me he didn’t understand his secondary school English homework. He opened his notebook and told me he had to write five sentences using the words “in” and “of,” which were sloppily scribbled on a blank page. Beneath the two prepositions was an example (written in much neater handwriting) that read, “The people of Solentiname are funny.”
I made the mistake of assuming that he knew what the sentence meant and asked him if he needed help understanding the difference between “in” and “of.” He gave me a blank look and nodded his head. After defining the two prepositions several times and providing examples of how and when to use them, I finally felt like he understood his homework assignment. He was nodding as if he understood and seemed ready to write something. But instead of putting pen to paper, he looked at me and his eyes seemed to ask, “What now?”
Long story short, I soon realized one of the only words he knew in English was “bedroom.” I felt completely helpless and could not understand how he was expected to complete his homework without a basic understanding of English. When I asked him to show me some other homework questions, I noticed that several questions were grammatically incorrect and several words were misspelled – whether the student or the teacher made these errors, I truly do not know.
I realize this was an isolated incident. I also know I cannot make any assumptions about the education system here based solely on this experience, but I feel compelled to share this story and to talk briefly about education here.
While primary school students in most of Solentiname usually have school five days a week, secondary school students attend school every other weekend. In other words, they have four school days per month.
I can’t help but think about my days in high school when I forgot math equations and historical dates after only one or two days. Even with the instruction of the world’s finest teachers, how much information can the average student keep over 15 days?
The organization I am volunteering for, Alianza para Solidaridad de Solentiname, has recently begun week-long intensive classes once a month for secondary school students who are interested in continuing their education at university. Click here to read about the second session that took place in November, 2009.
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