Who we become is largely the result of our education, not just from the classroom, but the broader education that we get from our families and community, the media, and experience. All these sources come together to teach us not only facts, but values and work ethic.
At Chacocente, we try to replicate life's learning process through traditional, technical and social education. We require that the adults learn to read and write, and offer them special courses to achieve a primary-school education. We teach problem solving and logic, analysis and life skills. We also do technical education within certain fields of study, as well as planning, and setting goals and priorities. The goal for the adults in our project is to establish a small business in the fourth and fifth years of our agreement.
The children are taught on site, as the public schools are woefully inadequate. We use a private-school curriculum, and encourage our teachers to be creative and dynamic. While the teacher-student ratio in the public schools is a minimum of 1:40, we are aiming for no more than 1:8. The goal with the children is not to fill their heads with facts, but to teach them that learning is a life-long endeavor that enriches our existence.
An example of how our curriculum differs from the State schools' can be seen in reading. Nicaraguan schools teach children how to read words, but there are no reading classes per se. The children don't learn to read fluidly, nor for meaning. We have an hour of reading, aloud and silently, every day in every grade level. Our hope is that our children will learn to read for pleasure, a diversion that is almost totally absent in Nicaragua.