"Teaching" and "Helping" by Jim Cooper

It was assigned to read two chapters from the book Down on the Island by Jim Cooper. In the first one, "Teaching", Cooper expresses his point of view about the syllabus for the English class he was teaching at the Colegio located in Mayagüez. He noticed how much difficult was for the students to learn English because most of them didn't know it very well and therefore they didn't understand the readings they had to do at first. After he visited some public schools, he also noticed some of the teachers were having trouble to speak English. Cooper proposed a syllabus which included strictly language courses to the freshman and short stories and novels to the sophomore students. He would loved to stated that the language program he set up solved the student's language problems, but it didn't at all.

In the second chapter, "Helping", Cooper expresses his point of view about a method implemented by the students from our island. This method consisted of 'helping throughout cheating'. How this can be possible? Puerto Ricans, as Jim Cooper demonstrated, are the most hospitable people in the world and they tend to do whatever they can in order to help others. Many of the students seek for an extra help in their classmates, but this attitude was not only in their everyday work but during the time they were taking exams too. However, students learn how they must behave in the school since they are kids at the primary levels. All I want to say with this statement is that students have been taught since their primary levels to be cooperative with each other.

"When I started asking students why they were looking at another student's paper during an exam, they replied with no embarrassment: because I don't know the answer, and maybe he does. If I asked the other student why he let him look at his paper, I got some such answer as: but I'm just trying to help him. He's my friend."

We all know that this kind of help is actually cheating, but the students didn't realize it. It is also worrying that Cooper stated teachers also promote the cheating attitude. I think we must do everything possible to earn our grade by our own effort; not at the expense of others. Students should help them, but in a good way working on cooperative teaching or learning, but they should not cheat. I'm against it.

Reaction to "A Small Place" by Jamaica Kincaid

Jamaica Kincaid reveals her experience under the English colonialism and her thoughts about the tourists who visit Antigua. I notices her voice as one mix of feelings: sadness, nostalgia, contempt, and so on. Kincaid talks as an insider of her country; as an expert of it. But from her expert point of view, she classifies the tourists as "an ugly human being". Are the tourists "ugly human beings" just for being tourists? Here is when the author expresses contempt from the tourists.

"An ugly thing, that is what you are when you become a tourist, an ugly, empty thing, a stupid thing, a piece of rubbish pausing here to gaze at this and taste that, and it will never occur to you that the people who inhabit the place in which you have just paused cannot stand you [...]"

Roberts (2008) states that the notion of identity in human society is based on two fundamental factors: the perception of sameness/ difference and instinctiveness of man to be a social being. The perception of sameness/difference implies that those who are perceived as different are treated different. Kincaid expresses Roberts statement of this sameness/difference perception when she says:

"[...] that behind their closed doors they laugh at your strangeness (you do not look the way they look); the physical sight of you does not please them; you have bad manners (it is their custom to eat their food with their hands; you try eating their way, you look silly; you try eating the way you always eat, you look silly); they do not like the way you speak (you have an accent); they collapse helpless from laughter, mimicking the way they imagine you must look as you carry out some everyday bodily function."

It's all about culture. As I stated in one of my last posts, culture is "that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society." (Tylor, 1871). But culture can be also modify throughout the years and be in constant changes since there are countries which are actually colonies from other countries. Kincaid expresses how she felt living under the English colonialism and how the racism and poverty were noticeable.

That political state Kincaid is narrating us from Antigua let me think and compare it with our Puerto Rican history and political state. Puerto Rico have been since under the power of Spain through the American power nowadays. We have been in constant changes and adaptations since the Spanish until the American colonialism. We have incorporated to our culture many American aspects or festivities. We celebrate their holidays as if it were ours. We introduce a lot of English language to our vocabulary as well as we wrongly translate many English words to Spanish...we have created a 'Spanglish' vocabulary. However, instead we can talk English we have an accent. As Peter Roberts says, "language can sharply distinguish between insider and outsider through difference in accent, idiom structure and word". Therefore, we will always be outsiders in another country with a little knowledge of an insider.