On the way home from our second day of service work we gave some of the local teachers a ride on our bus and dropped them off half way home. I discovered that they were going to participate in a demonstration for teachers in Peru, but more specifically, a demonstration of teachers in the shanty town. It turns out that the teachers have not been paid for three months. What seemed so odd to me was that most schools in the shanty towns were built by, paid for and run by community members with minimal, if any financial help from the government. It seems to me that when the economy gets a bit rough, the poor are the first to be pushed aside; education funds being the first to be withheld. Out of sight, out of mind seems to be the attitude of the Peruvian government toward the poor. All the studying and reading in the world could not have brought this into perspective like witnessing it first hand in the slums of Lima.
Jason Melton: BA Political Science & Speech Communication
It is a little discouraging to know that education funds are looked as a secondary need. How are the children of Peru suppose to grow and better themselves with out the stable foundations of educaton. I will never take my education for granted again.
ReplyDelete