Educación en Nicaragua

Some of the students here have had the opportunity to have an hour long discussion with Dr. Skar during the afternoon. We are asked to read the local newspapers and choose articles that are of interest to us. Several students chose articles that are related to the education system and lack of resources in the schools.

One article cited a statistic that said that 60% of the schools lack sanitary bathrooms and drinkable water. Coming from the U.S., that statistic is astounding. We take it for granted that when we go to school, we will be able to use the toilets and have a drink of water. At the school I am working at, there are two faucets of running water outside of the classrooms, which I understand that 60% of the schools must not have. However, the bathrooms are simply latrines, four stalls with toilets that give way to nothing but holes in the ground. That is certainly not sanitary and on top of that there is no soap for the children to wash their hands with when they are done. Then they go and have snack time, for which they must bring their own bowl and fork from home. I have seen children that forget forks eat their rice and beans with their bare hands. Something that has surprised me and seems very positive is that the children are gauranteed to have a meal during school. The teacher or school (I haven´t had a chance to ask which one it is) provides uncooked rice and beans, and the children take turns bringing it home for their parents to cook it. They then return with the cooked meal to share with the class the following day.

Another article I read said that 235,000 children in Nicaragua are working selling food on the side of the streets, working in mines or coffee plantations. The kids may possibly go to school in the morning and then work in the afternoon. However, these kids are too exhausted by the end of the day to do their homework and continually fall behind in school. It is not a choice for these children, they are sent to work by their parents to help support the family. Some parents remove their children from school so that they can work full time. It made me wonder, why would they do that to their children, why would they limit their child´s opportunities so drastically? However in Nicaragua, even if a person finishes highschool and goes on to get a university diploma, there is still no gaurantee that they will get a job and have a successful carreer. Jobs are so scarce that there is no incentive to continue with a formal education, what is the point? Most families here make $2 per day and need to support a family with those funds. Mind you, that´s not $2 per person per day, that´s $2 per family. Teachers make around $100 per month, and that is one of the most highly respected fields.

There are so many children in the classrooms and at first I thought to myself, ¨Wow! They really need to hire some more teachers.¨ But I´ve come to realize, they can´t hire more teachers. When the government can´t even pay one teacher a decent salary, how are they going to hire two? A friend of mine who works in another classroom said that her class is supposed to have 40 children, but on a given day there are around 18. One may think, well why don´t they all come to school? We all assume that if a child doesn´t go to school, their parents will yell at them, the school will check up on them, or the truency officer will come to talk to the parents. However, as I just stated above, some parents purposefully take their children out of schools. Others may not have faith in the educational system, and others may just not care. And there will be no police officer coming to the house. There is currently no law that demands that children attend school. In fact, they need to pay to go to school, which is another reason why there is such low attendance.

A law is currently being proposed that will obligate children to attend primary school and to make this schooling free. If they don´t go, the police will check up on them and enforce it. That may be feasible in the U.S., but I really doubt there are enough police officers to check up on that many kids, especially when half of them don´t show up. And even if they do all go, with 40 kids for one teacher, not much can be accomplished. Even now with around 20 kids, half of them don´t recieve the attention they need, imagine if that number were doubled!

Dr. Skar brought up a good point during this discussion, why are the only volunteers the only ones lending a hand in these schools? With low employment rates, surely there are people sitting around their house all day that at least know the alfabet. Why aren´t they going to the schools? My mom here in Nicaragua doesn´t have a job. Neither does her daughter. Neither do many of the other family members of students here in Nicaragua. Why isn´t there that drive to help the youth here in Nicaragua? Why are foreigners coming here to help when the locals don´t even seem to care? Maybe it is because they have become so dependent of the non-governmental organizations´help that the Nicaraguans don´t think they have to. Why isn´t there that will for change like there was during the Sandinista Revolution? They see the daily conditions themselves and their neighbors live in and yet don´t seem to make an effort to change the current situation. Personally, I don´t have an answer. I don´t know. I don´t know what has to happen to make people take a stand for what they believe in.