Guatemala – A poor vision of what children are capable of doing

I visited a rural public school in the coast of Guatemala. I was greeted by a teacher who told me she was sorry I came in today because Tuesday is the day when she is in charge of the food shop (along with other teachers) to celebrate Children´s Day which was almost 2 months away from the day I visited.

Children were doing inadequate work for their plane of development, they were still treated as very young children. The activity was not engaging for most of the classroom, except for the manual work. This meant that the teacher had to control and boss the students around so that they would work. This was supposed to be an art project, but the teacher dictaded how each child should use their materials in order to form a specific animal. This left very little room for creativity.  

Many adults have the idea that children are only happy and can only have fun when they are playing soccer or outdoors on a playground. Actually, both children and adults benefit from doing meaningful work that is challenging enough for them to keep them engaged and concentrated for long periods of time (Flow). Doing meaningful work builds up a real sense of self esteem as by working more one improves and expands the limits to our actions, one knows what one is capable and what one is worth because by constant work we prove ourselves that we are capable of doing and achieving things. We only know we have the capacity to do something because we have done it before (Nathaniel Branden).

The problem that Guatemala faces is a very complex problem that has no quick fix, it is a cultural problem. To my eyes, the issue is rooted in the culture, that is, in people’s values and theories of themselves, others and the world where we live in.

However, I am positive about changes occurring. We´ve all seen older cultures move from violence and power into more peaceful ways of living (Pinker). People used to live in fortes, and now people can peacuefuly walk down the streets without fear of being attacked.

There is hope because human beings are learners. Whatever it is that we do now we acquired -learned- from our culture and surroundings. No matter how difficult, human beings can also unlearn and change old ways of thinking for new ones. We can make connections, analyze, and most importantly we can choose. Once we are exposed to a different view of the world, to different paradigms and ideas, we can choose to little by little reflect on and then change how we see the world and therefore how we act.
I certainly do this to a small scale in my daily interactions with people, but how can I escale this up? How can I share this with the world? How can I give people the opportunity to experience transformative education? How can I show them that there is an alternative?