Growing Pains

In many ways, Paraguay is the baby in a world of nations.  Yes, many of our towns have celebrated 400 year anniversaries (and usually that just marks when the Europeans started paying attention).  Yes, people often call our capital the mother city of South America, as the founders of many of great cities stopped in Asunción before establishing, for example, Buenos Aires.  And yes, Paraguay officially turned 200 this past May.  Nevertheless, merely 22 years back, Paraguay experienced a rebirth. 

The dictator Stroessner ranks in as the 14th longest serving non-royal state leader in history.  Coming from a country where presidents stick around for eight measly years, I find it difficult to wrap my brain around the idea that one person could act as the face of a nation for 35 years.  (Of course, Strom Thurmond and Ted Kennedy don’t even top the list of longest serving US senators, at 47 and 46 years respectively.  However, I hardly believe that most Americans considered these guys for even a moment when making daily decisions.)

In 1989 Paraguay initiated a move from closed society where very little from the rest of the world penetrated these borders, to a place where international trends could potentially take hold.  With time, cable television and the world wide web steeped in to take the country that sustained itself- intellectually and agriculturally- for decades, and introduce it to the rest of the world.

The transition from absolute power into democracy hardly ever goes smoothly.  When all a generation has ever known focuses on pleasing a tyrant, change does not come easy.  Beyond updating laws and recognizing human rights on a state level, personally people need learn how to live freely.  Dealing with choice does not always come naturally.  And through these awkward, finding oneself years, Paraguay struggles through comprises and contradictions arise.

Parents post photos to Facebook of their children performing traditional dances from smart phones.  Some areas surge forward with the speed of neighboring industrialized countries, others lag behind.  We live in a town with 3G internet coverage, but no standardized running water system.  A woman’s gaze or the way she crosses her legs may may invite something entirely unintentional.  Yet, since no one bothered to investigate the lyrics, second graders can whip up a dance routine to Lady Gaga singing about someone’s “disco stick” without any concern.

Halloween has become a point of contention.  Our town, which prides itself as one of the most Catholic places in an already very Catholic country, does not celebrate.  November 1st and 2nd mark special days in the local religious calendar and dressing up for October 31st indicates a partnership with the devil.  Despite this, elsewhere in Paraguay, stores stock up on fake spiderwebs and the second annual zombie walk recently marched through the capital.

On the other hand, you can dress up as Batman for the first day of spring.  Also known as “Youth Day,” our town hosts a week of celebrations including a children’s parade, some sort of princess contest, and countless asados.  Paraguay makes a big deal out of this particular change in season and an even bigger deal out of extolling the country’s youth.  Nearly every person in our medium sized town took part in the party.  Neither one of us had any idea the significance of the day before hand.  Other volunteers reported a wide variety in levels of observance in their own sites.

Accordingly, we navigate Paraguay in tandem with the rest of the population.  Our confusion takes a backseat as this nation finds itself.  I doubt we’ll figure it all out in just two short years.  Neither will Paraguay.  All the same, next year I will have my Godzilla costume ready a month early.

An Exchange in Self-Esteem

Charla: Literally translates to “talk” or “chatter”.  In reality, refers to a sort of guest-led training event.  The speaker may substitute for a teacher in a school or host an independent training (single or multiple sessions) on any number of topics.  PC Paraguay loves charlas.

I have a confession to make.  Throughout junior high and high school, I never took a standard version of a class when an honors track existed.  (Full disclosure, when I transferred to public school in the sixth grade I did not enroll in the gifted language arts program because I had spent the previous standardized test season in the hospital and my new school did not know what to do with me.  At least my math teacher gave a pre-test on the first day of class and promoted me on the second.)  Backdoor bragging notwithstanding, the fact remains: I did not realize until many years later what true classroom management meant for most teachers.  Of course I know that not every class that doesn’t earn an honors point gets crazy and truthfully, arrogant honors kids can get completely out of hand.  However, generally speaking, when you share all your classes with a group of nerds more interested in applying to Harvard than Homecoming, most days pass uneventfully.  If anything, I was probably the most obnoxious female in the A.P. clique.  (Super sorry, by the way.)  Even so, it never occurred to me to carry on a conversation with my neighbor talking over my teacher in my full speaking voice or to blatantly disregard clear instructions.  To this day, I still feel guilty for giggling as the boys in my 8th Spanish class tortured a substitute teacher by tricking her into using made up slang to tell the whole room that she did indeed masturbate.  (She thought she told us about an entirely different hobby.)

Well, today, those thirteen year old giggles exacted a little karmic retribution.  After months of careful observation and planning, Kevin and I dove in head first and lead our first set of self-esteem charlas for seventh through eleventh graders. 

If my high school experience represents one end of the classroom behavior spectrum and season four of The Wire represents the other, typical Paraguayan classrooms lie somewhere in the middle- leaning closer towards The Wire.  Some kids take a great interest in school, others prefer to drink terere during class and throw garbage on the floor.  Teachers, tend to concentrate their attention on the focused students and disregard the behavior of the others.  I have yet to see discipline enforced (or even threatened) for disrespectful conduct.

This problem stems from multiple directions.  One, after speaking with several teachers, I’ve learned that most people who work in schools do not do so because they feel passionate about learning.  In Paraguay, if you want the fastest track into white collar work, you become a teacher.  Additionally, although recently the federal government completely re-hauled grade level expectations, few teachers follow the new guidelines or use suggested methodologies and lesson plans.  Kids move from grade to grade, regardless of their competency, with their peers.  Most teachers teaching today, teach in the same manner that they learned. 

A dictator doesn’t stay in charge by encouraging critical and free thinking.  Incidentally, five decades of Paraguayan public schools concentrated on rote memorization.  Teachers would read from a text book and students copied what they heard into personal notebooks.  In art class, a teacher would draw a picture on the board and expected students to mimic the drawing as closely as possible.  Twenty-two years into democracy, not much has changed.  Students still do not have their own textbooks and struggle with imaginative lessons and creative problem solving.  Kids memorize correct answers and leave the process of getting there to the textbook publishers.  In other words, no one in Paraguay has seen Dead Poets Society. 

Finally, students barely attend class four hours a day and schools regularly cancel for strikes, institutes, and inclement weather.  When school is in session, classrooms lack climate control and proper furniture.  While observing a one hour long class from a broken chair on a hot day, I could hardly pay attention either- and I’ve had tons of experience feigning interest in boring situations.  How can we expect kids to do any better?  Luckily, the teachers in our local school seem dedicated to bringing about major reforms in education and have specifically requested we work with them on the same.

PCVs learn to combat these issues, by hosting interactive charlas where the kids get out of their seats, work in groups, and have to come up with their own answers.  Although the later part requires pulling teeth, after a while the kids catch on and let their guard down.  For our introduction on self-esteem, the students seemed to enjoy themselves and the charlas went basically well.  (I’d average our seven sessions to date at about a “B”.)  Perhaps they went well because we included outdoor activities that work best (at least for discussion purposes) when everything goes wrong.  Eh, igual.  (It’s all the same.)  For the record, I feel no guilt from bribing answers with candy.  Nothing solves a participation problem better than sugar. 

My post-charla self-esteem, though... that’s another issue entirely.  Make no mistake, these classroom hours drained the life out of me.  However, not all hope has fled.  As we exited the school this afternoon- after a particularly difficult group of ninth graders put us through the ringer- some eighth graders stuck their heads out the window of their classroom and yelled, “when’s our turn?”  Our reply of “tomorrow” met cheers.  Of course this exchange interrupted their teacher mid-lesson, but I take my wins where I find them.