My time as Director of the Compassion International program really gave me the ability to see the stark differences between the public schools and the bilingual school at the WGO ranch. What did I learn? In the Honduran public schools, a teacher can have as many as 60-80 children per classroom. Especially in the rural schools, there may be only one teacher with 3-6 grades. The students are required to pay for their uniforms, school supplies, and books. Although Honduran law requires education for all children, many families cannot afford to send all their children. They may send one or two children to school, and the others stay home. Or, they may send children to school for a couple of years to learn some basics, and then when the next child reaches the age to enter 1st grade, the older child drops out so the younger can then attend.
It is not uncommon for school to be canceled without notice. If a teacher is absent due to sickness or a meeting, the children do not know school is canceled until they arrive. Many times the teachers will get a phone call the night before a meeting, letting them know they have to report to the district meeting the next day instead of class. If one teacher is absent but the students have other teachers during the day, there is no substitute. The students remain unsupervised during that class period until it is time to go to the next class. Many times the teachers will not show up because they are involved in a strike, fighting to get their overdue paychecks because the government failed to pay them.
Student absences are not reported, either. I know of one situation in which a youth's caregivers were at the school one day and the teacher mentioned that the student had not been at school for two weeks. The caregivers had no idea, because the school never notified them. They believed the youth had been at school the whole time, and had no idea where the child was or what he was doing.
Besides the problems with class size and poor attendance, the teachers use antiquated teaching methods. Classwork typically consists of the students copying pages from a textbook into their notebook. The homework is to then memorize paragraphs from the pages that they copied in class, or write a "summary," (which really ended up being re-copying the paragraphs with the most important information.) Another typical homework assignment is to make an "album." This was the assignment that most kids at the Compassion site needed assistance with because of their lack of access to the internet. The teacher will assign a topic that the students have to "research" on the internet. The student finds the information, prints it, then cuts and pastes the exact information onto a piece of white bond paper. They then have to find, print, cut, and paste 4-5 pictures to go with the information. Most of the time the students do not even read the paragraph of information, and the homework is graded on the neatness of how it looks. After helping a Compassion child get their information for the assignment, I would ask what they learned from the information. Almost every time the child would just shrug his/her shoulders, and have no idea what the information stated.
Teachers will assign Kindergartners and First Graders hours and hours of homework. Typically they are required to draw figures on a page that supposedly helps with handwriting. However, these little kids will have to complete 5-10 pages per night in these books, or be assigned 30-50 pages due by the end of the week.
Another issue I saw was that the students are only allowed to complete math problems one way. I can't tell you how many times I would be tutoring a child, and show them a shortcut for doing a math problem. The student would master it, but when they turned their work in, the teacher would mark the problems wrong, even though the answers were correct, because he/she didn't understand how the student got the answer, and it wasn't done in the exact steps shown in the textbook.
In order to do the homework the students needed to have the books, but they could not afford them. So, they would find a friend who had the book, or each friend would buy just one book in one subject area, then the others would photocopy the pages they needed at the local copy shop, because they could get copies at about 5 cents per page. It was easier for them to get 5 cents every day then pay $10-$20 per book all at once.
When I have visited public schools, what I have found every single time is pure chaos. The teacher will be ignoring kids who are horsing around, and sometimes fighting, while attending to a few at her desk. Recess at the public schools are completely unsupervised. Kids are running around everywhere, with adults no where to be found. Some students leave the building to go to the local pulperia, or house store, to buy snacks and sodas, without anyone knowing they have left and if they will come back.
I had one youth at the Compassion program who uses a wheelchair. She had been rejected from registering at her local school. When I went with her to confront the principal about it, he said that there was no room for her because the classes were already spilling out the door, and he did not have staff to assist her, even though we told him several times that she did not need assistance. After I argued with the principal about the law and her right to attend, he simply shrugged his shoulders, said there was nothing he could do, and she had to go to a private school for youth with disabilities, assisted by the Compassion program.
That is what is called education in the public schools of Honduras.
Now I will say that there are private schools in Honduras, some of which are excellent. However, in order to attend, the family has to have enough money to pay the monthly tuition. The families that I am targeting could never afford to send their children to private school. Thus, the need for a different solution - Christian Life Academy.
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