Jim Cooper was an English professor in Puerto Rico during the 1950's. He also went around schools in the island to supervise and evaluate teachers. Now, there's something you must know about Puerto Rico in the 50's (actually, it's still happening today). In Puerto Rico everything is ruled by politics. People want to be Puerto Rican, yet they can't live without federal help. I believe that if we're part of a country, and our second language is English, we should at least learn it correctly. Even if it's just basic English. But a lot people here believe that if you speak English you're a "vende patria", you're selling your motherland. It really is all politics.
Now, Cooper tells us about the first teaching experiences he had, being a native speaker, but never a teacher. Many people in Puerto Rico were taught English in schools by non-English speaking teachers. Do you get the irony yet? Flash Forward 50 years into the future, and I'll tell you a story of MY experience as a public school student.
I learned English in my own home. Dad talked to me in Spanish while mom talked to me in both English and Spanish. Add to that the fact that I watched movies and played video games in English, and that at 4 years old I was already reading in English, and you get a fully bilingual public school student.
While in school I was taught not to go against what the teachers taught me, and I didn't because most of the things I was learning in elementary school, I was learning for the first time. The only time I actually spoke up and corrected my teachers was in English class. I'm glad to say I wasn't the only one. But what would you do if the whole class was copying the word "sheeps" as the plural for "sheep"?
I politely raised my hand and told the teacher with the terrible accent and grammar, that the plural to sheep was the same word, sheep. Needless to say, that the teacher was furious and actually sent me to the office, but at what cost? My classmates were being taught the most inaccurate form of English and I saw it as my responsibility to correct the teacher and teach the right way. Later on in life I found out that my teacher was actually supposed to be a science teacher. But I never really found out who assigned him to teach something he doesn't know.
In this post, you integrated your life experiences as a public school student with what was stated in Jim Cooper's reading. I think it's great to give an example like that in order to help the reader know a little bit about the reality of Puerto Rico nowadays!
ReplyDeleteWhat you state as a problem in public schools is true also in private schools. We have to deal with this problem that dates from the 50’s. Isn’t that scary. The fact that today more communication means exist bring our generation the opportunity to overcome such limitation. Also consciousness of the importance of knowing English , not just only as a responsibility as US citizens, but as global citizens, motivate our generation to look beyond schools for a proper education.
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