I've noticed a trend in the education field lately to compare our schools here in the DR with schools in Cuba and Chile. I don't think that's fair. Both are countried distinctly different from the DR and for reasons of infrastructure and, in Cuba, severe obligation (punishable by law), their school systems work. And work well.
But the things that make their school systems work is lacking in the DR. In order to compete with Chile and Cuba there would need to be drastic changes in the government, in infrastructure - hiring of teachers, a sense of responsibility from the universities to impart modern and applicable knowledge to teachers in training...
i think it's a good idea to hire some from "afuera" to rebuild the system. sadly, it's not going to happen anytime soon. take money away from the "botella"? nope.
full day school is also a great idea. there are schools in santiago that are planning on putting "intensive" high school - 2 grades in one year, 4 hours a day - because they want to be able to put "full day" school in the near future and need to "weed out" the "bad seeds" as quickly as possible. what happens to the students that get lost in that process? if we have a deficiency already teaching ONE grade in a year, how much higher will it be teaching TWO?
the point is, there is no physical space for all day school. it's a rampant problem in latin america. i know that in mexico, guatemala, honduras, el salvador and english speaking belize all have half day school and did not score nearly as poorly as the DR.
maybe it has something to do with the fact that in one week, there is ALMOST ALWAYS one day with no class - teacher's meetings, rain, holiday, araganania (laziness, i'm not sure if that's correct, but it's what we call it here in my spanglish speaking household). or maybe it's because there are only FOUR valid hours of class and students are given a thirty minute "recreo." or maybe it's because there is no focus on the 4 basics: spanish, math, science and social studies.
has anyone noticed how many classes are REQUIRED by the board of ed? in elementary school there is: espanol (which is divided into: reading, writing, spelling, handwriting and speaking... but only given one period (about 40 minutes) a day, math, social studies (both history AND geography), science... and now, the "extras" formacion humana (religion), art, civics (isn't this really part of social studies?), gym class (how do you have gym with no playground?), computers (even if the school has NO computers), from 5th grade on BOTH ENGLISH AND FRENCH (neither of which are given the proper time or effort to actually learn them) in high school there are THIRTEEN classes that dominican students take in ONE semester - including "agroeconomia" and "comercio".
even with a full day, it's kind of a system overload. not to mention that the setup is so fragmented it doesn't really allow for continuity. Instead of one full year of biology, one full year of chem, one of physics and one of bio2 or chem2 (etc), there is ONE SEMESTER of bio and ONE SEMESTER of chem freshman year and ONE SEMESTER of bio and ONE SEMESTER of chem junior year (3). how can those students actually be expected to retain the information and not have to reinvent the wheel each time their subject comes up?
I think the thing that most bothers me about these studies that recently came out is that they only focus on PUBLIC schools, but really the problem extends to the private sector as well. The teachers in the public school are typically more qualified than teachers in the private and overwhelmingly better paid that private school (let's all forget about bilingual where teachers get paid, mostly, for speaking english). the problem is an all around curriculum program, mixed in with lack of interest or a culture of education.
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