Promoting World Literacy or Why I’m Here

United Nations Millennium Development Goal 2.A.: “Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling”

But does that really matter if they aren’t learning anything in the schools?

[note: this post is slightly lengthier than normal, I realize. But I think it is quite informative if you are interested to know exactly what I am doing in Paraguay, and more generally, the real ‘change’ or work that the Peace Corps does.]

John F. Kennedy, in order to answer a call from the youth of America who wanted to help people in other countries, created the Peace Corps in 1961. Or so the legend goes. Since then the PC has been met with criticism from abroad and the U.S. alike. It has been called a tool of United States imperialism, furthering U.S. interests abroad under the guise of ‘peace.’ In the widely read book Lies my Teacher Told me, James Loewen says emphatically that the greatest benefit of the Peace Corps is the intellectual growth of its volunteers. Before joining the PC one of the factors that almost deterred me was that I did not want to feel like I was imposing myself on a community in a third world country that did not want me there. Fortunately, this is not the case in Kilometro 16. I feel that as an Early Elementary Education Advisor I will be of great use to my community in the next year and a half, and this post will explain why.

At the end of the school year, I administered basic reading evaluations to Kindergarten through third grade classes in the three local schools, and the results were a little bit frightening, at least for me. None of the kindergartners could identify even a single word. Of 35 first graders, 24 were able to identify at least 5 words, but of those 24 only one was able to respond to questions after reading a first grade-level reading passage. In second grade, of 29 of 36 students were able to decode words, but of those 36 just eight were able to correctly answer at least 6 of 10 questions to pass a comprehension test on a First grade level reading passage. And finally in 3rd grade, just 3 students couldn’t decode any words, but of the other 25 students, just 14 were able to answer at least 6 of 10 on a first grade test, a figure that would have been lower if I considered the fact that one of my teachers was basically giving the students the answers to the questions.

Let me reiterate: no kindergartners can read a single word. That’s 5 and 6 year-olds, who are extremely ripe for the learning by developmental standards. A forth of 1st graders can’t read, and almost no first graders can read a short paragraph and summarize it. Less than a forth of 2nd graders can read and summarize. And finally approximately half of third graders have that skill. And I have tried to get even 5th graders to write original pieces, albeit a 3 sentence letter to their friend, which is done with great difficulty. In the U.S., to juxtapose, when I was working in a kindergarten classroom I saw a little 5 year old write an original paragraph and who was able to read short novels, while even one of the kids who was a little bit further down on the learning curve was able to recognize 20 words by the end of the school year.

This lack of literacy in the primary grades is extremely concerning for several reasons. Many students, as a result of poor early elementary instruction, still either can’t read at all in 4th grade and beyond, or else they can pronounce the words but do not think about the meaning of what they are ‘reading’ and thus comprehend almost nothing. Writing skills are sub,sub-par as well. Far behind their age level standard once they reach junior high and high school, many will drop out, disillusioned with school in general. Or they just come to class and sit quietly, understanding nothing, just to hang out with the pretty chicas (seriously!). The majority of students graduate high school never having read an entire book.

Why the lack of literacy? Bilingualism is probably the biggest reason. Almost all students speak the indigenous language Guarani in their homes. At school, however, the materials are all in Spanish, so students are taught to read in Spanish before they even know how to speak it—not exactly in sync with the latest teaching reading methods. And then the materials that the schools do have are meager at best: a few reading textbooks (never enough for all of the students somehow) and a school ‘library’ consisting of about 15 kids books. Additionally, Paraguay is just 20 years removed from a dictatorship, and many of the teachers still, out of habit (and b/c of the lack of materials), teach with methods that were in use back then. Understandable, since it is the way they were taught. But unfortunately, these teaching methods do not function very well for a majority of the students.

One of the most frustrating parts about my job is that I know exactly what could be done in the schools so that all kids, every single one, would be able to read. And trust me, if I could come right out and start openly critiquing teachers to improve them, I would. But that’s not how things work around here. So my most difficult task next year will be communication with and motivation of teachers. I have my work cut out for me for the coming school year in Paraguay. First, convince the teachers that a problem even exists—that they are not fulfilling the potentials of the students. I must do this in such a way that does not damage their egos too much, which is like walking on broken glass in the indirect culture of Paraguay. Second, I have to persuade the teachers that I have the knowledge to impart to them that will help students learn better if the teachers would only try my (from their perspective) ‘out-there, drastically different’ teaching methods. Then, I have effectively train teachers in said methods so that they will use them even when I am not here any more.

Paraguay’s literacy rate is listed at 95%, although even optimists doubt that its ‘functional literacy’ (ability to read and write meaningfully, more than a signature) is that high. If in the next couple of years I can put even a fraction of dent in that number I will be happy. Having said that, I think something becomes clear: whatever the original reason behind the creation of the Peace Corps, the fact is that it allows its volunteers to do worthwhile work abroad. And yes, let’s face it, PCVs get a lot of personal and professional growth from the experience. But no, I don’t buy the argument that sharing the latest and greatest teaching reading pedagogy with teachers in a recently democratic country is a furthering of U.S. imperialist interests.

On another note, I just killed a 5 foot long snake in my house. See y’all next week!

Six Signs You are (Still) in the Peace Corps

“We must not cease from exploration. And at the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time.”
-T.S. Eliot

During the first couple of months I was in Paraguay, everything seemed surreal. I would note every little tiny detail of everything that I saw or that happened to me and it was the most incredible thing ever. I.e. the time I stopped on my way to somewhere and watched carpenter ants carry leaves many times their size for a solid ten minutes. Or when I went nuts because I saw a firefly with a totally different light pattern then Illinois fireflies. Or when I laughed for about 2 straight minutes at the descriptive language for describing a cold beer in Guarani, which translates as: “This beer is nice and cool like a Penguin’s butt.”

‘Culture shock’ is the commonly used phrase to describe this adaptation process to a new culture. After several months of immersion, culture shock typically wears off, as it has for me. I am at home in my environment again, in my own element. Things in my day-to-day that I would have, at the beginning of my experience, deemed ridiculously journal-worthy often don’t even get a second thought now. This weekend I had a realization that I have become desensitized to a great many things after living in ultra-rural Paraguay for more than 7 months. So, in case I forgot, here are six signs (taken this past weekend) to remind me that I am still in the Peace Corps:

1. Saturday morning is extremely rainy. You realize this means this means that you will not be able to go into town for at least 3 days if not more because of the road conditions. Instead of reacting negatively, you celebrate the joyous fact that you will have a morning to read the classics and do yoga without interruption from neighbors randomly stopping by to hang with ‘the Americano.’

2. Water is dripping into your house in at least 7 different spots. Instead of getting upset you congratulate yourself on how much foresight you had to put your bed in the ‘dry corner’ of your hut.

3. You have an intestinal disturbance that clearly would have been ‘Kaopectate’ worthy back in the states. As you squat in the roofless latrine during a storm, being downpoured on, your only reaction is to chuckle about how smart you were to bring dry TP with you in a plastic bag.

4. When you come to a recently formed river cutting across a road, you are already knee deep before you realize you just took off your shoes to wade through muddy water. (I remember my denial the first time this happened: “well there has got to be some way around this thing…nope there aren’t too many pedestrian bridges in Paraguay”) You just have to embrace bare feet in the boondocks.

5. You are overjoyed to walk into a neighbor’s house and find them watching an (extremely) mediocre Wayne Brothers movie, let alone when in English, dubbed into Spanish. In this particular case the contraband film, obviously pirated, filmed in a movie theatre, is “White Chicks.” It may be the Waynes bros, but hey, it’s a relief from the usual 7 hour epic Chinese kung-fu flicks that everyone is always watching.

6. The highlight of your day is figuring out that you can leverage your machete against a tree in such a way that you will be able to split bamboo with maybe 400% more efficiency. So genius.

By the same token that I have been come desensitized to Paraguayan life, its going to be interesting to note what I think of Brookfield when I get back a week from Tuesday after having been gone 10 months. Trains? Snow? Chipotle burrito? Irish Times, and Guinness on tap? Chinese food? Wisconsin cheese available in a store near you? Two story houses? Indoor Heating? Hot showers? I’m going to feel like a tourist in my hometown.

Thanks, Wikileaks!

It is common in Paraguay for Peace Corps volunteers to be accused of either being in cahoots with the C.I.A., coming to secure Paraguay’s giant aquifer (2nd biggest in the world) for the U.S., or, my personal favorite rumor, we are here to “find the gold” that is allegedly all over this country (I have my eyes peeled, haven’t seen any still). The Peace Corps Paraguay country director was even recently asked, on a very mainstream radio station, if indeed the Peace Corps Volunteers were spies for U.S. interests. Personally, I have only been accused once of being a spy to my face, and it was by a very drunk Brazilian who was babbling nonsense to me one night, so I didn’t have to take that accusation very seriously. The only true suspicion I have stirred thus far up is with the local chainsaw-ists, who think I am going to ‘report them’ (whatever that means in Paraguay, there is no one honest I could report to even if I wanted to) for cutting down and selling the wood from the national forest preserve.

The rationale for the Peace Corps being a 2 year commitment as opposed to 1 year is because in isolated areas where locals aren’t used to Americans, it may take a year just to build the trust necessary to truly be able to start initiatives that will result in sustainable change. For the last 7 months I have built up a supreme reputation in Kilometro 16 as being what I will call a ‘really solid dude’ in my community. I go work in the fields occasionally which earns the farmers respect, I drink terere with old women, I have close relationships with all of the local teachers, know a ton of the kids names at the school, don’t do anything shady, play soccer with the high school kids, etc. My trust bank here is pretty big.

But what would life in tranquil, rural Paraguay be without a little drama? The ‘wikileaks’ story has caught fire in the Paraguayan mainstream media. Turns out the U.S. government asked the Paraguay embassy to find out if Hugo Chavez financially supported Fernando Lugo when he ran for president in 2008. This has substantially increased the number of times the ‘spy’ topic has been broached in conversation in the last couple of days, even here in rural Paraguay. Every time it is brought up, I do my best to convey with some suavity that, yes, the U.S. government, like any government, has good programs (i.e. Peace Corps) and some questionable, polemic ones, like all of the C.I.A. operations in Latin America in the 20th century, and yes, wanting to know everywhere that Chavez drops a nickel. Although a slightly awkward subject to discuss with Paraguayans, the wikileaks conversation is something that I think is important to have. I feel better if I talk to people here face to face about it instead of them just mentioning it behind my back. Lucky for me, my well stocked trust bank will probably ensure that anyone who knows me here will not believe that Profesor Miguel could be a spy, in spite of whatever classified documents appear on wikileaks. Or would they? My argument with people is often: honestly, if I were a spy, I would be doing a pretty bad job wouldn’t I? Teaching kids in primary school how to read? I suppose maybe they think that is my cover. But honestly, I think the U.S. would have found a more competent spy. I don’t even speak fluent Guarani yet…