A mild case of culture shock

My orientation has been completed, winter break is over and classes here in Chile have now resumed. After seeing the 10 English classes in the school where I work, only one thing seems certain: this is going to be a challenge. As part of the new initiative, the Ministry of Education now requires every student from fifth grade on up in Chile to take English class, which is extraordinarily young for Latin America. The school where I am teaching is quite low on resources, so they have neither the staff nor the space to go above the official requirements -- which is precisely why I am here.

My school has trouble even meeting the minimum threshold. Though fifth- and sixth-graders are supposed to have two hours of English instruction a week and seventh- and eigth-graders three, an "hour" of classroom instruction here is typically only 45 minutes long. The older kids have two class periods a week, while the younger ones only see the English teacher once a week for 90 minutes.

Things don't get much easier when you do get the students in the classroom. Class sizes vary from 35 to 45 students, which can make for a carnival-like atmosphere. After observing a few classes here, my classes at Scott City High School seem, in retrospect, to be meditation sessions in comparison. But many of my fellow volunteers who have spent time in other Latin American countries tell me that Chile's classes are among the most tranquil.

Other recent thoughts:

I continue to be reminded of how intertwined language and culture are. The first English class I observed here provides a good example. The teacher instructed her students to describe the person next to them using a few adjectives that she wrote on the board. The first pair of adjectives was "fat/thin." I couldn't help but imagine the angry phone calls that an American teacher would get if he or she invited students to describe their classmates as fat.

But in Chile (and, from what I understand, in Latin America in general), the adjective "fat" just doesn't have the same kind of negative connation. Husbands and wives even call each other and their children gordito/a -- which means "little fat one" -- as a term of affection here.

The second pair of adjectives that the teacher wrote on the board surprised me even more: "white/colored" for skin color. When pressed by some students that the person sitting next to them was neither, she added "rather colored."

That would never happen in the United States; this simple language exercise exposes a deep cultural and historical difference. Chile has just never had the problems with racism that America has. Although I couldn't discern any real difference among most of them, students had no problem applying the labels white, colored and rather colored to each other.

Justin Cox, a graduate of Scott City High School and Washington University, is teaching English in Chile. He is writing a weekly column during his six-month stay.