Again (education in the DR)

[Rick Snyder]

An article in the Listin Diario today.
El Calendario Escolar says the schools must impart 1,258 hours of instruction to those students in the courses básico and inicial and 1,290 hours for those students in the bachillerato.

The education omnipotents have determined that there are 9 months of classes this year and each month has 22 days and this equates to 198 days of classes. These 1,258 hours are strictly for teaching and do not count for recess or eating. The public schools hardly receive, in their morning session, classes from 9:15 to 11:30 (2 ¼ hours) and the afternoon session from 2:00 till 5:30 (3 ½ hours) and these timeframes include recess and meals. The Calendario Escolar has also given the schools 12 vacation days this year which brings the 198 days down to 186 days of instruction this year. Now let’s see…… 1,258 hours of instruction into 198 days (simple math 1258 divided by 198) and the students should be getting 6 ½ hours of instruction a day. The article goes on to explain that even though the government is investing thousands of millions of pesos into the school system the Secretary of Education is very concerned about the quality of teaching and learning if the students are receiving less then 3 hours of instruction daily (duuuuuuuuh). The S of E also said that a budgetary controled study should be conducted by organizations such as the (EDUCA) and (ADP) to determine the reason the students are losing instruction hours and to take corrective steps to the problem.

It is interesting to note that in the Listin Diario last week there was an article in which the government said that for every 100 students only 5 receive their high school diploma. THAT’S A 95% DROPOUT RATE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

For those bleeding hearts out there who seem to think that more meals or more classrooms is what is needed all have your heads in the sand. It’s the QUALITY of the education. To see an example of this all you need to do is ask people younger than 30 to recite the alphabet to you. If you don’t know the order that the letters are arranged then how can you effectively use items like a dictionary, phonebook or computer to name a few. This is only one example of the lack of quality in education but one that I feel is very basic and essential for better learning.

It has been mentioned a few times by other posters and I’m beginning to believe it also, (IT IS A LOT EASIER TO GOVERN AN IGNORANT POPULACE)

[Pib]

Well, I have bad news for you. I can't recite the alphabet (don't even know if it is in the school programs as I skipped my first two years of schooling), but I sure as hell can speak Spanish. Furthermore, the Spanish alphabet changed after I left school, and I am most times confused as to which letters were taken out and which were left. This does not impair me in any way at speaking, understanding and writing my language. Spanish is not English; they don't have to be taught the same way.

Yes, better education, teachers who are better prepared are needed (well, duh!). But school meals has a lot of importance when a lot of these kids who attend public schools show up for classes 'con el estomago en pijamas'. I believe I have spent more time than you in public schools in the DR, been that I am the daughter of someone with 37 years as teacher/principal (someone who started as profesora rural) and also because for the last 5 years of my education my school was turned into a public school. And yes, kids in public schools (not mine though) show up at school without having put anything in their stomachs, my mom had kids fainting in class.

I have seen the system, I have heard my mom complains, I have known some of the worst teachers possible (some were my mom's workmates) and I have known the best teachers one can possibly imagine. There is little more hours of study can do when a teacher is given so little resources that they have to buy chalk out of their miserable salaries.

Trust me, my anger is not directed at you; it just seems to me that whatever came up with that would be the kind of doctor who would use a band-aid to stop a major hemorrhage.

[Rick Snyder]

Sorry Pib I didn’t mean to upset you and I agree with you in that the children attending school should not have to do so on an empty stomach. At the same time I do not believe it is the public schools responsibility to feed the masses. So where does the fault of this problem lay and what should be done about it I don’t even want to begin to get into but the fact remains that if you feed all the children all you will end up with is well fed uneducated children. If you build more classrooms you end up with well roomed uneducated children. The money that the government is spending must be better programmed.

Unless you left school in the year 1802 the alphabet hasn’t changed and I think that is the location of one of the problems. Who started this myth that the alphabet changed? The Spanish alphabet has had 29 letters in it since 1803 and still has 29 letters. If you are unsure then ask a few Dominican teachers and let me know what they tell you as I have already done that and I would be interested to know if their responses are the same to you. How can the uneducated and misinformed teach properly. You don’t need to know any of the letters of the alphabet to speak Spanish as my father-in-law is a classic example of this because he can’t read or write but he sure can speak Spanish.

Let us suppose for a moment that you are reading a newspaper and you come across the word (indocto) and you don’t know what it means and at the same time you don’t know the order of the letters in the alphabet nor that the letter (i) is the 10th letter of the alphabet just after the (h) and right before the (j). How long to find the (i) section in the dictionary? Now you need to find the (in) within the (i) section, then the (ind) etc. etc. Learning to recite the alphabet is important for learning. There is also the fact that if you can recite the Spanish alphabet you automatically learn the sound every letter makes in its pronunciation except for the letter (w) so doesn’t it stand to reason that learning to recite the alphabet serves some useful purposes and just might help as everything to date sure isn’t working?

[thepiper]

"This Spanish variant of the universal Latin alphabet has been used by the Academy since 1803 (sixth edition of the Academic Dictionary) in the preparation of all its alphabetical lists. Nevertheless, at the Tenth Congress of the Association of Spanish Language Academies, held in 1994, it was agreed to adopt for academic dictionaries, at the request of various international organizations, the universal Latin alphabetical order, in which the ch and the ll are not considered independent letters. As a result, these two letters come to be alphabetized in the places which correspond to them within the letter C (between -cg- and -ci-) and within the letter L (between -lk- and -lm-), respectively"

Maybe this so pib if you were to go back to school in dr you would learn to read and write with a different alphabet.

[Rick Snyder]

This is all well and good in the alphabetisation of words but the fact is, according to the RAE, 29 letters are in the alphabet and the letters cha and elle still exist and are a part thereof. Therefore any variance to this is not Spanish and you either teach correctly or you invent a new language. Using the basic teaching book NACHO 2, printed here in the DR, it explains that the ch and ll are a part of the alphabet and the letter ch, pronounced che makes the che sound and the letter c makes 2 sounds, the c suave (s) and the c fuerte (k). If you were to do away with the letter ch then you would have to teach that the letter c makes 3 sounds. Why reinvent the wheel?

QUOTE

ABECEDARIO. 1. Para designar la serie ordenada de las letras con que se representan los sonidos de una lengua, pueden usarse indistintamente en español los términos abecedario y alfabeto (del lat. abecedarium y alphabetum, respectivamente). El primer término está formado a partir del nombre de las cuatro primeras letras de la serie latina (a, be, ce, de), y el segundo, a partir del nombre de las dos primeras de la serie griega (alfa, beta). Aunque son ambos válidos, el nombre alfabeto es el de uso más general y el que ha dado lugar a derivados: alfabético, alfabetización, analfabeto, etc.
2. Como las demás lenguas románicas, el español se sirvió básicamente desde sus orígenes de la serie alfabética latina, que fue adaptada y completada a lo largo de los siglos. Así, el abecedario español está hoy formado por las veintinueve letras siguientes: a, b, c, ch, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, ll, m, n, ñ, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, z (® a, b, c, etc.).
3. Esta variante española del alfabeto latino universal ha sido utilizada por la Academia desde 1803 (cuarta edición del Diccionario académico) en la confección de todas sus listas alfabéticas. Desde esa fecha, la ch y la ll, que en realidad son dígrafos, es decir, signos gráficos compuestos de dos letras, pasaron a considerarse convencionalmente letras del abecedario por el hecho de representar, cada uno de ellos, un solo sonido. No obstante, en el X Congreso de la Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española, celebrado en 1994, se acordó adoptar, a petición de varios organismos internacionales, el orden alfabético latino universal, en el que la ch y la ll no se consideran letras independientes. En consecuencia, las palabras que comienzan por estas dos letras, o que las contienen, pasan a alfabetizarse en los lugares que les corresponden dentro de la c y dentro de la l, respectivamente. Esta reforma afecta únicamente al proceso de ordenación alfabética de las palabras, no a la composición del abecedario, del que los dígrafos ch y ll siguen formando parte.
4. Mientras que los dígrafos ch y ll son las únicas grafías que representan, respectivamente, los sonidos /ch/ y /ll/, el sonido que representa el dígrafo rr es el mismo que el representado por la r en posición inicial de palabra o precedida de las consonantes n, l o s (® r, 2 y 3). Este solapamiento explica que, a diferencia de la ch y la ll, la rr no se haya considerado nunca una de las letras del alfabeto.
Real Academia Española © Todos los derechos reservados

ch.

1. f. Dígrafo que, por representar un solo sonido consonántico de articulación africada, palatal y sorda, como en mucho o noche, es considerado desde 1803 cuarta letra del abecedario español. Su nombre es che.
ORTOGR. En la escritura es inseparable.

Real Academia Española © Todos los derechos reservados
ll.

1. f. Dígrafo que, por representar un solo fonema consonántico de articulación tradicionalmente lateral y palatal, es considerado desde 1803 decimocuarta letra del abecedario español. Su nombre es elle. En gran parte de los países y regiones hispánicos se pronuncia como y, con salida central del aire, y con sus mismas variaciones de articulación.
ORTOGR. En la escritura es inseparable.

Real Academia Española © Todos los derechos reservados

[Pib]

Well, the alphabet didn't change, it was only rendered a bit useless for people who grew up looking for ch and ll in the dictionary. So, it wouldn't have made me any good using newer dictionaries.

I can use a dictionary alright (of which I own quite a few, in various languages, thank you very much), I can find my way alright even if I have to think for a few seconds to recite the alphabet. As I said, not having recited the alphabet in school did not impair my learning of the language. I am not an expert (duh!) but I am damn proud of my proficiency. I think you are just paying too much attention to minor things and angels dancing on the head of a pin.

As for school breakfast: if we lived in a perfect world children wouldn't arrive at school without eating anything and they would go straight to learning, as it is they don't, so what do we do? You work with what you have, and we have kids that CANNOT pay attention because their stomachs are empty.

[Lesley D]

Not only an empty stomach is a problem but what about all the other problematic factors: like "butacas", lack of supplies, old material etc. The public education system in the DR is in what I call a critical state and I personally am not worried about the alphabet. All the others obstacles need to be remedied first to foster productive learning. If the environment or medium in which students learn is not conducive to "productive" learning, the alphabet is irrelevant. I am speaking from personal experience. Based on the numerous articles that I continuously read in el Listin Diario there are problems in many areas and the key factors in my opinion are: incompetent educators, poorly paid educators, high absenteeism, lack of supplies and the curriculum itself. These areas need to be corrected first and revamped if students have a chance at getting a semi-decent education. I fear for the current and upcoming generation.


-Lesley D-

[Pib]

Originally Posted by Lesley D

Not only an empty stomach is a problem but what about all the other problematic factors: like "butacas", lack of supplies, old material etc. The public education system in the DR is in what I call a critical state and I personally am not worried about the alphabet. All the others obstacles need to be remedied first to foster productive learning. If the environment or medium in which students learn is not conducive to "productive" learning, the alphabet is irrelevant. I am speaking from personal experience. Based on the numerous articles that I continuously read in el Listin Diario there are problems in many areas and the key factors in my opinion are: incompetent educators, poorly paid educators, high absenteeism, lack of supplies and the curriculum itself. These areas need to be corrected first and revamped if students have a chance at getting a semi-decent education. I fear for the current and upcoming generation.


-Lesley D-

Thank you for saying what I wanted to say but you said better.

[Rick Snyder]

There are indeed many problems beyond the alphabet and we all seem to agree on that fact but what to do about the problems is where they problem is. I remember reading a while back in the DR1 news about the warehouse up north that was found with either several hundreds or thousands of “batacas” stored away. Did they ever get distributed? No follow up. I remember reading about the school administrator that had her dog on the payroll as a teacher. Was the dog taken off the payroll? No follow up. There was the reporting about all the janitors that were on the payrolls as teachers. Where they taken off the payroll, fired or prosecuted? No follow up. I teach English in a public school at night here in El Seybo and I arrive at the school at 6:30 and sit on my motor waiting for my students and watch the afternoon janitor team leave with many bags of rolls and many cartons of milk under their arms. Is this maybe the food that all of you are talking about? Do you think these fine outstanding janitors are giving this food to students in another schools maybe? Is the school overstating their enrollment in order to receive more food daily in order to feed the whole town or is it possible that there are children not being feed in order to feed other people not enrolled in the public school system? I can almost guarantee you that the school administrator was always crying the blues about her teachers not making enough money as her and her dog got their monthly check. I can also guarantee you that if food is being stolen in 1 school in El Seybo it’s being stolen from a lot of other schools here and elsewhere. Soooooooooooooooooooo, while you cry about the way things are and should be why not incorporate teaching the alphabet to the preschoolers as it might help in the long run, can’t hurt and doesn’t cost anything. I have also proven that it can be done in ONE hour and it stays in the mind of the child forever!!

[Lesley D]

Rick...usted es tenaz... (persistent) but that's okay because there are one or more aspects that worry everyone concerned about the public school system in the DR. Since you are so persistent about the alphabet I decided to go through some books I bought in Panama on one of my last trips there. I bought some primary school education textbooks books at a store for teachers and students which are used in the classroom. One book I particularly like is called Nuestra Lengua 3 Educación Primaria (Casa Editorial Santillana). I would say the book is suitable for grades 5 & 6. The book has twenty- four chapters and learning how to use a dictionary is introduced and covered in four subsequent chapters. In the first lesson (Uso del Diccionario I) the students learn "el orden alfabético" so to prove your point about it's usefulness- you are correct. After working through the various "talleres de la lengua" in the last chapter the students learn how to search for words in a dictionary. Now whether Panamanian students have an advantage over Dominican students cannot be determined by this one example but I know some teachers there and I will ask them in what grade do the students learn to recite the alphabet (if they do) and if they find it effective. If the responses I receive are valuable I will post them or send you a PM.

Having said this the alphabet still does not bother me as much as a recent article I read in el Caribe. The Secretary of Education, Alejandrina Germán wants to move forward with bilingual education in seventeen public schools all in tourists areas. However, the problems she is facing include: finding quality teachers, competent bilingual teachers, teachers who understand grammar etc. What I don't understand is for students to learn a second language well, they have to be very strong grammatically in their own language and speak well. Now knowing the problems, poor educational standards and the drop out rate, shouldn't Alejandrina be concerned about resolving the existing issues as mentioned in my previous post rather than introducing bilingual programs? How would students benefit from English when they are weak in Spanish? I find this very disturbing and once again it opens the doors to more incompetence on the part of teachers. Alejandrina has already indicated her challenges in finding good language teachers therefore who are the teachers that will be teaching these students?

-Lesley D-

======================

Here is a bit of the article:

Educación
La educación bilingüe, ante primeros escollos
Faltan profesores, mientras experto cree no es prioridad
Por Itania María / El Caribe
Lunes 10 de enero del 2005 actualizado a las 12:00 AM

Para salir adelante con la educación bilingüe para el nivel inicial y como segundo idioma para los estudiantes de básica y bachillerato, la Secretaría de Educación enfrenta un gran escollo: la falta de profesores cualificados.

Y la propia titular, Alejandrina Germán, lo admite: “Hay (profesores especializados) pero la mayoría están en instituciones privadas y algunos institutos... tenemos que ver cómo les damos el incentivo suficiente para que vengan para acá”.

En entrevista para El Caribe, Germán comentó que el área de Currículo (al que pertenece el departamento de Inglés de la Secretaría) hace una propuesta “pero creo que para poder comenzar un programa bilingüe tendremos que dedicarle un presupuesto especial a esas escuelas”.

Y agrega: “Necesitamos buenos profesores, con capacidad para innovar, que hayan estudiado Lingüística, que sepan de verdad cómo se aprende un idioma y que podamos trascender los métodos tradicionales de enseñar un idioma”.

Y como para convencerse, dice: “tenemos el reto; lo vamos a lanzar en 17 escuelas y lo vamos a hacer bien”. Estas escuelas pertenecen, en su mayoría, a las regionales de Puerto Plata, Higüey y La Romana, cuyo común denominador es el turismo.

Gist translation:

Bilingual Education Facing Initial Difficulties

The Secretary of Education Alejandrina Germán faces the difficulty of finding qualified teachers for the primary and high school bilingual programs.

In an interview with El Caribe Germán said: “There are qualified teachers but the majority teach in private schools and institutes”. Germán also stated that to start the bilingual program a special budget must be granted to the schools”.

Per Alejandrina Germán good teachers are needed who can innovate, that have studied Linguistics, who really understand how language is learned and to whom we can extend traditional teaching methods of learning a language.

The program will be launched in seventeen schools mostly in the tourist areas, which include Puerto Plata, Higuey and La Romana.