School and educational situation in the Dominican Republic 🏝️ Country and people in the Dominican Republic

followmikecee (61)in #life • 6 years ago (edited)

Hola mis Steemians

I have often reported in my articles about the high poverty rate in the Dominican Republic.
According to the most recent UN data from 2016, which found, almost 40% live in poverty or even in extreme poverty (starving population). That is about 4.5 million people. An inconceivable number

All the statistics

that I found on this subject have a relatively low illiteracy rate. In fact, the number is much higher, because many Dominicans are not registered at all with the authorities and are therefore not recorded statistically.
This was also the case with my family here, by the way. 2 of the 3 children of my wife were not registered at all and therefore had no access to anything. A situation that we had to change quickly.

All these people have actually never attended a school and have therefore also no possibility to find a job which could secure their existence. The school situation is very bad, especially on the outskirts of larger cities and in rural areas.
An important reason for this situation was also the lack of a democratization process in the country. Until the 90s, the dictator Trujillo had regarded the people on the island as his private property. Only then did the country stabilize politically.

Current situation in the Dominican Republic

More than 4 million Dominicans live in misery today. That means at worst:

that they don't even have enough to eat on the table every day.
do not have necessary clothing or shoes
have no apartment
or in the case of illness, for financial reasons cannot even go to a doctor or buy medication.

Current school situation

All these people are mostly illiterate or children of illiterate people. Even today, many children have no possibility to attend school at all. Likewise many other children go only for very short time into so-called school temporaries. After this time they are then considered alphabetized, which is actually complete nonsense. Because they can hardly calculate, let alone read a newspaper text and certainly not write their own text.

But at least more and more people know about the importance of a school education and especially a school leaving certificate.

School-education room and school-leaving certificate

The situation clearly shows me that such a poor country like the Dominican Republic is completely overstrained to build itself by its own efforts and above all quickly sufficient school space.
I see this extremely in my daughter's school here. Although the existing buildings where they go to class are used in at least two, sometimes even three shifts, the existing classroom is not sufficient.

Classroom of my little daughter (red balloon)

This situation is particularly difficult in the newly developing districts and in places with extremely high population pressure.

Despite the meanwhile increasing possibilities to attend school, it cannot always be assumed that the children attend school until they graduate (officially up to the 8th grade). Especially in the villages in the countryside, many children go to school for only a few years. Often this is enough for a little reading, writing and arithmetic, but only very superficially and insufficiently. I often see this here that they can hardly use what they have learned in their daily lives.

The reasons for this are usually manifold:

so in many villages there are no schools at all
or then only schools that only teach up to the fifth grade because the school building is much too small.
the way is simply too far for the remaining school years to the neighboring village.

In addition, in remote smaller villages the way to the next school is so long that the youngest children simply cannot walk yet. So they only start school when they are nine or even ten years old. Usually they only complete a few school years and then leave the school without graduating.

In the large poor districts of Santo Domingo or other Dominican cities, there is often no school for more than a thousand children. Then they try to hold a kind of school lesson with the simplest provisional arrangements.

The learning conditions are often so extremely catastrophic that despite great effort and discipline on the part of the pupils, I can really count on an increase in learning. This is why children often do not go to school after a certain time. Often they see no sense in just sitting out the time.

From public authorities and the government definitely comes too little, so I fear that this problem will continue for many years if not generations to come. Very sad about all the future of these children!