My Latest Rant

Today when I met with my children's literacy group I had 3 newcomers.  Of those 3 children there were 2 that could not read.  No they were not 6 years old they were going into grade 3 and grade 4, a brother and sister team.  Not only could they not read, they did not know their alphabet.

Tonight I am angry.  Angry enough to pen a letter sent via email to the minister of Education.  You do not have to read it all but I am posting it here for the record.

NOTE:  I sent this and just checked my email and the email came back undeliverable.  That's Panama for you.  I will phone tomorrow and check the email and if all else fails I will send it pony express but I WILL send it...sigh

Update:  I found a new email address, a better one with her name on it.  I sent it off last night and it has not come back....we'll see what comes of it


Ministerio de Educacion
Panama
The Honorable Ing. Marcela Paredes de Vasquez:

It is with a very sad heart that I write this letter to you. I apologize that it is long but please read it carefully.

By way of introduction, my name is Rosalie Lillo and I am a Canadian.  Some years ago we purchased property near the town of Sortova in Chiriqui and we come here to escape the cold months of a Canadian winter.  Except for the garbage on the roads, we find Panama to be an enchanting place and the people very welcoming.

We live near the town of Sortova and the property borders a cluster of houses in which live the poorest of the poor in the area.  During our tenure here we have come to know these people, particularly the children.

What first alerted me to the problem of education here, that I would like to address in this letter, was the gardeners son Hormelis Saldana or as he is called by friends and family, Cholo.  Cholo was about 12 years old when we came and had not gone to school since the end of Grade 3.  I tried to get him back into school but there were no programs, at that late age, to accommodate him.  This young man is now 20 years old and is totally illiterate.  He does not even know his alphabet.  His sister taught him to sign his name.  He is a lovely engaging young man but is now condemned to remain in the league of the poorest of the poor for the rest of his life.  His cousin Santo Saldana who lives nearby, did not fare so well.  He is also illiterate having dropped out very early but he has been caught up in the web of drugs and alcohol so prevalent with people who have no hope and, as I understand, is known to engage in criminal activities to feed his habit.  I have since discovered what happened to Cholo is that by the end of grade one he did not know his alphabet.  By the end of grade 2 he still did not know his alphabet.  By grade 3 he had tuned out and by the end of grade 3 he had dropped out.  He is by no means stupid; he is however uneducated.

Then Cholo's younger sister struggled through school.  She repeated 2 grades but did manage to make it through grade 6 and she can read.  When it came time for coliego the father did not have enough money to send her so she stopped her education at the end of Grade 6.  I was shocked and told him that I would pay for her to go but he told me that it was too late last year to register her, even though it was only mid February.  I insisted that she had go the next year and he agreed to send her.  This year I was on top of things and saw to it that she got registered early enough to go.  He then informed me that she would not be allowed to attend colegio because, at 14 years of age having repeated 2 grades and missed a year of school, she was now too old and would not be allowed to go any further.  Her life is now stalled at grade 6 and she is doomed to carry on the family legacy of poverty.

Fast forward a few years to his little brother, Porfirio.  Porfirio also went to school in Sortova and by the end of his first year I discovered that he did not even know his alphabet.  He was on the same train as brother Cholo.  I begged his father to keep him back in grade one and I undertook, with the help of his older sister, to teach him the alphabet.  It was a struggle, but he succeeded. By the end of grade 2 he was beginning to be able to sound out simple words but lagged far behind where he should have been at that age.  Last year, however his mother hired a tutor who helped him after school every day and when I returned this winter he was off and running like a race horse.  His average was 4.2, he reads almost as well as his older sister who has finished grade 6 and he plays drums in a marching band.  He is self confident and he is very proud of himself.  They could not afford to pay this woman but I helped the family out and she got compensated.  He is anything but stupid, he is in fact proving to be quite bright and has a keen desire to learn now that he has some confidence.  I am hopeful that I can help to pull at least this one little soul out of the depths of poverty with education.

In light of this experience I have became acutely aware of the need for these children to have access to books.  How can you learn to read, how can you want to learn to read if you don't have access to books? And not just text books, I mean story books.  I am told that there are no children's books to borrow from a library here.  I don't know if there are any in the school library or if in fact the schools even have a library but the fact remains that these children do not have story books, nor do they seem to have access to any.  I then went out and sourced some affordable books which I purchased and I have started a literacy group with the local children.  They are so excited about this group and relish getting their turn to read aloud and show that they can do it.

I now have a dozen children who attend on a regular basis and we meet 2 to 3 times a week.  Following the reading we then either play volleyball or soccer, that is then followed by a play time with a garden hose.

When I started the group I had 2 children out of about 6 that could not read at all.  One is going into grade 4, the other into grade 7.  I am able to help one of the girls, the younger one, and she is making good progress but the older one is beyond my level of expertise and seems to have lost her desire to learn.  I marvel at how it is that a child could get as far as grade 7 or even grade 4 and not be able to read.  I know now that these children are the ones that have not yet dropped out like Cholo.

What has prompted me to write to you today however is the fact that this morning I had 3 newcomers to the group and of these 3 children 2 do not even know their alphabet, one going into grade 3 and the other into grade 4. And again I ask myself...HOW?...HOW can these children get to that level of school and not even know their ALPHABET?  And WHY is the phenomenon so prevalent here in Sortova?  This is NOT an isolated event.  Is the whole educational system in Panama so broken that children are being shoved from one grade to the next without having mastered such a basic task as learning their alphabet?  Is this a problem that is exclusive only to this area given the rate of poverty or is this a problem in all of Panama.  I ask myself, WHY are these children being robbed of their only tool to pull themselves out of the quagmire of poverty and what can we do about it, what can I do about it?  It breaks my heart to think that I can't help them all.  I can help a few but the problem is too pervasive to help them all.

I understand that you, as a minister,cannot fix anything if you are not aware that it is broken.  That is why I feel compelled to personally bring this matter to your attention.

So my question for you Senora Paredes is: What can their government do for them, these lost children?  Can the government supply that extra teacher to work with these older ones until they master their basics, to retrofit them so to speak?  Can the government supply an extra aide to work with the grade ones to make sure that they have mastered the basics before moving on.  Can the government fund a library of children's books so that the children are encouraged to want to read?

I respectfully await your reply.


Kindest regards,

Rosalie Lillo
6500-6803