Five Things I Learned in Peru

My trip to Peru last week as a study abroad experience with ECU was truly an experience that I will never forget. I learned so much about the culture and the people there and the struggles that people experience in trying to keep up with a modern world, especially in the field of education. So many of you have asked me about my trip, and I seem to think of something new each time I answer the question. So here's a list of five things I learned in Peru:

1. Poverty is relative to where you are. So many people in the cities of Lima and Cusco live in conditions that we could never imagine for ourselves. Homes without heat or air conditioning are the norm for middle-class families with good jobs. Sanitation is an ongoing problem everywhere except in tourist areas. Lower class families have "apartments" with tin roofs, missing windows and no running water. And this is in the cities, where it is best. Public school teachers there earn about $600 (US money) a month and that is double the minimum wage. A family of four can probably survive the month on that.

2. They have common problems with us. In regards to the advancement of education, they seem to share common problems with the southeastern United States. While we know where jobs and the future of employment are headed, we also find ourselves holding on to many outdated things in our schools as a last-ditch effort of preserving our way of life. In Cusco, schools are forced to teach the indigenous language of Quechua.  If you speak to the students, they are eager to learn English and other world languages (and most speak at least two languages) and want to study outside of Peru to experience the world around them. Meanwhile, the ones that control schools and curriculums speak one language and have a more narrow view of what students should learn. We are probably guilty of the same.

3. We could learn some things from their university systems. Peru offers free college to students after high school. (They finish high school at 16 there). While this offer is limited to a certain number of students with high enough test scores, it does provide access to thousands of students each year. There are private college offerings as well. Some families that can afford private schools prefer it because they feel that the school is superior to the public option, however in most cases, the public college is the best educational option. What I found unique was that the colleges only offer degree programs that relate to jobs that are central to the economy of Peru. There are no communications degrees or liberal arts programs that are not connected with an industry. Simply put, college education equals jobs.


4. Children can learn whatever you teach them. One of the most impactful experiences I had was visiting an after school program for young children whose families work on the streets. It provides them with a place to be and someone to feed them and help with homework. In this place, there is no running water, so when it was time to clean up from snack time, I saw children walk to a five-gallon bucket and wash their dishes and then rinse them in a second bucket. Each child did this without being prompted and then put their dishes away. Also, schools in Peru are mandated to have one psychologist for student mental health needs for every 500 students. This is dramatically more than what we provide for students and you can tell it in how students interact. While their school curriculums may be behind ours, they are beating us in this arena, and it's our own fault.

5. Experiences change people. While I saw this trip as a unique opportunity to see the world as a part of my university experience, it quickly became something that changed my outlook on the world and my profession. A person's experiences change how they view the world around them and the opinions they have about others. As educators of one of the richest and most advanced nations that has ever existed, we owe it to our students to provide them with experiences that cause them to think globally and act locally. While we may not be able to take students on foreign excursions, we can expose them to the world around us in so many ways. We need to do more of that.