The Development of a People

One of the chief frustrations of working with campesinos (country folk) is their overall lack of critical thinking skills that I regarded as common sense, basic for survival. In January I took a woman from my community to a Peace Corps seminar on project management and leadership. Among the topics addressed were identifying personal values, using schedules, prioritizing, organizing, and identifying and achieving of goals. As basic and necessary as these topics are, they were foreign and challenging for almost all the Panamanians present. As one frustrated volunteer said, ¨It feels like we are teaching them how to be adults.¨
I myself was disillusioned as my community member failed to grasp simple concepts in spite of my lengthy attempts to help. She tended to wander into vague generalities and couldn´t form concrete and specific ideas. While identifying goals for our conservation group, she always jumped to the big picture– the vague and idealistic dream. Till the end she couldn´t understand the component parts, or the concrete and specific goals, that must be identified and achieved one–by–one to make dream a reality.
Another volunteer and I were left exasperated after we spent over an hour with Panamanians preparing a speech, and its final delivery was at best impromptu, if not totally chaotic. They couldn´t organize their thoughts, failed to follow an assigned outline, and wandered off topic frequently. Although I am sure the seminar helped in little ways, I was left wondering whether these skills would be put into practice or remain in print, on papers destined for kindling. Although she eagerly filled out her provided yearly planner with such tasks as ¨prepare lunch¨and ¨wash clothes,¨ it seemed those would be the first and last items 2009 would ever see.
This is not, of course, the first time I had noticed such deficiencies in these basic life skills. The vast majority of problems within our conservation group are due to failures in organization, planning, and a lack of critically thinking things through. Often forgetting to address present problems, the members jump to future vague pursuits without the necessary forethought, and consequently add to the mountain of issues they already face. Begun without the security of a written contract, our viveros now house over 3,000 trees that were not sold to hydroelectric companies as promised, and can now only grow roots into the ground, becoming more unfit for even reforestation. Problems accumulated so quietly and stealthily that the livelyhood of the vivero is under question.
At the heart of this deficiency of skills is both the lack of education and the overwhelming failure of the Panamanian educational system. Most campesinos do not continue schooling past primary (elementary) school, as I learned was true of my community member. High school, or colegio, is for those lucky enough to have families that value education and can bear the additional financial burden. Even then, colegio is largely vocational and focused on single–subject areas, and students do not develop much for critical thinking. University is for the ambitious who leave only to return to their hometowns when necessity dictates.
But a high school or university degree does not guarantee the development of active thinking abilities, as I am slowly learning. Rather, education here is based on passive thinking–memorization and regurgitation. What is written on the board is to be copied on paper and in memory, and certainly not questioned. Things are as they are because it is so, and rarely is the crucial ¨why¨addressed. As I clumsily attempted in broken Spanish to explain simple addition to one girl, I quickly discovered she had merely copied the problems from the board and the teacher never explained the process or reason behind it. Her uninterest was evident in her vacantly wandering eyes, for she didn´t care to focus, and was only waiting for me to arrive at the easily memorizable answer. If the why and how components of concepts and ideas were actually valued in school, these children might grow up understanding the processes and reason behind what is otherwise dismissed ¨because it is so.¨ Even then, such improvements risk falling into the same vicious cycle of passive memorization and recitation: the change must be more radical.
The failures of the Panamanian educational system are evident even in its supposed success stories. There were two university–educated Panamanian women at our seminar who were quite knowledgable of the subjects at hand. Yet, at times, they were stumped by simple concepts and acted on whims and inclinations without addressing the ramifications of their decisions.
Blame for the vivero´s undesirable sitation lies more heavily on the government agencies than group members themselves. Panamanians, like most Latin Americans, are very title–conscious, and brandish their university–obtained titles whenever opportunity affords. Government agencies staff a fair share of university graduates, but even these elite seem just as prone to make the same mistakes as their less–educated counterparts. Personal observation has lead me to conclude that most government–initiated projects are quick–fixes that produce short–term benefits, but lack long–term forethought and planning.
ANAM, the Panamanian version of our EPA, initiated the vivero project in my community and in numerous others in the area. They overextended, failed to obtain contracts amd follow–through, failed to train participants, and have consequently left most promises unfulfilled. All of this appears to be due to an egregious lack of forethought. All volunteers were told during training that government agencies most desired volunteers to train Panamanians in leadership and resource utilization (especially how to work with agencies). Why this is not approached in school, and why I should encourage Panamanians to rely on agency workers who themselves lack these basic skills, is beyond me.
It is commonly noted that the American educational system is heavily entrenched in the notion of independent and critical thought. While only its flaws and shortcomings were ever evident to me as a student, as an adult I respect its strengths and those flaws that seem so monumental at one time now pale in comparison to the weaknesses of third–world education. Once a student´s burden but now an adult´s blessing, the development of active thinking serves one in more ways than can be illustrated or demonstrated by an exam in class. I am thankful for having been asked ¨why do you think this is so¨and ¨what would you do,¨ instead of being thrown an answer and directed to commit it to memory. Being only a year out of college, the details and facts I memorized are already fading out of memory, but the concepts and method of thought remains strong. Who would have thought (for I certainly hadn´t), that by explaining why two plus two equals four, and then asking me how I would approach a two–digit summation, my elementary school teacher was preparing me for more than just the next grade but for the next stage of life– adulthood.
While waiting for lunch at the seminar, I was struck by the comment of a weary volunteer. A transfer from Bolivia, she was amazed at how so small a nation (three million people) with relative wealth (from the canal) just ¨couldn´t get it together.¨ After witnessing the failure of agencies and community members, I had to agree. It appears to me that the only sustainable means of doing so would require a complete overhaul of the current educational system and gradual introduction of active and critical thinking skills. The roots of the problem lie deep, for how you are taught molds how you think, and how you think shapes how you live. If Panama is to develop as a nation, it must first develop as a people – for a nation is only as developed as its people.