Critical Inquiry Final Blog Posts:
Duncan Andrade: Hokey Hope:
Mythical Hope:
Hope Deferred:
Critical Hope:
While in Cusco, we only visited two schools; however, while in Peru we visited many schools in multiple different settings. Some of the schools were polar opposites in terms of the resources that they had, context, networks, infrastructure, etc., but there was a common thread of hope in each school that we entered. Hope is something that everyone has no matter what situation they are in. In each school we went to there was always a presentation given to us by some sort of school administrator or staff member; they would tell us all about their school and the hopes and dreams they had for their students. In each school these hopes and dreams were different. At Colegio Roosevelt, the hope included going to Universities in the United States and becoming very successful and wealthy business people. At the last school we visited in Cusco, student’s hopes involved becoming tour guides or merchants because that was how their economy thrived. Hope is something that every teacher wants to instill in their students, but there are some types of hope that do more harm than good. It was eye-opening to see that in some schools the administration and teachers were already aware of the false hopes that can occure. For example, when we were in Andahuaylillas visiting the Fe Y Alegria school the women who gave the presentation to us was fully aware of the idea of “hokey hope.” She explained to us that her students and many people in the town feel trapped and feel that they have no where to go in their education or after they complete their education. Even if parents send their children to school, and they go to school until high school, they have no way of continuing past that level. It was portrayed to us as a viscous circle which students are trapped in because there are no opportunities for them to get out of the circle and make better lives for themselves. There are no universities near enough for students to attend and if there were there would be no way for these students to afford attending. We could see that the presenter was emotional about this and that she really wanted the best for students, but she was fully aware that no matter how hard they work, how well they pay attention and how well they play by the rules, there is still no where for them to go. Just being a good student is not enough for these students. I have to say that the majority of the schools we visited did a really good job of challenging the notion of “hope deferred.” Many times the teachers knew that the conditions were bad, or that the government was not going to help them or that there was not enough money to make the situations better, but the schools worked through all of these problems and did not blame the system for the faults. It was inspirational to see how the schools worked hard to improve their schools even when there were so many factors pushing against them. In almost every school, the parents were heavily involved in anyway possible to create better environments for their children. These schools defied the odds and worked past the failing system, the lack of funding, societal factors, etc to help their students reach their goals. At every schools the students had different hopes and dreams for themselves and at each school there were students who were so hungry to reach their goals. Teachers told us that sometimes there are students who walk two hours just to get to school; this perseverance was so inspiring and put a lot of things into perspective for me. In the United States many students see school as a chore or take receiving an education for granted, but to see how many obstacles these students overcome just to get to school was incredible. This experience reminded me how fortunate we are to have so many opportunities handed to us in education and that hopes and dreams can be achieved more easily depending on the situation. Every school has students who are roses that grow from concrete, but there were many schools in Peru in which the entire school was a full garden of roses who grew from concrete. I believe that it is the teachers that make this possible. I believe that teacher quality has the biggest impact on students and their hopes and dreams. Every teacher needs to embrace critical hope to help their students take charge of their lives and show them that there are ways to grow through even the toughest concrete and past the obstacles that get in their way. Blog Post #2: Pick a political issue related to education about which your interest has been piqued during our time in Peru. Do some media/news research to get better informed about the issue here in the US. Your blog post should address how you came to be interested in this issue via our time in Peru, and it should provide some analysis and explanation of the issue here in the United States. Examples of issues that we talked about during our month were teachers' unions, school privatization, national curriculum, bilingual/bicultural schooling, school funding, teacher training policies, access to education, etc. You may find the Pinterest boards here to be of interest. Access to education is one topic that really caught my eye while my time in Peru. There are many reasons that children do not have access to education and some of these reasons were very clear to see depending on the location we were visiting while in Peru. Early on in our visit to Peru, we were exposed to the problem of gender inequality in education. In certain regions of Peru, access to schooling is unequally distributed between females and males. In one video we were shown, we were exposed to the fact that many girls do not go to school, and if they do they drop out at a very early age. When there are girls in the classroom they are often not paid much attention to and are bullied and made fun of by the male students in the class. Right off the bat, female students are up against many challenges getting in the way of their schooling. It is not uncommon for families to keep the girls at home instead of sending them to school so that they can help with domestic chores and take care of other siblings at home. Males are seen to have a right to an education while females are supposed to stay home and tend to the home. Along with gender inequalities in schools is the language barrier that some schools present. In some regions of Peru, families speak the indigenous language of Quechua in their homes instead of Spanish; however, this can become problematic when school material is taught in Spanish. This makes if difficult for the Quechua speakers to fully understand the material and often sets the females further back and they never get a chance to catch up. The video showed us how female students tend to be placed on the outside of the classroom and boys occupy the middle of the classroom which makes the female students feel even more ostracized and out casted during school. This set up leads to the female students not really participating or engaging in the lessons and they fall further behind and eventually stop attending school all together. Besides gender and language inequalities, there are also inequalities in funding or financial resources. Many of the schools we visited had minimal resources to work with. They accepted the fact that the government would not help them and that they were on their own to improve conditions and find resources for their students. This lack of resources can have an effect on teacher quality as well as student learning. In one school in Cusco, there was a classroom with a tarp roof and no windows; we were told that the parents helped purchase the tarp for the roof;before the tarp roof, he classroom did not exist making the other class sizes bigger. With the help of the makeshift classroom, a new class could be formed making the overall class size a little bit smaller. In another school in the district of La Victoria, the teachers showed us an entirely new playground and jungle gym that was put together by the parents because they really wanted their children to have a safe space to play while at school. So although these schools did not get help from the government or did not have many of the resources they needed, they worked as a community to improve the school conditions for their children. In some districts that we visited, the problem was simply that there were no schools for the children to attend, which is really no simple problem at all. For example, in La Pamplona there was one Fe Y Alegria school for all of the children to attend. In many cases there was no safe way for children to get to school so they are not able to attend. Schools are very expensive to set up and in many districts there are not enough schools to accommodate all of the children in the area. The lack of schooling and poor educations have negative effects on the population and overall well being of the country. These children leave school without having basic skills or knowledge, which greatly impedes the social and economic development of these areas. The ex-minister of education told us that education is greatly improving in Peru and that they have come a long way from where they once where. This might be true, but it was often hard to see while being in some of the schools because many of the problems are rooted so deep. These children face so many challenges and have so many setbacks making it so much harder for them to continue with their education. Many of these pushback factors are things that they cannot control. It was obvious that these schools are working very hard to improve equality and access to education for these children, but there is only so much they can do in order to help. Inequality and access to education have always been problems in the system and are difficult problems to fix, but if educators, parents, and communities come together a lot progress can occur.
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