What You Thought You Needed, Jack Johnson

“I explained to him why we need trees on the island.  He told me since the mangos were no longer good, the tree was no longer good.  I told him about soil regeneration, carbon mitigation, but he burned the tree anyway.  It’s because I don’t have a ring, and those who hired him, do.”

My counterpart looked at his finger, referring to the ring Panamanians receive after graduation.  The ring that symbolizes that the wearer is educated.  Few enough people have a college education on the island that I often forget when necessary to include the “Licenciada” in front of my name, the word that symbolizes the same thing as the ring.  But still, in an area where only the youth are expected to be educated, unless you’re an outsider, a man with more knowledge of the earth than many I’ve met, in Panama and abroad, is ignored because he doesn’t wear a ring.

Is school the only place that one can learn?  The answer seems obvious, but is it?  In a country that going to school, and staying until graduating from the equivalent of high school, is still a privilege that parents work to be able to give to their children, this fact is almost forgotten.  Some parents are so proud their children can go to school, they keep them in the uniform after the bell has rung and classes are over.  No one asks these children what they learned in school.  No one asks them what they study.  No one verifies that they learn.  But since they wear the uniform, they are on the property during the school hours, no one cares if they actually pay attention and do the work.

I look at this in shock.  I watch a girl, without a father and a mother distracted by gambling, with clear attention difficulties and a desire for attention, be passed from grade to grade because the specialist can’t spend the necessary time with her and still have time for the rest of the students.  My teachers are spread thin – we have 8 classrooms and seven teachers, one of whom is the special education teacher.  Each classroom is multigrade.  In a country where education is claimed as a right, not as a privilege, my students are almost ignored by the government because we are small and poor.  We should feel lucky we have a school at all, and all children aren’t forced to leave the island when they want to learn.  Only the high school and university levels.

And still, having a ring from this type of education, means more to a community than what a man who has worked the earth his whole life, read more books about natural science, has to say.  This is the real reason why they welcome a foreign woman into their community – the hope she will change perceptions and people will listen to her because she has an education.

An education is viewed as a free pass, by those with and without.  They deserve work, they deserve respect.  They have to earn nothing.  Graduating from university guarantees a job.  It did in the United States, too.  Up until it didn’t.  How long before the Panamanian education and economic crash?