Jim Cooper. "Down on the Island": Helping

The summer of 2013 I worked as an assistant teacher in the public school of Manti, Augusto Cohen. Before giving the elemental kids one of their diagnostic tests, the teachers made a mini reunion with us, the teachers assistant, and told us that if any of the students had trouble doing any exercise we have to “help” them. But if they don’t get it after all we had to tell them the correct answer. In the eight chapter of the book “Down on the Island”, Jim Cooper talk to us about his years teaching on the island, Puerto Rico, and one of the biggest problems he encountered here, “helping” or cheating between students. Cooper present this term as an idea of cooperation between teacher-student and student-student, without any competition in their curriculum. 

            Cheating in the schools of Puerto Rico was, or is, not considered a bad thing because it is viewed as a social, and a cultural cooperation. The student had been hearing since the first grades: “Starting in the first grade in Puerto Rican schools, teachers tell students to look at their neighbor’s paper if they don’t known the answer”(Cooper 80).  Therefore the children were taught and raised with this way of thinking. Helping each other in the classrooms is something that defines them, that is part of their identity. Through out this chapter Cooper tells us about two methods of learning, the competitive and the cooperative. The competitive way is the one that Cooper was familiar with in the States, it is the one in which the students are willing to be better than anyone else in their classroom and better than anyone in any other school. Even though Cooper was determined that cheating in the classrooms was something that he could never imagine or maybe accept, we can infer by the tone of the author that he at the end was convinced that the way the students cooperate with each other has its pros in the training education of the students.

            Cooper writes about Puerto Rican’s academic view and how it is different from the American’s cultural view. I think that both methods are needed to develop a good education system. A balance between the both is necessary for the student to acquire the good things that both methods can offer. Cooperation and competition is something that we see and experience in Puerto Rico every day and this book gave us the opportunity to understand that this is something that comes from way back in our history. Therefore I think this balance is what makes the Puerto Ricans so unique from other cultures: respectful, kind, friendly, professionals, and intelligent people.