As I read through the two chapters, Teaching and Helping, from Down on the Island by Jim Cooper my attention was mainly caught by the fact that it was a professor who didn’t understand Spanish and is moving to a place in which he will mainly teach native people in times in when as he mentions, neither the teachers in 1954 nor 20 percent of the Puerto Ricans on 1993 could speak English. We see through the chapters that Cooper shows us his internal and external journeys, since he mainly explains his adventures while teaching in a place full of students he most certainly wasn’t used to and also narrates about the things that happened to him while helping across the island. An internal journey Cooper goes through is the fact that he has to deal with a new perspective of seeing things since he is not only living in a new place, but also he doesn’t know how to communicate in the language spoken by the natives of his new adventure. If we go ahead and look for an external journey that is directly related to the change of location Cooper has, we can take the part I which not only is he exposed to a gift given by his students as the year ended, surprisingly after he passed even the worst student with a C, but Cooper is also exposed to having the different teachers have a sort of rivalry feeling as they compared the gifts given to them by the students, Coopers says that he noted this in his diary as a “mercenary note”.
While teaching in Mayaguez, Cooper gives us an example of othering as he talks about his impressions upon seeing the departmental tests given to the students the year before and his comparison of the test, which consisted of relatively easy questions to a test, since he says he would have expected these questions in a freshman English class in the United States. Through the helping phase, Cooper narrates in such a way in which we can see a clear example of othering when he uses, once again, the United States vs. Puerto Rico factor to emphasize on the ways in which a Puerto Rican or American student would behave during a test. He mentions that a Puerto Rican student would most probably let his neighbor look at his test since he wants to help him get a good grade and Cooper mentions that, on the opposite side, an American student would hide his paper since for him he is the only one interested in getting a good grade without lending a hand since he thinks of the neighbor as a rival, not a as person in need of help, as a Puerto Rican thinks of him.
I think that part of his experience of moving into a new place where he doesn't know anything at all makes it more interesting. It doesn't influence his way of seeing Puerto Rico and as you said is like an adventure where he gets his perspective while seeing things he is not used to. Sometimes when we know things about places that we are going to travel we tend to have a stereotype and change our way of seeing that place.
ReplyDeleteTrue, Génesis. We really have to be careful about the natural tendency to stereotype. It is fog in the way of seeing clearly. What is your opinion, Gerardo?
ReplyDeleteI think stereotyping is a key for understanding a culture better, we need to open ourselves to all the many different people in the world and try not to see through our own eyes since not everyone is the same, and stereotyping may not let you see thing in their true form!
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