In the supermarket in Miraflores a man is shopping with his empleada, his maid. She pushes the supermarket trolley. He holds a list of purchases. He tells her “A tin of tuna” and she takes a tin from the shelf and puts it in the trolley. And so they go.
These activities are not aiming to be efficient or effective. They are maintaining five hundred year old power structures in Lima society.
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Laura, aged forty, has cooked a handful of meals in her life. She has hired helps to cook for her, or eats in restaurants, or has food delivered.
Milagros cooks every day for her husband and children. she has cooked thousands of meals.
Every day, Milagros comes as an empleada to Laura’s house and Laura spends half an hour telling her what to buy in the market, and how to cook it.
This is not about cooking a meal, it is about maintaining five hundred year old divisions of power, prestige and opportunity.
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I volunteer to help in a settlement on the edge of Lima, where houses built of thin board are scattered up the hillside. The community is building a road or trackway between their houses, on a Sunday morning. Thirty villagers are working, moving rocks to clear the route. Four or five people are putting the rocks like a jigsaw to create a solid foundation. It is called dry stone walling and it is a complex skill which I do not have.
Back in Miraflores, I tell my landlady about my day. She looks confused, or perhaps appalled.
“You have to tell them what to do!” she exclaims.
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An alarm goes at eleven, and all the students and teachers leave their classrooms.
They gather in the grounds in circles and someone checks their names. Then two hundred students and teachers walk across the grass to another point, where a senior staff member makes a long speech, amplified into meaninglessness by a faulty sound system.
For a year and more I ask people around me what we are doing and why. “Just follow everyone else” they say.
The activity, in this school, is presented as a learning opportunity An hour later we receive an email declaring the exercise a success. We know that one teacher was not present to check the names of their class, but the email still announces 100% success. And so we go.
These activities are not aiming to be efficient or effective. They are maintaining power structures in Lima society. Someone wears a coloured jacket, walks in a circle and makes a speech. And everybody follows. Order has been maintained. But it is not order, or organisation, it is hierarchy. And it is not creating anything of value.
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Every Thursday all the teachers gather in Victoria Hall, a wooden floored, concrete walled echo chamber, for some activity. In my first meeting, Marco, the history teacher, asks a question somewhat roughly. He was answered curtly and aggressively by the “Peruvian Director”. But at least he could ask a question. This is a refreshing open and consultative environment, I think. The same happens the following week, and the Peruvian Director replies with added hostility. Marco never asks questions again, and nor does anyone else. Marco leaves at the end of the year.
Every week after that, the “Peruvian Director” subjects us to a 90 minute lecture. She is talking to a room full of experienced teachers some of whom have been teaching the International Baccalaureate curriculum or the IB Middle Years Programme for 8 years, but her chosen form is the lecture. It appears she has never taught IB or MYP, she has spent her life as an infant school teacher, but no-one else is invited to contribute. Sometimes she speaks for ninety minutes without any materials. Sometimes she put on the screen a page from the MYP handbook, three hundred torturous words written by academics who believed they can create new realities by crowding multiple abstract nouns into an unforgivable sentence such as “enhanced communication foments structured learning objectivity”. She reads through the page on the display, line by line. Then extemporises on the theme. She dilates that 300 words into 20 minutes of speechifying, mostly by repetition and lists. That is one of the better days.
After six months of delivering monologues without resources to a room full of experienced teachers, she presents a video of a teacher in the 1970s USA delivering a lecture without resources to a room full of students sitting at spaced desks in rows.
“What`s wrong with this?”
Total silence from 40 teachers.
“Come on anybody, what is wrong with this style of teaching?”
No answer.
“Its out of date. It does not work!”
Silence. And perhaps now a sliver of self awareness slips in as she turns to look at the video.
That was the last time we were subjected to her 90 minutes of linguistic bullying. After 35 hours, I can not recall one single significant thing she said. That last video was the most significant contribution of 35 hours of lectures. But we all knew six months earlier that her approach was out of date. Either no-one is prepared to talk to her, or she is unable to listen to anyone. Or both.
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Although she has retreated embarrassed from our Thursday Meetings, the Peruvian Director” stills holds onto our early Monday morning meetings. This too is played out as a form of domination. She always turns up late, making thirty teachers wait for her. She talks and talks and talks, and around 8 o`clock, she offers the Head of DP the chance to say something. And the Head of MYP.
Classes start at 8 o`clock.
We all get to classes late. So the Peruvian Director starts every week by dominating and disrespecting teachers, and Heads of Curriculum and also the students.
My Head of Department tells me that she has to check and approve every written material I photocopy to give to the students. I print off each sheet, attach an approval form to sign and take it to my Jefa. Every sheet is read closely – “is this correct English?” – and amended with a red pen. I print off another copy and bring it back for approval.
I teach seven different grades with different worksheets for each. Because of the time-consuming approval system I prepare very few materials for the students. One worksheet is used for four weeks. Or one printed powerpoint for the whole term. For the students, the course is tedious and repetitive. My time is spent amending, printing and getting signatures. But the hierarchy is maintained.
It turns out, I discover in my third year, that other heads of department tell their teachers to go ahead and photocopy what they require without the need for a slip.
Now I use Google Classroom with every class from Grade 7, eleven years old, upwards. And my Head of Department is worried that she is losing control. Because she does not know how to use Google Classroom.
And so it goes.
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The “Peruvian Director” speaks excellent english but refuses to speak it with me. Two weeks after I was interviewed and offered a job by herself and others speaking in english, she invites me to her office and speaks entirely in rapid unstructured spanish. A few weeks later I enter a room where she is chatting with the english teachers over lunch, and she hastily changes to speaking spanish.
I mentioned the training idea to several people, and then sent an email to the Peruvian Director. I got a positive response “OK, we can introduce some training next year!” This will be two years after I joined, and three years after the half-day introduction regime was introduced.
Perhaps unwisely, I follow up by pointing out that the existing half day training for new teachers includes an “organogram” of staff which is not an organogram but a list of senior staff. It does not include teachers – anyone below heads of department, it seems, is invisible to management. This time I received no reply.
Three days later however, I was in class when the head of DP knocks on the door and asks if she could talk to one of the students. She takes him away, then some minutes later he returns and continues with his work. A few minutes later Elena storms into the classroom, marching past me into the centre of the room and shouting at the students, followed by Martha.
“What is she talking about?” I ask the students.
“She is accusing us of misusing our computers.”
“They are supposed to be using their computers” I explain. “They are showing me their progress on internal assessments. ”
She continues to walk around the room shouting.
“You put on Facebook “I am gay” she says to Rodrigo. And then after a pause “but of course you wouldn’t do that.”
Rodrigo`s mother is a teacher.
“And you put ” Yes you are!”” she says to another student.
“We all left the room,” one of my students points out, “to look at the solar panel at the front gate.”
It is true, I say, that I had taken all of the students to look at the new solar panel which one of the class had raised money to buy and install as a personal project to help the school community.
We would have been out of the room for ten minutes or more.
After more rumblings and threats Elena leaves, saying that they will inspect the security videos. I realise that I have photos on my phone, taken as we looked at the solar panel. They have a time and date. I take them to show Elena.
“So you took them out of the room to look at the solar panel.”
I was defending my students from her accusations, but she talks as if I am defending myself. I begin to wonder if the whole circus was an attempt to intimidate me. Half an hour later one of the psychologists comes to ask me to fill out an “Incident Form”. It seems another childish attempt at intimidation. What had happened was that the school had turned on access to Facebook for a weekend event two weeks earlier, and failed to restrict it again. What had happened was that the “Peruvian Director” had charged into my classroom shouting at the students, looking for someone to blame for something. But why? That was less clear.
I politely fill out the psychologist’s form as if I am taking responsibility for something, and am told they will have to check the security cameras. I never see the form, which should be countersigned by others, or get any update on the results of the security camera views.
As I spend more time in Lima I realise that this pattern of behaviour, accusations and intimidation with a parody of due process, turns out to be the national manner of asserting power in parliament, in the justice system, and on the streets.
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The. following day I went to her at ten and asked for the powerpoint. She took out a heavily annotated copy. “You should put the subtopics on each page. Otherwise they won`t understand it. And put links to videos here. And write the page numbers of the book that it refers to.”
She handed me my copy of the sixty page powerpoint, with minor amendments, mainly additions, on most pages.
She pulled out a sheaf of additional notes written in red. They were written on two scraps of paper that appeared to have been torn, not from a notebook but from a sandwich wrapper. And then they had been stapled together, to make them more presentable.
This was the work of someone who had not only lost her norte, but her south, west and east. I took the notes away and stored them in a file marked MM for MicroManagement, where I had started putting memos, emails and notes on the bizarre and irrational conversations which were now happening with increasing frequency.
A few days later I found her standing by my desk. “Do you need any help tidying your desk? I`m very good at it!”
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In the school, planning takes place in five stages.
There is training for teachers with workshops within school and in mixed groups with other school.
There is detailed instructions from heads of department
There is the sharing of the school calendar which includes holidays, school trips (normally a week in term 2) sports events.
There is communication of any overall management themes.
Teachers create their planning for the year in the form primarily of unit plans which include class by class, week by week, teaching within a overarching Concept and Inquiry.
It wold be an interesting exercise for students studying Business to put these activities in the most effective chronological order, but they would never hit on the school’s solution.
This is what happens here.
Teachers are asked to plan their entire year at the end of December. At the same time, management meet to discuss their plans.
Internal and external training takes place in late February. Keen or new teachers might adjust their Unit Plans to include new ideas.
The week before term starts, management may issue some detailed orders, such as only including one ATL skill per unit. This and others are random instructions that have no basis in MYP. Teachers adjust their Unit Plans.
In the first week of term, early March, departmental heads and the head of MYP look at teachers’ unit plans and tell them to rewrite them.
A few weeks later, the school calendar is shared. Teachers adjust their Unit Plans.
During the course of the term, further deadlines are communicated on a weekly basis – marked assessments on the computer system, end of term grades, all involving some adjustment of plans.
These activities are not efficient or effective.
In short, senior management ask teachers to plan the entire coming year in December, but they themselves communicate a few days ahead. Teachers are constantly adjusting their plans. Teachers spend their lunchtimes at the computer in their classrooms, whilst managers and heads of department sit round tables having lunch in an upstairs room.
This is not order, or effectiveness, it is hierarchy and domination. And the management look at what they have achieved, and they say that it is good.
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A senior teacher comes to my class, her arm around the shoulder of one of my 15 year old students, about to complete the course and leave school.
“I have known this boy for many years, he is a close personal friend, and I want to make sure he will get a good grade.” she says, beaming.
“As there is no meaning in the national grades, I could give him anything,” I reply.
” No, they are very important, he needs good grades to get into University.”
Later she explained precisely how to ensure he gets a good grade.
“Give him several short tests, quizzes, different types of problems. Then when you have marked them, you can decide which you are going to use for the grade.”
The student has done no work and undertaken no assessments for several months, because he had chosen not to complete the course. I told him to sit at the back and do something useful and quiet. Yet it appears that, for Peru`s National Education System, I have to give him a grade.
Under Peru`s National Education System there are no standards or measurements as to the grade I give. There are no national exams or moderation of school grades. Peru`s Olympics would have people going for a run around the park, starting and finishing when they wish, until someone stops the clock and writes down a nota, a mark, for each person.
In several government jobs, there are set standards according to education – the magistrate or teacher must have several degrees or have completed various courses. But as there are no standards in the education system, this is a performance of clowns.
I said to Carrie, “Well I don`t mind giving him any grade because it has no meaning.” And she said “No it is very important, he can not get into University unless he has an average of 12”
So the number I and other teachers create without standards has a value. But still it has no meaning, in that they are not measured against any scale. Where I can say my students are three metres tall, and another can say they are 20 cm tall, because there is no definition of what is a centimetre or a metre?
Why would a country have a system of education whose grades have no meaning?
If there was a national exam, it would produce a ranking based on ability. Peru already has a ranking based on ethnicity, language, “class”, and money. An equitable education system, like an effective justice system, or transparent recruiting, would upset this ranking. Thus, they do not happen.
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Later, I ask my Head of Department how the National Education system of grading works.
“I don’t know and I don’t care,” she replies.
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I asked my Head of Department if there were any rules. She said there were none. I asked other people and got little better response. I asked my Head of Department again and she said there were some written down somewhere but nobody paid any attention to them. Other people said ask Martha. It seemed that every incident or occasion would produce its own ad hoc ruling.
After rather more than two years I asked a school psychologist about rules and guidelines, and she reached into the filing cabinet and gave me a whole printed booklet.
I wondered why they were not given as a matter of course to new members of staff.
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Passing Porta`s office on the way to the print room, she called me in. She wanted to talk to me about Charles` personal project, the culmination of six months work.
The Global Concept, the big idea which was to inform Charles’ work, was helping people, communities, and renewable resources.
He started by fitting a dynamo to a bike, adding a step down transformer to deliver ten volts dc and connecting it to a iphone placed in a charging box mounted on the handlebars. Researching what he needed, finding where to buy the parts, persuading his brother to take him there, took him the month of May.
“That’s great, but how are you helping others?”
He made a video explaining the E-bike and showing himself riding it. We showed the video to school groups and other teachers to spread the idea, which in essence was renewable energy.
“That’s great, but how are you helping others?”
He decided his mission was to communicate the idea of renewable energy. He made a list of teachers and students with bikes, events he could attend, bike rides, school sports day. He talked, in my presence, to the Green Committee, to passing teachers and students, to my classes.
And then he made a second video, “Sharing the idea”.
In this he describes how he told a friend about the bike and they said, “that’s no good, what you should do is make a turbine to put in the river to make more energy.” And he though, “Woohoo, that’ s it, I have shared my idea to make a better idea!”
He placed this video on YouTube, shared it with students, had a link placed in the school newsletter which was sent to all staff and parents, and then arranged to stand in the front of the school assembly to present his idea. He waited to be announced by the head girl. Instead they called on everyone to sing the school song and then return to class.
He went to see the organiser of the Assembly, clarified the problem, and re-arranged to present at the next Assembly.
Portia said, smiling, that she had marked it, as she was the moderator, and she gave it “a generous three…. giving due allowance for his difficulties with language”.
Rodrigo`s family was from Cuzco, in the Sierra, and spoke Quechua. Rodrigo`s English was weak but nevertheless he had chosen, unlike most students, to complete his Personal Project in English.
I smiled. This was absurd. “Let us see how the IB will grade it.”
I had given it a six on eight.
There were also, she said, issues of academic honesty. She doubted he had made the bike, the video. I said I had no worries about academic honesty and had signed my approval. I had followed the whole process in detail, talking to him every week. His brother or cousin had helped him, but he was entirely open about that. The bike was not the product, the product was to communicate his ideas. The bike was simply a tool. And I had seen him do spreading the concept, talking to individuals, to the green committee, to classes of students, and to the School Assembly.
She said she would not be submitting the work to the IB.
“But why why would you not send it to the IB?”
“Because it does not meet the minimum standards for a Personal Project.”
If she had concerns about academic honesty, I said, she should talk to Charles, ask him about the project.
She repeated that she believed the work to be dishonest and inadequate and would not submit it. I repeated that as supervisor I had followed the work every step of the way and was confident that it was correctly done, but she could satisfy herself by simply asking Charles to explain. She put on a “I am Very Angry” face and told me to leave.
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I could find no basis in MYP guidelines for refusing to submit the work. It appeared that if there were issues of academic dishonesty the appropriate procedure was to submit a report along with the work. As Personal Project was the only graded aspect of the MYP programme, students who did not complete the PP did not complete the course. If she refused to submit the PP she would be failing Rodrigo on the course.
The following week she asked Charles to bring her more information about his work, and his journal contained detailed descriptions and photos of him assembling the bike and making the video. By the Thursday, after the parents had sent me an anxious email asking to meet up to discuss what was happening, she was assuring Charles that she had never questioned the honesty of the work or my assurances as supervisor.
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I met with one of the long-term survivors in the corridor.
“Are you happy here?” he asked.
Perhaps I was looking glum
“No I`m not. The the management structure, the lack of communication, the abusive behaviour, I`ve had enough of it.”
“So…I thought it was just me.” he said.
“This hierarchy where all these instructions come down from above, and there is no system of feedback, there is no horizontal communication. They lack the most basic management skills, like planning. The lack of transparency, of honesty, it is medieval.”
He agreed. “They lie. They lie all the time. They lie to protect their position, to cover up their mistakes, to blame others for their laziness. They lie just for the feeling of power they get from lying. Its corruption just the same as we have in the country, they all cover up for each other to stay in power.”
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Let me tell a story. It is just a story. It may not be true. But it seems to fit the facts, those that I know. It also seems to fit the atmosphere, the individuals, the tone. The look in their eyes of cover up, the private conversations behind closed doors, the whispering in corridors, the refusal to put anything in writing. The Kafka environment.
Katrina feels so uncomfortable with her head of department that she can no longer work with him.
She tells her colleague Negumi, with who she shares lunch every day. that she is going to drive him out of the school.
The Peruvian Director, newly appointed, is a life long Primary School teacher. She has no knowledge of the Secondary School courses of IB and MYP.
She is insecure and feels unsupported. She is desperate to find people to support her.
She appoints her secretary as Head of human Resources. Now she, and the only person she trusts, can hire and fire anyone they choose. We have a corrupt network of two. We do not have a strong independent Human Resources Department, an important institution providing a balance of powers.
Mariana, who has extensive experience of teaching IB, is told to stay out of the way. Perhaps she is threatened with firing. Certainly, she plays a reduced, almost silent role in the school thereafter. She retains an upstairs office, she listens carefully to what people say, but she rarely ventures an opinion.
“But who is going to teach Physics?”says the Peruvian Director.
“I have a friend who can do it,”says Katrina.
She finds a friend, a young girl who has just left school and wants to be a teacher, who has a job with little experience.
Echidna has never taught these courses, IB and MYP, and has very little understanding of Physics, and her spoken and written english is poor.
But persuaded by her friend Katrina she resigns from her job and joins the school as a Physics teacher.
When this arrangement fails spectacularly after three months, we now have a pact of three people complicit in mutual support and cover-up. Hermanitas.