July 30, 2010: Going to school.

I would like to say from the beginning: I am going to do my best to be objective throughout this post, or at least describe things with as little judgment as possible, but I’m sure I will fail miserably. This will occur for any number of reasons, including:

1. My philosophical skepticism about the notion of objectivity,
2. The cultural biases I’m bringing into my observations, and
3. My tendency to get a little overheated when discussing education, but mostly because
4. I am very, very bad at keeping my opinions to myself.

Also, A DISCLAIMER: this post has some words that some people may find uncomfortable, but I figured if a class of Tico fourth-graders and I could handle them, the rest of the world could too.

That said:

When one walks into a Costa Rican school – after being exposed solely to United States schools, and especially schools in states where it snows – one notices a key physical difference right away: there are no windows.

This is not to say the rooms are dark, lightless caves; on the contrary, they are usually well-lit and airy because they are very, very open. That is to say: there are huge openings in the walls, but they have no glass in them. They have bars, usually, but their main purpose seems to be keeping the children in the room, which is managed to greater or lesser success. For anyone who has attempted to keep the attention of a room of 6th graders for anything longer than a fart joke, imagine trying to run class essentially in the open air. Distractions are everywhere: a breeze runs through the room and riffles through all the paper; another class goes to lunch, with all the accompanying yelling and scrambling; another teacher comes up to the window and reaches through a note to drop on a desk; I’ve seen birds and butterflies fly through classrooms.

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I was observing a class which, to me, seemed like complete chaos: I had already seen several kids just get up and walk out the door, one student had attempted to stab the teacher with a paper clip, and there were a couple of guys just hanging out on the floor, drawing on the underside of their desks. The teacher was making a valiant effort – she had managed to not punch anyone, which is remarkable, given the circumstances, and was obviously trying out different classroom management techniques in the hopes that something would work.

She had just gotten everyone in their seats when another teacher walked up to the classroom window and began to yell inside. “WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?!” she said. Students, teacher, and I looked around, unclear who was being yelled at. “WHAT DO YOU THINK THIS GRINGO WILL THINK OF OUR SCHOOL WITH ALL OF YOUR YELLING AND NOISE?!”

I tried to shrug nonchalantly in a vague attempt to indicate a completely objective and non-committal point of view. Kids wriggled uncomfortably in their seats. “YOU’LL EMBARRASS US ALL!” she yelled through the window.

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The walls are concrete – sometimes painted, sometimes not – and the roof is made of corrugated zinc plates, which fill the rooms with a deafening roar when the rain starts, like standing under a waterfall emptying on a field of marching band drums. When the rain is hard enough, no one can yell loud enough to be heard over it, and everything stops. The chairs and desks are made of wood, and, judging from their archaeological fields of initials carved across each other and the dull polish they carry, which wood can only get by being rubbed with elbows, forearms, and the occasional forehead, they may have been in use since the school opened in the 50s. There are still actual chalkboards, their surfaces fogged with white, and about which I had forgotten how much fun they are to draw on.

Eventually, you will notice that there are no books. Costa Rica rightly celebrates its very high literacy rate – one which is higher than that of the States, in fact – but it has apparently managed to achieve this goal without books (which is a feat in its own right). Students essentially have to write their own books: each student has a series of notebooks, usually one for each subject. Each day, the teacher writes on the board or recites the lesson for the day, and the students dutifully copy it down, verbatim, in their notebooks. This kind of rote repetition is, from what we’ve seen, the main method of instruction, varied occasionally by presentations or collage exercises.

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I observed one class where the teacher was covering basic sexual anatomy. Opening her curriculum book, the correct page, she began to read: “VULVA!” she would yell, and the whole class would, almost in unison, say, “What?”

“VULVA!” she would reply, “V-U-L-V-A!”

Kids bent over their desks, writing the word hurriedly.

“THE FLESHY LIP-LIKE MEMBRANE WHICH SURROUNDS THE VAGINAL ENTRANCE!” the teacher would yell.

“Fleshies?” the kids would say, printing a chicken-scratch of words, “Membrain?”

“KEEP UP!” She would reply. “CLITORIS!”

This went on for 40 minutes, interrupted occasionally by the class wise-acre who kept demanding that the teacher explain what a vagina is, which she pointedly refused to do. “Where is it?” he would ask, in his best mock-innocent voice. “What do you use it for?”

I was then asked to draw a uterus on the chalk board, which is certainly not something I had come prepared for. I did receive, however, many compliments from the class on the quality of my uterus.