MH_Stevens - 10-30-2005 at 12:57 PM
An ex-pat who is a missionary and lives in Vincente Guerrero told my wife and I that if you have children who need to go to school in Mexico it is
better to live in a town with an orphanage. She did not say that the children should go to the orphanage school but she may have meant that. I was
slow on the uptake because I did not ask her why she thought that. What, if any, is the logic to this? Do any of you Nomads have school age children
in Mexico?
Mike S
bajalera - 10-30-2005 at 01:49 PM
My grand-daughter is a third grader in public school in La Paz, but I don't know squat about the orphanage suggestion.
MH_Stevens - 10-30-2005 at 03:02 PM
Bajalera: Any comments on the school system?
bajalera - 11-2-2005 at 10:36 AM
MH--Mostly I don't pay much attention to what's going on at schools, but on a recent visit noticed that a second-grader granddaughter in Santa Maria,
CA was doing homework that required rounding numbers off to the nearest 5 or 10. Later, back in La Paz, the third-grader's homework involved counting
from 2000 to 2200 by threes. [Both girls are bilingual, but go to public schools using either English or Spanish.]
It really seems to me that rounding off and counting by threes are ancillary skills that could well be postponed, and the primary years should
concentrate on basic math. But I don't know what conclusion could be drawn from these two examples, except maybe that Mexican schools are either
keeping up with, or sinking down to, the U.S. level.
Last week the La Paz girl brought home a test booklet labeled "Historia, Geografia y Civismo," which was several cuts above anything I've ever seen in
the U.S. There were a lot of questions--some of which I couldn't answer--but she missed only two, so I'd say that Mexican schools are doing a very
good job of teaching Social Studies.
Lera
MH_Stevens - 11-2-2005 at 11:44 AM
How I agree so much about what you say on school work that could be postponed. My 11 year-old daughter writes and does math like I did not do until I
was 14 (yet I go a doctorate), but she can't sing, they have no band, she can't dance, she can't play games, etc. etc. It's like the man doesn't want
our kids to "feel" anymore, just work his machines. This is one reason I live, as much as I can, out of the system, and hence my interest in BC.