Educational Laissez-Faire

I consider myself quite the left wing radical but there is one area in which I apply the principle of laissez-faire and that is the realm of my children´s education.

I figure that the more I pay a school to educate my child the less I should be involved in the actual process. Yeah, yeah, I can hear the gasps and protests about “the home environment is essential” and “parental support is key” etc, etc. All quite true but please, don´t expect me to be on call 24/7.

The education system here seems to assume that one parent (i.e. the mother) does not have a full time job and is therefore free to attend school functions at 11 in the morning and 2 in the afternoon. Parents are exhorted to attend charlas on nutrition and hygiene at 6 pm – an hour when I am either still at work or thinking about kicking back with a stiff drink on my terraza.

One school I heard of even grades on parental involvement, so if the parent doesn´t attend the multitude of talks and mid-morning displays of kindergartners´ scribbling abilities, the child is penalized and loses points on his or her final grades. Excuse me?!

I pay the nursery school my three-year-old son attends to keep him busy, teach him to share and play nicely with others and send him home sleepy. I even toilet trained him myself. I do NOT pay them to send home homework every Thursday with instructions for his parents to do it with (i.e. for) him and send the folder back, sin falta, on Monday.

I pay the expensive fees at my daughter´s international school so they will give her a wider-than-Peruvian world view and metaphorically kick her ass when she doesn´t turn in her homework. If I was planning to painstakingly pore over her homework assignments every night or help my son scrunch up bits of red paper to stick on to a paper apple I would have saved my money and home-schooled them myself!

When my son was being “assessed” for entry into an expensive primary school, the school psychologist asked my husband in an accusatory tone, “are you sure you spend enough time interacting with him?” He replied indignantly “we spend as much time as we can with him when both parents have to work in order to afford to send him to your school.”

And don´t get me started on the hidden costs. I supposedly pay an all-inclusive fee but get hit by Smuggies on a weekly and monthly basis with urgent last-minute requests for materials to make a maqueta necessitating after-work trips to Wong supermarket and expenditure on styrofoam, glitter, modelling clay, pipe cleaners and bristol board.

In the case of the Baby Inca it´s the shows. The nursery puts on an annual Christmas show, an Easter show, a Mother´s day show, a Father´s day show and a show for Fiestas Patrias. Each one of these requires an outlay of s/40 to rent a badly-fitted costume which could be purchased for a quarter of the price in the local market. Which is no doubt why they never tell me what role my child is playing until they send the costume home the night before.

Now I don´t want to come across as some kind of maternal Grinch here. As anyone who has the misfortune to be my friend on Facebook can attest, I oooh and ahhh over my kids´ every achievement with the best of them. But I no longer have the space to store every piece of paper on which my son has drawn a squiggly line at school. And as for his thespian career, in three years he has not progressed further than the chorus line. I know we can´t all be stars but how come I keep seeing the same faces in the good parts? I´m just saying.

And it´s not easy bigging-up your child on Facebook when his roles tend to be Second Palm Tree From the Left; Fourth Pebble on the Beach; Third Wolf (that was the year he had his first line. When asked “how does a wolf go?” he replied, in ringing Shakespearian tones, “Ahooo!”); or one of a group of background chickens.

And they always have the shows at 2 pm on a Saturday afternoon, effectively screwing up your first day of rest for the week. And 2 pm. Really? In Peru? Where lunch is sacredly and leisuredly taken at 1 pm? Really? Despite several irritated notes of complaint by me and assurance from the teachers every year about a timely start, every year the other parents wander in at least 45 minutes late while I snarl and stew on the plastic chairs provided in the church hall.

My irritation at having to wait for unconcerned parents who clearly have nothing better to do on a weekend is exacerbated by the sure and certain knowledge that the theme of the performance, whatever the occasion, is going to be a religious one, crammed with barefaced indoctrination and shudderingly sexist stereotypes.

Take his recent Christmas performance. His nursery is nothing if not ambitious, I´ll give them that. This show spanned several centuries of world “history” all the way from the Creation to the Nativity.

First on stage was God. A delightfully small and grumpy individual clad in a white robe, firmly clutching his Francesco Bernoulli model car.[1] Accompanied by narration from the nursery´s Director, he reluctantly created the world, nudged on by one of the teachers. He then retired sobbing, devoured a bottle of milk and fell sound asleep on his mother´s lap. Which, considering the alternative possible outcomes of His wrath, was a blessing indeed.

Next on stage strode the fruits of His labour. Apparently, on an empty stomach and in a temper the Almighty tends to create flora and fauna consisting entirely of a bemused cow, a lugubrious donkey, a diminutive frog and three chubby dancing flowers.

Now you see what I mean? You would think from the creation of the world to the birth of the Messiah there would be plenty of plum roles to go around. Yet one kid played the Sun; Adam AND the Angel Gabriel, with a costume change each time (but wearing the same pair of orange Crocs).  And what did the Baby Inca get to be? A frog.

No, I am being bitter and unfair. He was not a frog. He was THE frog.

The Frog´s biggest fan

Anyway, the thus assembled global population proceeded to execute a game but cautious song and dance rendition of (what else?) Old MacDonald Had a Farm in Spanish. This was closely followed by the appearance of Adam, who had shed his Sun outfit in favour of a flesh-coloured leotard and a pair of green shorts. Adam delivered his lines crisply, noting his loneliness and asking God to intervene on his behalf. He then retired for a nap, dutifully stretching himself face-down on stage so stiffly that the orange Crocs didn´t touch the ground. Eve was then unleashed upon him.

I use the term advisedly. Dressed in a sort of Hawaiian dancer outfit, she did not walk onto the stage so much as sashay, one arm extended to the side, wrist drooping seductively, the other placed firmly on her hip. After circling him once, her no doubt bewitching presence awoke Adam and he assumed a well-choreographed expression of surprise and awe – hands on either side of his face, mouth and eyes wide open. They then proceeded to dance salsa to a rousing Juan Luis Guerra number.                  .

A merciful veil was drawn over the unfortunate incident of the snake and the apple and we proceeded straight to the Immaculate Conception.

Mary was seen dressed in modest pink robes busying herself around the house with broom and duster. “Mary,” said the narrator, “loved to sweep and clean. And she loved to pray. She had long conversations with God”.

Whereupon the Sun/Adam, now transformed into the Angel Gabriel via a white robe and gold tinsel-trimmed wings, emerged and gave Mary the glad tidings. He said firmly that she was going to have a baby and that he would be El Salvador!  Mary showed the appropriate gladness but asked “how can that be, I am not married”. The Angel Gabriel – who had displayed excellent diction in all his roles up to this point – mumbled something unintelligible into the proffered microphone then rallied and reiterated resoundingly “…and he will be El Salvador!”

Thus reassured Mary broke the news to a complaisant Joseph. “No te preocupes, yo voy a ayudarte a cuidar el bebé de Dios” and a celebratory song and dance number followed.

The rest, as they say, is history or, mejor dicho, biblical allegory. They went to Bethlehem on a wooden rocking horse; a hefty plastic Baby Jesus was born; a star in white strappy sandals led Balthazar, Melchior and Caspar to where it was all happening and they dutifully presented their gifts.

Ohmigod! I´m surrounded by arm-waving biblical maniacs!

Having been inexplicably absent from the manger scene the Frog reappeared for the grand finale and even managed to beat Adam to the back row spot next to Eve. Maybe it is this lack of understanding of his proper place in the celestial big picture that has been hindering his ability to capture the lead roles. And long may it last! The day I catch my son playing a salivating Adam opposite an undulating Eve is the day laissez-faire goes straight out the window.

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[1] From the movie Cars II.

Portents and Omens

“Señora Juliet”, said my nanny one day, as she arrived breathless for work.  

“Ay Señora Juliet, I am so afraid!”

She was all atremble and I feared the worst: either her mother had another health crisis or she had got a better job and was about to abandon me.

Had there been floods in the sierra again and were they on the point of losing their home? Had some adolescent cousin turned up pregnant and confessed that the father was a married man with no inclination to take responsibility? All familiar Peruvian scenarios.

Reyda is not to be rushed when giving information.

“Ay Señora Juliet, I can´t believe it, but they said it was on the news!”

Some patient prodding revealed that she had received a terrified phone call from her younger sister the night before from their pueblo in Andahuaylas, in the Peruvian highlands.

“Ay Señora Juliet, tu puedes creer? A baby has been born with two horns and a tail!”

I had got up particularly early that morning. Lots of pending stuff at the office and I wanted to beat the traffic. If I left home before 7.15 I could get to work comfortably before 8am; any later and I would have to wait until the morning school rush was over to have any hope of finding a taxi willing to take me along the coast road to my office in Magdalena. But, clearly, discussion on the birth of the antichrist was not going to be disposed of in short order.

I attempted to assume an expression somewhere between intellectual curiosity and reassuring disbelief.

“Uh huh” I said.

My nanny is great but a bit long-winded when in a state of excitement. Her narrative style tends to the extremely literal: “My cousin said to me, ´Prima, you know what?” and I said, No, Prima´, I said, what?´”… and so on.

But bit by bit the shocking details emerged.

“Señora Juliet, the girl was a virgin, only 19 or 20 years old. She had been walking in the fields and you know how animals walk in the fields too. Well, she had on one of those wide skirts and as she walked an animal passed by and lifted up her skirt and that was all. Within 24 hours her belly started to swell and her parents took her to the doctor.”

Now I do not dispute the possibility of a 20 year old virgin lurking in the Peruvian highlands, but I have seen those skirts and they are wide enough to hide several mountain goats and the odd llama beneath them.

“Si Señora” she continued. “And when they got to the hospital they did a scan and the doctor said ´your daughter is going to have a baby´”.

“Uh huh” I said, glancing furtively at my watch.

“Señora Juliet, the baby was born right then! Only 24 hour hours later! And then when they saw the horns and the tail the father of the girl said “kill it!”

“Ah ha” I said.

“Si Señora, he said ´kill it´ and the doctors were going to kill it but as soon as the man said that, exactly 13 minutes after the baby was born, the baby said…”

“Ummmm” I said (“tick, tick, tick” said my watch). “The baby started talking?”

“Si, Señora! It said, ´kill me if you want but if you do, the following things will happen: Piura, Ica, Lima – and I can´t remember what other places it mentioned – will all be swallowed up by the sea.”

My nanny is a well-educated woman. Secondary school only but she has lived in Lima for many years. She has guided me through the pitfalls of the Gamarra garment district and bargained hard on my behalf in the treacherous byways of Plaza Hogar on a quest to purchase chests of drawers so I could hardly abandon her now in her hour of need. She takes excellent care of the Baby Inca and has a running battle with the teachers at his nursery, keeping them on the straight and narrow when they neglect to inform her of why he has a bump on his head or appears to have fallen into the “water” (Peruvian slang for a toilet bowl) at school.

If Lima was about to be inundated on the instructions of some belligerent baby Beelzebub I owed it to her to show some concern.

“Ummmm” I interrupted. “Where did your sister hear this?”

“The newspapers Señora! My mother can´t read but she saw a man in the street with a big pile of newspapers and a big group of people buying them so she bought one too and had the neighbour read it to her.”

Religious wingnuttery tends to flourish in remote regions (remember Jonestown?) and, as I myself can testify, publishing costs in Peru are relatively cheap. I was beginning to see a glimmer of light here.

“Has it been on the national news?” I asked.

“No Señora, I haven´t seen anything this morning”.

The Peruvian media are indefatigable in hunting down the most sensational and gory details of even the most innocuous of events. If the End of Days had been announced in even the farthest flung corner of the Andean cordillera trust me, the Peruvian press would have got the memo and there most certainly would have been live footage and heated talk show discussions within the hour.

I put this most reasonable observation to Reyda.

“Ay Señora, but Humala told the press not to report it! When the baby said he was going to drown all those places the doctors got frightened and sent for Humala and he ordered them not to let any press in.”

Peruvians are on a familiar one-name basis with their President and he obviously has preserved the common touch if he flew to the sierra on short notice at the request of the local doctors at the precise time that he was allegedly (according to the national press) in Argentina meeting with President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. But of course, in hyper-Catholic Peru, the birth of a horned baby constitutes a national crisis.

In addition to the Old Testament overtones, Andean communities are apparently highly susceptible to portents of evil and are perfectly capable of believing many impossible things before breakfast. Consider the Pishtaco, immortalized by Mario Varga Llosa in his novel Death in the Andes.

“According to folklore, [the Pishtaco] is an evil monster-like man, often a stranger and often a white man, who seeks out unsuspecting Indians, to kill them and abuse their bodies in disgusting ways, primarily by stealing their body fat for various nefarious cannibalistic purposes or cutting them up and selling their flesh as fried chicharrones[1]…

Preoccupation with body fat has a long tradition in the Andes region. In pre-Hispanic times, fat was so prized that a deity for it existed, Viracocha (Sea of fat)…Spanish missionaries were feared as Pishtacos by the Andean aboriginals, who believed they were killing people for fat with which to oil church bells to make them specially sonorous. In modern times similar beliefs held that human fat was needed to grease the machinery of sugar mills or that jet aircraft engines could not be started without a squirt of human fat. Pishtaco beliefs have affected international assistance programs, e.g. leading to rejection of the US Food for Peace program by several communities, out of fears that the real purpose was to fatten children, and later exploit them for their fat.”

(Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pishtaco)

In the face of such evident evil can one be surprised by the fear and loathing engendered by the birth of a horny, prehensile throwback?

I managed to both calm Reyda down and control my unworthy impulse to roar with laughter. But the Devil himself knows how I was going to explain my late arrival to my non-Peruvian boss.

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[1] An absolutely delicious Peruvian dish featuring deep fried pork, chicken or seafood.