There are so many things I love about living in Monteverde. Many have to do with adventuring outdoors in semi-natural surroundings (much of the forest around our house is second growth, but still very lush), learning about the lives of other people here, and living a more simple life.
Yesterday morning, we had a group of nine hiking through some trails at a neighbor's house across the street. Ages ranged from four to eighty-seven and to give you an idea of its challenge level, we had to take the dogs back home because John the elder of the group was worried they would fall into the ravine or pull someone with them. We ventured down to a waterfall, admired a massive strangler fig tree and a huge thirty five year old walnut tree that would take over one hundred years to attain the same size in Illinois. In future blogs, we will have to write about the strangler fig tree and about John's move to Monteverde in 1971.
As we started the hike, someone mentioned black friday and shopping. It literally brought a strange chill as I thought about sitting in a car attempting to navigate through the Best Buy parking lot and being continually bombarded with advertisements from every direction. I do not miss the gauntlet of commercialism that tells me "buy this, take your kids here, your life will improve if you have this, eat here, drink this, wear that, he can't be a man 'cause' he doesn't smoke the same cigarette as me," and on and on.
We do not have a TV, a car or radio. Yes, we do have internet and do need to buy things, but shopping is not part of the culture in this community. There are some signs with arrows pointing to a point of interest and most of the signs for restaurants and hotels are small and simple. There is one sign for the Super Compro along the road - its seems out of place and of course there are the two vehicles that occasionally drive by blasting commercials from their rooftop speakers. One driver we know, Ricky always stops and waves "Pura Vida", cheerfully accepts guayvas from the boys and lets the boys speak into his microphone! In general, consumerism is not a major part of people's lives here.
On a related note, I faced a challenge in the 7/8th grade classroom this week when I introduced a method for presenting an animal species. I instructed them to create a magazine, TV, or radio advertisement 1) as a vehicle to tell the audience about the animal while 2) encouraging preservation of its habitat and 3) discouraging the construction of a shopping mall that could endanger the species. The kids understood their animal and the concepts of habitat preservation and endangerment, but stumbled with the advertisement part. When I presented a task like this in Chicago, the students would run with it and I would be impressed with the creative juices, but these kids just did not understand advertising the way the Chicago kids do. I realized, after playing a TV commercial actor and showing magazine ads that this would be difficult. I asked, too late, who had experience with creating an advertisement, and two students raised hands. They presented their animals on tuesday, with a varying degree of fanfare!
Oh no! Children in this community will have a disadvantage when competing for that marketing executive job after college! These students have plenty of talent and skills that I would not find in a Chicago classroom (blog about that soon). I think about the meaning of education: Are we training our child to be a good worker? Or, are encouraging our child to be a learner for the sake of learning. Is education a combination of these or something completely different? Depending on the culture, does the purpose of education vary from neighborhood to neighborhood? and country to country? We are part of our culture.
Posted are some pics from yesterday's hike and of local advertisers. Signed M.
No comments:
Post a Comment