Talking with Important People

Our group has a month-long project on basically anything we want, with the only requirement being that it involves field work and talking to people.  That month is speeding to a close (the presentation is due the Monday after next, and we're spending 5 days of those 11 days in Santa Cruz.)  My group is investigating the Colegio Bolivar,  a public boys' high school that went co-ed this year, to the tune of angry parents and much resistance.  In Bolivia, summer vacation ends in January, so we've been here watching the whole thing unfold from the beginning (it's all over the news).  Today Kate and I went to the school to see if there was anyone there we could talk to.

The school was very nice and light blue with a gated archway.  Some grown-ups  adults were talking in the gateway and one of the woman (presumably a secretary or administrator) asked what we wanted.  We asked if we could speak to the director (aka principal) and she had us take a seat outside his office.  The building was basically a big square, with the main entrance leading to a courtyard in the middle.  It had a big impressive staircase in the middle that led to the second floor balconies (think Sound of Music staircase, only whitewashed and Spanish style).  We waited for perhaps half an hour and then went in to talk to the director.  His name is Miguel and he's been the principal for 2 years.  He seemed a little standoff-ish at first but then we had a great conversation for at least an hour.  Then he had another meeting, but he told us to come back any time.

So a summary of what we talked about:
-500-ish boys, 10 girls at the high school
-a law from the government mandated mixed schools
-parents were angry because the girls didn't respect the waitlist to get into the school (because the law required mixing, I presume)
-the girls are all 13 and 14, in their first year of high school
-there were a lot of problems at first but things are calming dow
-previously the World Bank and other countries had a big role in the Bolivian education system, but now it's more nationalized
-they are focusing more on educating a whole person, not just the academic side (this is also part of the education reform, curious how it works literally in practice)
-they have begun teaching indigenous history and languages (the kids at Bolivar learn both English and Quechua, a local indigenous language)
-Miguel talked about having a balance between honoring Bolivian tradition and culture (and helping to save the indigenous cultures that are dying out) and teaching technology and helping the students prepare for the global world

At the end, he asked us a little about the US and the education system there.  We were both glad he did; it made it seem less like an interrogation and more like a reciprocal exchange.  (Reciprocity=ayni in Aymara and/or Quechua)  We're hoping to return Friday to talk with a few professors or some of the students.  Another interesting thing I noticed was that Miguel kept using "varones" to refer to the boys and "chicas" to refer to the girls.  I don't have an awesome grasp on the connotations, but varones sounds a lot like "barons" which made me think it referred more to men.  Chicas, on the other hand, refers to girls, preteen/teenage girls.  I was a little put-off by this, but by the end of our interview I realized that even though "chicos" and "chicas" might translate to "boys" and "girls" for an English-speaker, "chicos" can also mean a mixed group of boys and girls.  So Miguel had to use a different word to distinguish between the genders.  ¡Bien interesante!