Song of the month - Go Do by Jonsi

"Go Do" by Jonsi is, without a doubt, one of the greatest songs I've ever listened to. Every time I listen to this track, I can't help but visualize myself traveling the world, feeling joyful and carefree. Highly recommend it!  

Helping - "Down on the Island" by Jim Cooper

The eighth chapter of Jim Cooper’s “Down by the Island”, which is titled “Helping”, narrates the author’s experience with Puerto Rican students cheating on their English tests, but claiming they were basically “helping” each other. The author claims how Puerto Ricans are the friendliest and most hospitable people in the world, which can clearly be seen in how students help their classmates get good grades. This was completely surprising for Cooper, mainly because in the United States, college students were taught to be competitive and ambitious toward others, whereas in Puerto Rico, students took a different and more compassionate approach.

In this chapter, Cooper narrates how Puerto Rican students did not realize the severity and consequences of their actions; what these students called “helping”, was actually cheating. In fact, when Cooper asked students why they were looking at their classmates’ papers, students would genuinely say it was because they were really desperate for the answer in order to get a good grade. However, Cooper also criticizes how teachers and professors promote this kind of behavior in their students.  Tests were specifically made to evaluate students regardless if they dominated the material or not, which actually promoted students to do anything just to receive a good grade.

To prevent “helping”, as Cooper portrays in this chapter, students should be judged on other activities that promote independent thinking, such as group projects, open debates and discussions, and oral presentations. Although tests are important because they measure the student’s capacity of understanding the material, teachers should also implement these other measures and techniques; testing should not be the only system to decide whether students fail or pass a specific course. By valuing independent thinking, rather than testing and grades, students wouldn’t need to cheat or “help” in their college courses.

Teaching English - "Down on the Island" by Jim Cooper

During the 1950’s, a young professor from the United States named Jim Cooper went to the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez to teach an English course. As he began teaching in Puerto Rico, Cooper encountered many issues involving the education in “El Colegio”, as locals refer to the UPR Mayagüez. First of all, students didn’t even take English courses seriously, mostly because they underestimated it and thought everyone passed automatically. However, this was completely untrue. Most students didn’t speak English at all, unless they came from bilingual private schools or emigrated from the United States.

This issue clearly portrays Puerto Rico’s political status and educational public system in the 1950’s, mostly because the English language was completely foreign to people who were raised in rural areas of the island. In fact, even English professors didn’t know how to speak English fluently. Many had very thick accents, which made the teaching progress even more difficult for students. Jim Cooper even criticizes when Puerto Ricans mispronounced words, such as “feel” and “fill”, among others.

The process of settling English as a second language in Puerto Rico has improved in the last few decades due to the large amount of exposure from the internet, television, media, social websites, movies, and music. However, the approach for teaching English was completely different in the early 50’s. Therefore, it’s very clear how older generations speak a minimum –or none– English, compared to younger generations who have been exposed to the language from a very early age.

"A Small Place": Colonialism in the 21st century.

Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place is a short and simple-written book narrating her own story as she traveled to her homeland of Antigua.  Inside this exotic and fascinating Caribbean island, Kincaid portrays her bitter and disappointing attitude towards the “new Antigua”. She criticizes the loss of social values and the corruption involving the government and the higher classes in Antigua’s society. Jamaica Kincaid clearly articulates the crisis plaguing other developing nations as well, such as African and Caribbean countries that have yet to overcome issues involving the negative legacies of colonialism and slavery.

The topic of corruption is, by all means, the most discussed and influential topic of Kincaid’s novel. It’s impossible to compare powerful nations such as the United States and Great Britain, to developing countries in South America, the Caribbean, Southeast Asia and Africa. We are currently living in a world where wealthy nations exploit, control and enslave other countries by economic practices instead of using whips and chains. This term, also referred to as “Neo-colonialism”, was coined by Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah to describe the economic, social, cultural and political practice of using capitalism, business globalization, cultural imperialism and –international– economic arrangements to maintain colonial control. In other words, the essence of neo-colonialism is that sovereign states, although theoretically independent, are still subjected to economic systems and political policies directed from outside, mostly by powerful and greedy nations.

Despite the decolonization that occurred after World War II (1939-1945) was over, former colonial powers continued to apply economic arrangements with their former colonies to maintain political and economic control. Imperial practices were mostly done by the United States, and the empires of Great Britain, France, and other European countries. However, these practices can also be traced back to the discovery of America, where Spain, Great Britain and Portugal colonized and exploited countries by bringing slavery and taking all the natural resources back to Europe.

Neo-colonialism is also based upon the idea of breaking up large and united territories into small, non-viable states which are incapable of independent development. Therefore, these territories must rely upon imperialist nations for internal security and even international affairs. This idea can be traced to the separation of the former Yugoslavia, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, where socialist and communist regimes were in control. It’s no surprise the United States, and other capitalist nations, were involved in these issues. The Cold War between the United States and the former Soviet Union is the perfect example, mostly because it wasn’t a war between two powerful nations, but rather between socialist regimes and capitalist democracies.

Lastly, another facet of neo-colonialism is the disproportionate involvement of multinational corporations in developing countries. Many capitalist businesses invest an immediate and large amount of capital, but instead, these corporations just exploit the natural resources of developing countries. Privatizing and restricting national resources –and their access– has an influential role on local and national scales, such as unemployment and poverty, which results in the underdevelopment of these countries. Therefore, corruption and crimes involving the government of developing countries, such as Antigua in “A Small Place”, isn’t a local issue, but rather a web of economic interests linked to wealthy, imperialist countries.