Greetings, everyone

The Imposibility of Distance Education in a Country Ruined by Corrupt Oppression

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Way before the world was hit by Covid-19, Venezuela had already received the punches equivalent to 10 pandemics. Out current political situation is so messed up I have decided not to post about it directly (it is pointless to try to understand what is going on, let alone explain to someone else). Our economy is just going worse, now that the government has dollarized the prize of gas (0.50 cents per liter). The average person makes $4 a month, but filling your tank will cost you about $40 (go figure). Our health system is as bad as ever, even though the government's propaganda machine has sold the idea that we were better prepared to face Covid-19 than any other country in the world (as proven by the unbelievably low number of possitive cases and deaths). However, I'd like to take some minutes of your time to vent about an issue that, as an educator, affects me deeply. Our educational system was already failing our youth; now that teaching is being done remote, we are facing an unprecedented disaster.

In the last weeks, I have been investing more time than I can afford to helping my kids and some friends' and relatives' fulfill their school assigments. The map that illustrates this post is just one example. One my daughters, who is on 7th Grade was asked to draw by hand a Mapa Mundi showing every country in the world and their capital cities and also showing the Covid-19 stats with emphasis on the most affected countries. Don't get me started on the English and Spanish assignments (I just finished one homework for a HS senior that took me three days to complete).

Homework used to be tasks that we were not able to finish at school for lack of time, but which with the teacher's instructions, class notes, textbooks, or just enough time we were able to fulfil on our own. The same could be said about mid-term and final projects. However, in Venezuela absurdly high expectations were created around the idea that we were a country like any other and that distant learning could be achieved with the efficiency of the Japanese, the Finns, or whoever is doing great things for their kids' education.

The problem is complex and we can't pinpoint one single culprit. On the one hand, our children have gone lazy, very lazy; that can't be denied. This has partly been because of their parents. Parents in their 20s and 30s made it customary that homework was for them, not for the kids to do. They are the ones who meet in groups, devide sections of group projects and work on every detail while their kids play or watch TV. That I disapprove.

On the other hand, we have teachers who, for different reasons, have misunderstood or twisted the prupose of their profession. They demand from their students knowledge and skills they have not given them or help them obtain or develop. They have reversed the old banking system pedagogy that considered students as empty vessels that had to be filled with the teacher's unquestionable knowledge. Now many teachers do not even know the subject they teach (one of the legacies of the revolution), but they demand impossible things from students through grand assignments usually expressed in cryptic language neither students nor parents can understand.

And that's where I get the calls from many friends whose children are laboring (pariendo, as we say in Venezuelan Spanish) to lift what has now become a burden off their shoulders, to help them pass a class, so that they can just forget about the knowldge or skills they never got the chance to acquire.

Add to that all the technological limitations we have now that sent us back to colonial times, when kids had to walk miles to attend the only one-room school in their area and most of the time could not afford even a pencil. Most children do not have smart phones or computers, let alone internet service. In some cases they do not even have stable electricity. Many regions have regular blackouts that last anything between 2 and 12 hours. Basic materials/supplies for some assignment, like a bond paper sheet, can be so expensive that we have to find used sheets of letter-size paper, glue them together, like I did for the map above, and work from there.

And yet, many teachers spent the last three months asking kids to perform not above their intellectual capacities, but above their material possibilities. They just followed the orders they were given and they were only interested in fulfilling their part of the deal. They did not care whether or not the children did the work themselves. In all honesty, they were fully aware of the fact that most homework was being done by people like me. They have been granting grades that will make children happy, regardless of the effort they put or the learning they got.

Under different circumstances, I know they could have figured something else out. They could have found ways to make sure that meaningful learnign was achieved, but given the mess we got, I don't know if I can responsibly question the teachers without feling guilty for not finding a solution to this dilemma myself. In any case, our children are the ones losing here while politicians present wonderful results in their press conferences (which some people around the world actually believe!), in neatly and fully equipped conference rooms that give the impression that we belong to the so-called first world. Well, our politicians and military do live first-world lives. They have stolen so much money, they could not care less about any sanction imposed by the US or any international community.

In the meantime, I'll make sure my daughter learns some Geography. She may not know how to draw a map this complex, but she can surely learn to appreciate the value of the information contained in it. I told her I was able to help her with this map because back in the day you could not graduate from elementary school if you did not know world geography,and that involved drawing these damn maps.

Thanks for your time