Emotional Intelligence | Main Page on Peru Education

 

More school pictures from Peru, 2005

 

A high school I visited

 


Bored students having to stand up and say "Good morning teacher"


A student helping me teach the english class, something the students would rarely get a chance to do I'm sure since the teachers like to have all the students sitting in their chairs.

 


When I asked them how many had messenger. Shows how exited they were to think of chatting with me later. (The pic has a problem)

 


When I was leaving. This is typical in all the schools I visit. The students are so happy to have a fresh face and someone who doesn't just shout at them, threaten them etc.

 


Here is the ancient professor trying to explain some grammar rule about past possesive. The students had no idea what he was talking about. None of them could make a sentence using the grammar rule. And he had no idea that they were totally lost. He was so completely out of touch with them.

 


When I look at the picture below I start to cry. I see the person in the middle posing for me. He kept looking up at me, trying to get my attention. He is so attention starved. People told me later he has problems at home. But I didn't need them to tell me that to know it. And I look at the person with the book on his head trying to block the hot sun. I think of the teachers and director standing in the shade. And I remember the Catholic school in Indonesia where the students told me they had to stand like this in the hot sun for two hours for two days the first week of school.

And I think of the men walking around hitting the people with sticks. I think of how little I can do to change things. How little I can do to help meet the emotional needs of the young person who needed so much attention. I think of Daniela in Quito and hope that she will come and help me. Because I know with her help I could do so much more. With her I feel so alive, so awake, so motivated and inspired. Yes, D, it is chemistry. It is a chemical reaction. Talking to her last night helped give me the motivation to look at these pictures again. To select some of them to send to her. Now I look at the old man again. And think of how totally out of touch he is. He could barely speak English and what English he did speak was with a Chinese accent. But he knew his grammar rules. And of course that is more important than being able to say "What's your name, where are you from?" Almost no one in any public school in either Ecuador or Peru can say such simple things. They can't say "How old are you" or "Are you married or single" or "Do you have a girlfriend."

It is so discouraging to think of all the children and teenagers who are being hurt so much everyday around the world. And Daniela doesn't really understand why I want to kill myself sometimes. She can't feel the pain I feel, she can't know the intensity of it, because first, she is not me, second she has not seen the things I have around the world. She hasn't met as many young people who are being hurt everyday in schools and homes. Who are being treated like second class citizens, like slaves, like prisoners, like idiots incapable of thinking for themselves.

Anyhow here is the picture..

 


More pics of them standing, bored, in the hot sun.

 

 


Here you can see that the teachers are in the shade.

 


It is so hot they were putting their notebooks over their heads to give them some shade, but the "inspectors" would tell them not to if they walked by.

 


Here are the "inspectors" who walk around randomly hitting the students on the back of the legs with sticks if they are not standing straight and quiet. It is a little hard to see but the one on the left is holding his stick straight down next to his right leg.