This is certainly the (almost) last entry I will post from Tolte,
although I may have to ice this cake somehow after I leave. It is Saturday,
July 6, 2013, and yesterday was the last day of school. Early tomorrow (unless
potential festivities tonight get in the way), I will travel to Cuenca, future
site of Ecuador: La Segunda Vuelta. And while this second year in Tolte has
produced some disappointments, mostly in my own inability to make more things
happen, the final moments of the school year were certainly touching. And I
hope that I reached a few hearts in those moments, too.
The greatest outpouring of affection came from the third
grade/fifth grade classroom, because Clara (Avanti’s special ed teacher) got in
there with Luis and made a project out of it. And so I received a big pile of
classic childhood projects, hand-folded and decorated envelopes with genuinely endearing
notes inside. Against the background of what each grade has been like, it left
me with complicated feelings.
The third grade has been a wonderful and exciting class for
me to teach this year. This was a surprise, because last year I didn’t teach
the kids younger than fourth grade. This was in part because I just couldn’t
manage them at all. But this year I was asked specifically to teach all the
kids, and the third grade turned out to be either my best or second best group,
depending on what kind of day the seventh grade was having. The note that
really made my eyes water came from Myra, the best student in the class—and also
one who is occasionally very difficult. There are days when, mid-class, perhaps
due to some small frustration, she slips into a silent fury, absolutely
refusing to cooperate or play along, speaking only to show that she knows the
answer to a question directed at another child. The envelope she made for me
was tiny, with three little plastic jewels down the flap. I think these were
culled from dinosaur stickers I gave out on Tuesday. The note inside, in
typical Myra fashion, didn’t say too much. But wrapped in the note was a small,
pink balloon. And that pink balloon may be the most touching, heart-breaking
present I’ve ever received.
And then there was the fifth grade. The fifth grade is
simply an awful class full of otherwise likeable children. The problem seems to
be that they really dislike each other. There is a general boys against girls
war, but there can also be nasty conflicts within those groups. They love to
tattle on each other, yell at each other, argue, but I’ll give them credit for
not hitting each other. Still, of the three classes I had last year, this one lagged
far behind the other two. This is perhaps more surprising because when I came
back in September, I didn’t feel that there was a clear difference between what
the fifth and sixth grades remembered from the year before. In essence, the
fifth grade is so focused on who’s doing what that they can hardly learn
anything, and this applies to all of their school work, not just English.
But it was these children who were writing and saying, “David,
no se vaya (David, don’t go).” They thanked me for teaching them English, they
apologized for their behavior, and they hugged me and told me that they wished
I could stay with them always. And this clutched at my heart, too, because I
also recognize how much these children need and appreciate my affection,
especially because they know they don’t treat me very well as a group. Again,
as individuals, they’re adorable. When they come to the library in the
afternoon, we chat, we laugh, I read them stories, and it’s clear that they
love me. In those moments, I can’t help but love them, too. And then comes the
next morning when we’re in school, and I can’t bear the 45 minutes we spend
together.
I suppose this issue of the children’s behavior leads
logically to what may be the most important thing I said yesterday, maybe the
most important thing I said in my two years here. I have always known, and complained,
that the only sort of discipline that parents use here is corporal punishment.
It is only recently that my too-innocent brain has grasped the idea that this
corporal punishment often goes beyond the bounds of what should be considered
appropriate discipline. And once the idea dawned on me that some of this
discipline should be called abuse, I seemed to see and hear of it with an
alarming frecuency. A couple of boys came to school with bruises on their
faces, a girl mentioned being whipped with an extension cord, a father came to
punish his child for injuring another kid, threw him to the ground, kicked him,
got his belt out and would have used that, too, if Clara and I hadn’t gotten in
the way and told him it was enough already. I had to do more first aid on that
child than the kid he accidentally hurt.
Since then, I have waited for some sort of opportunity to
speak to the parents about this. I did speak to the father who came to school a
couple of days later, but he just didn’t seem that receptive. But finally,
there was a padres de familia de la escuela meeting yesterday. And when they
thanked me, and I had a moment to thank them, I spoke to them about how much
their children long for their kindness, how necessary it is to talk to their
kids when they do wrong instead of hitting them for every silly kid thing that
they do, and how much it matters to me that they at least try to hold back the
next blow. Certainly, if I had another year here, I would try to form some kind
of parents’ group to develop some alternatives for getting what they want in
terms of their children’s behavior. And I had the satisfaction of seeing some
faces light up with recognition, an show some reaction to what I was saying. I
know it won’t last, but maybe a few kids will get off with a warning this week.
Maybe someone reading this will say, “Dave, kids in the U.S.
never get spanked anymore and they’re animals. Maybe a bit of what they’re
doing in Ecuador would help.” And I suppose that there’s some truth in this.
Many parents don’t spank they’re kids, but they don’t do anything to impose
limits, and they’re kids are no fun to be around. But the effect of constant
physical discipline is also awful. While I love the kids of Tolte, who have
many good qualities, I also feel that they’re sneaky, grabby, and,
paradoxically, lazy. Children in Tolte work very, very hard, often five or six
hours a day of hard farm work after school. But they do this because they don’t
feel they have any choice. When presented with school work, or any other task
not imposed by force, their instinct is simply not to do it. The sneakiness
come in when they confront rules, like my rule against eating in the library,
which I have explained is necessary to protect the books. The children almost
seem to feel a compulsion to eat in the library, because they so desperately
need to do what they want to do sometimes. As far as grabby, it seems to be a psychological
truism that kids are grabby or steal things when they feel they are short-changed
in other ways. And in the high school in Chunchi, are the kids from the
countryside, who are more frequently raised this way, the respectful, serious students?
No, they’re the kids who tear the school apart and are rude to the teachers,
reinforcing all the prejudices against the rural zone. So the next time someone
tells you how important it is to control their kids through hitting, ask them
what his or her kids are like when they’re out of the house.
My last adult English class did not fare well. The two high
school girls stopped coming during their final exams, and didn’t come back for
the last week. The two adults had urgent business in Riobamba, and although one
came each night on Monday and Tuesday, attendance at the last class was zero. I
don’t know if that reflects a lack of charisma on my part or a lack of
commitment on theirs, but I was sorry to see the class end that way. I am
confident that everyone learned something, especially the adults. If I had to
do it over again, I think I would insist that the class be made up of adults,
because the high school kids don’t have the time. But the ongoing struggle to maintain an adult
literacy class also demonstrates how difficult it can be to get adults to leave
their houses in the evenings as well.
But one of my adult students did have an eye-opening experience (one that may have opened my eyes, too). She was watching me do my oral final exam with one of the seventh graders, a good student but not my best. When we finished, the adult students said, "David, she speaks better than the high school kids in the night class." Yes, she does. When I leave, that ability is doomed to fade or disappear, but it hasn't been an empty experience.
I would like to mention the gift I was given in the last
school meeting, now that I’ve explained how I used it as an opportunity to get
up on a soap box. It was a folder of the kind that children in the U.S. use for
their book reports, containing 8 pages. Each page had a class photo, and a
message from each student. For first and second grades, the message was simply
their names. That’s all the writing they can do independently. But the comments
get more interesting, and the emotions more complex, as the pages turn to the
seventh grade. The last page contains two photos, one of Tolte, and one of the
train running on the Nariz del Diablo track. I wonder what I will think when I
look at it in the future—or even if I will look at it in the future. But right
now, it seems the most precious object I own.
Post-script: At the parents’ meeting yesterday, the idea of
finding some way to pay me to work in Tolte next year came up. Avanti offered a
50/50 split of my salary a couple of months back, an idea that didn’t seem to
have much appeal then. But perhaps the emotions roused by seeing me head for
the highway have shifted the balance. There is now some possibility that I
could return to Tolte. This might be
difficult, as I am fairly committed to starting anew in Cuenca. But I’m willing
to accept whatever offer the universe makes.
