Assigment 1

Well, first of all the context. The school that I went to was “Reino de Suecia” in Playa Ancha. I have to say that from the very beginning the whole school caught my attention for several issues, but lets talk about one in special. If I remember well, It was my second visit to that school, and I was selected to attend to 5th grade classes. It was a really poor school, with students of high social vulnerability, and for the sake of objectivity Im not going to give more detaills. In the classroom, apart from the students and myself, there were two more persons, the teacher and another student doing her last VISE. So as you can see, I was the only male between these two females. So, one day we were getting back from a break and I was chatting with this girl, and suddenly a student came by and spitted on her foot. Of course my reaction was immediate, and I had a little chat with this boy about respect and some other things. But to my surprise he was not the only one that treated female teachers like that, most of the students refer to them with swearwords but they did not do that with me. These situation, repeated over and over again and it led me to think about lots of issues and also lots of questions. For example, Why I dont receive the same treat from students?, Whats the image that these students have of females?, why if students are taught at school to treat women as equals, they dont have a good response to it?. After some time visiting this kids, I started to know a little bit more of them, and some questions started to be answered. The first question was answered easily, I didnt get the same treat as females teachers just for the fact that Im a man, and this led me to the second question. Chatting with their teachers I knew that most of the students mothers were in jail, or they were prostitutes, and some others were battered by their husbands. So they just repeated the same behaviour that they see in their own houses. And the third question is answered really easy after knowing the two past questions. Its in my opinion a problem of the whole society that education hasnt been able to resolve. After students leave school each day, they come back to their reality, to steal, to live on their own sometimes, and as this paper is about, to see the same disrespectful treat to females around them, so even if they are taught at school, in their reality there is no support to acquire the principles given at school.

Rodrigo Cerda Morales