Ugh! California!

Let me tell you about something that has been a thorn in my craw for the last couple of weeks. In each of the classrooms, there is a bookshelf of neglected, irrelevant textbooks and half complete sets of encyclopedias that have either been donated by Belizean book companies or well-meaning folks from the States. How do I know the books are neglected? Well, first off, we never use them. More graphically, though, I got one of the encyclopedias out one day to try to find Korea in a map to show my class and was surprised to find a very prosperous ant colony had decided to make up camp within the cover. Within seconds, there were ants everywhere, quite perturbed that someone had had the gall to tear the roof off their home. Good luck trying to refinance now. How do I know that some of the books are from the States (and here’s the part where I get to my point)? One of the books on the shelf was my old 4^th grade California social studies textbook, “Oh, California” (and here’s the part where I tell you how I really feel)! What the hell?! Why would anyone ANYONE think that it was a good idea to send a California history textbook down to Punta Gorda, Belize? When would a Belizean fourteen year old ever have to or want to know about the history of missions and railroads in 19^th century California? I try to justify it in my head by thinking that maybe it could teach the kids about similar struggles of colonialism, but the colonial experience was completely different in both places. Belize never had missions, California was rarely neglected by whoever controlled it, and Belize never had an industrial revolution or at least not to the extent of California. I still wonder how this book got here. If it was just jumbled amongst an old pile of books put together by some fourth grade class hoping for Karma points, whether some poor dupe actually thought it would be useful in some way, or whether someone just wanted to get rid of it and thought that donating it to Belize was just as good if not better than recycling it or throwing it away. I think this brings me back to my original point (remember back in December?) that good intentions don’t count for much. Someone must have felt really good about donating a textbook to an “impoverished” (I’m willing to bet that’s the word they used) community in Central America, but that selfsame book is doing little more than providing a cozy home for ants and termites. Yeah, we need books here, but we need relevant books that can help the kids to read AND to understand their place in the world as Belizeans, not to find out the role of the Chinese in building the railroads.

Speaking of cultural competency (are we speaking of cultural competency?), an interesting project I saw recently from the STD VI science teacher was to make a poster with the food pyramid on it. You would think that basic nutrition is something that is fairly universal considering we all need the same vitamins and nutrients to keep ticking, but what came back later that week was a lot like this:

The most important staples are at the top of the pyramid, rather than the least necessary sugars. That is beyond the obvious fact that the different categories are completely different. Do you see whole grains anywhere on there? Obviously availability and access to certain types of food is a huge issue here.