Reflection on week #2

I was very intrigued by the concept of a bilingual school and was excited to visit one. In the United States, there is not very much respect for the indigenous Native American cultures, and they are usually restricted to the arbitrary boundaries of a government-created reservation. Even within reservations, however, many of the traditional customs and languages are quickly being lost.

It seems like the situation in Mexico is slightly better. The Mixtec people work in solidarity and bind together to make political change in both Mexico and the United States, as well as to create services to provide for their own community; although they are a “minority group”, they are not completely powerless.

I was impressed by all the innovation behind the school we visited, and how thoughtful its concept was. They thought of things that I never would: making it possible for mothers to bring their children lunch, putting the health clinic inside the school so that women would be more likely and less embarrassed to use it, inviting non-Mixtec students to participate too (though I suppose that might not have been much of a choice, considering the school receives government funding.) There were obviously many creative ideas and efforts put into the school’s development.

But the implementation didn’t seem to work as well. When we visited the classroom, the students weren’t focused and the only ones who seemed to consistently be doing work were the ones the teacher was helping at the moment. In one class, the teacher left the room completely, and very few students appeared to be doing any academic work at all. It’s wonderful to try to preserve and respect a culture, but are the children learning? Is it working?

I found myself trying to assign blame for the students’ lack of focus, to decide that the school’s unique approach was responsible for it, but that was a rash reaction, one that wasn’t based on any knowledge on my part. I don’t know what other Mexican schools look like, and I don’t know if the disorganization I noticed was merely a symptom of widespread underfunding, like it would be in the United States. Actually, when I thought about the school again as we were leaving, I realized it didn’t look much different than many public schools in California, and the students weren’t very different than the ones I work with every week at an after-school program in Boston. The kids I know in Boston, a group of Somali immigrants of all ages, are smart, but struggle with basic academic skills, and are well below the level they should be at. I could easily look at them and decide that all Americans are uneducated, or that Somalis in particular do poorly in school, but I know that’s not the case. The difficulties they face are mostly due to overcrowded classrooms and parents who aren’t familiar with the kind of education they’re receiving.

This distinction is something I need to keep in mind. Mexico is not a country of drug addicts, traffickers, and undereducated people, though those problems do exist. Just like the United States has poverty, inequality, and crime (though sometimes these are well-hidden; people do go hungry in San Diego), Mexico has its own social issues, but that is not its primary identity. I need to remember that, especially as we continue to read articles and visit places that highlight such extreme issues. Each person, each country, each culture, has a multidimensional story and cannot be summed up in one experience or one description. It seems like I keep learning more and more about identity as this class goes on…

Kelsey