opinion

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Gringo scapegoats for

a fake doctor’s failure

by Eric Jackson

Admissions are way down at the University of Panama, just as the crop of high school graduates is bigger than ever. The top heavy political patronage administration is considering which faculties to cut how much, arguing that we are producing more teachers than there are teaching jobs to fill and so on.

Meanwhile, I know a young man in his early 20s who’s very bright, but who went to high school in a place in the Interior where the English teachers hardly spoke English themselves, and who came from a poor family without the means to provide for a private higher education. He applied to the University of Panama, but was rejected because he flunked the English requirement.

Yes, I realize that among the influx of North American retirees there are your stereotypical superficial gringos who think it’s so wonderful that the teaching of English in the schools will mean cheap English-speaking household servants and thus no need to learn Spanish. People like that typically also never learn any history, and tend to point fingers everywhere but in the right direction when they get blind sided by it. They also don’t tend to read The Panama News or anything to which they haven’t been exposed or don’t agree.

So leave it to the rest of us to understand how dangerous the effect of the Rector Magnifico’s policies are to the American community here. Panama is throwing away talent that it can’t afford to lose, telling bright kids who should be in a university classroom that their future is machete work, because they don’t speak our language. There aren’t too many things that can more easily inflame public passions against us. All it takes is unmet economic expectations and a few demagogues to whip up the emotions.

The English requirement didn’t come from our community. It came in the first instance from a legislator who hardly speaks any English at all. In the first form it would have made English the official second language, and was mercifully killed because of constitutional objections. The legislation that ended up passing required the study of a second language, but it didn’t limit that to English and it didn’t make proficiency a requirement for university admission. The slighting of Mandarin, Arabic, French, Ngobere and so on was a lazy decision of educational bureaucrats who never really considered what this country at the crossroads of the world really needs for its long-term development.

Yes, every student in Panama should have to study at least two languages, one of which must be Spanish. However, this country can’t afford to deny a higher education to youngsters whose talents don’t include facility with foreign tongues. Panama’s English-speaking community should be generous in its offers to help those who want to learn our language, but we should learn Spanish to fit into the Hispanic society amidst which we live.

And let us understand the trap that the rector with the fake doctorate and the crooked legislators et al have set for us. They are reneging on a generations-old promise of a free public higher education for Panama’s smarter high school graduates. They’re reneging on the promise that the Panama Canal Authority made earlier this year --- with public funds --- to create 297,400 new jobs. They’re for all practical matters privatizing higher education, reserving all the better jobs for people whose parents can afford to send them somewhere other than the University of Panama.

And they’re setting up the gringos to take the blame for their selfish, short-sighted and anti-Panamanian policies.

Sirias, Two thoughts
Jackson, Setting up the gringos as scapegoats
Birns, Will the Democrats change US policy in the region?
Roy, The hue and cry after a disaster can't substitute for prevention
Carpio, Banana politics
Pilgrim, Make AIDS a priority in the Caribbean
Bresnahan, The Pinochet legacy
Bernal, Presidential power and the party system

Ramey, True Muslims don't deny the Holocaust