7 July 2009
Classes began on Monday with “pre-schoolers,” but in reality, all ages showed up. Children are not required to attend school until the age of 7 in Costa Rica, and they are allowed to quit at 12! What’s more, they attend school for 3 hours per day only, with a morning group and an afternoon group in order to minimize the available space and maximize the teacher’s time. So a given teacher might teach 7 year-olds in the mornings and 12 year-olds in the afternoons. Like most everything else, there is a very relaxed attitude in Costa Rica about education! But children are children the world over, and except for the language, I saw little differences from American children and Costa Rican children insofar as their spirits, their attitudes, and their desire to learn. They already knew numbers 1-10 in English, and all the colors. They practiced printing the English alphabet in upper and lower case and answered simple questions about “how many” and “what color.” They started to get antsy, so w...