8/11/22
Colegio Nueva Granada (CNG), Bogotá
Yesterday I went to Colegio Nueva Granada, the American school in Bogotá. This private school serves many of the wealthiest families in the Colombia, offering a bilingual international education.
At a dinner party last weekend I met someone, I'll call her Claudia, who worked at this school, and she and I started a discussion about progressive education and project-based learning. She set up a meeting between me and the director of the school – I came to his office at 11am yesterday, and we discussed project-based learning, in particular the need to find a balance between open-ended projects and the kind of strong foundational skills that are often developed to the point of automaticity through more traditional learning methods.
I then met with the school's service learning coordinator, who explained some of their programs. She mentioned that the school has strict rules about where students can donate their school uniforms: they aren't allowed to just give them to a second-hand shop. Instead, students return their sweatshirts and other school initials-branded clothing to the community service office: this office re-sells the high-quality uniforms to incoming students, and for the lower-quality uniforms, students can volunteer to help remove the embroidered "CNG" logo and add other designs in its stead before donating the clothing. I thought it was interesting how tightly the school seemed to manage their brand – how each student wearing CNG clothing is a walking advertisement for the kind of student that attends the school, and this they must ensure that the uniforms are not obtained or worn by unknown and unvetted entities.
The most interesting part of my visit involved taking a 5-minute walk from the CNG campus to another campus down the hill: Fundación Nuevo Hogar. Colegio Nuevo Hogar began as a daycare center for the children of families that were displaced to Bogotá from rural areas affected by the guerrilla. As the kids were about to age out of the preschool program, the founder of the school realized they had nowhere to go that would offer a comparable quality of education – so they added an additional grade (kindergarten), and then kept adding year after year until it became a fully-fledged K4-12th school. I was impressed that they were able to sustainably run such an expansive educational program with each student being on a full scholarship. She mentioned that they had donor program with CNG called "plan padrino," where families from CNG could sign up to sponsor a family from Fundación Nuevo Hogar. Claudia was lamenting that only 30% of CNG families donate. The community service coordinator explained that part of this has to do with the fact that many families already have organizations to which they are used to donating – it's not that they are ungenerous overall. The rest of the funding needed to support Fundación Nuevo Hogar comes from outside assistance – but many outside funders are hesitant to donate (one in particular pulled out recently) because there is a perception that the Hogar must already have plenty of funds by virtue of having a partnership with one of the richest private schools in Colombia. I asked if USAID or other international assistance agencies were interested in offering funds, and the director mentioned that she had looked into USAID, but that nearly all the funds they are offering in Colombia right now are to address Venezuelan migration. Her contact with USAID said, "if this year's entering class at least 10% Venezuelan, they might be able to fund you."
Claudia and the community service coordinator seemed to have different visions for the partnership between the two schools. The community service coordinator explained that people frequently come to her with grand visions for different projects or partnerships between the two campuses, and that she sees it as her job to reduce the scope of what they want to do to something manageable. Claudia said she sees so much more potential for the partnership between the two schools than what exists currently – in particular, she said that the mindset of CNG families towards the students at Nuevo Hogar needs to change: "People need to understand that it's not about charity, it's about empathy," she said. Her statement really resonated with me. Claudia had to go back to her office to work, while I got a tour of the Nuevo Hogar campus. After the tour, I walked back to Claudia's office to pick up my bag and say bye. I sat down first for a few minutes and we reflected a bit on the school tour. She explained to me that while her husband was getting his PhD at University of Miami, one of his classmates wanted to look at the topic of cross-class integration through education – and Claudia mentioned this pair of sister schools in Bogotá where he might be able to do his work. This researcher's findings were that despite the presence of joint activities with students from both schools, there was not true integration – that is, students were not truly becoming friends, and families did not spend time with each other outside of school.
This finding made me reflect on my own education where I had attended a Spanish immersion program from kindergarten through fifth grade that integrated students from two adjacent towns of vastly different socioeconomic levels – Palo Alto and East Palo Alto. Even though all of us took classes together, we had vastly different experiences
When I was sitting at the table a Fundación Nuevo Hogar with those three women – Claudia, the service learning coordinator, and the director of the school – I thought also about how I would one day be a middle-aged woman just like them, and also like them, I would likely be doing some kind of social impact work. On this trip, and even back home, I have seen so many (typically White) women involved in social impact work – and it often takes the format of a charity or foundation. I noticed how it fit some sort of trope in my mind – the thoughtful wife helping those in need, but at a bit of a superficial level, not quite at the level of systemic change. There's something about it that makes me kind of sad: as we were all sitting around this table talking about the efforts to integrate these two schools, I could tell that each of these women was extremely bright. The service learning coordinator mentioned that her father had been a diplomat, so she grew up in many countries – from Argentina to Tokyo. The woman who gave me the tour mentioned that her father had worked for IBM – so growing she would spend three years in Colombia and three in Connecticut. All of them spoke perfect English and Spanish. I felt like they could have been excellent CEOs, political advisors, or academics – that they could have taken their strengths and passion towards more systems-level change. I wondered if they hadn't wanted that, or if they hadn't thought they could. To me, the kinds of inequalities in Colombia – and in the US for that matter – that are made so apparent in the contrast between the family lives of those at CNG and at El Hogar could be addressed at a much larger scale through policy, research, or social advocacy. I see so many (mostly white) women in charity work, and I wonder why they choose that route – or perhaps why society makes them think that that's the best route for them to have an impact. At the same time, when I see White women in high-powered positions – like Sheryl Sandberg or Samantha Power – it's easy for me to critique them as "gaslight gate-keep girlbosses," or as taking on so much power without a commensurate level of expertise, or of knowledge about the full effects (not all necessarily positive) of the decisions they make.
As the director of El Hogar finished her tour and walked me towards the path back to CNG, I commented on the challenge of integration. She explained that "El Hogar was originally founded to promote the character development of students at Colegio Nueva Granada." That statement took me aback – it seemed so wrong to build an adjacent campus that helps low-income students namely for the edification of the wealthy students. The director explained, "I think we can bring in more funding if we help the families at CNG to realize that – that the school helps their students' character development, and in that sense is really to their benefit." That justification seemed so absurd to me – it instantly brought to mind a movie called "my sister's keeper," where parents have a second daughter because this second child will have a blood type that can be used in life-saving infusions for her sister. Certainly uncomfortable, but perhaps also necessary. I suppose if that justification gives more low-income students an education, then the ends may justify the means. But I agree deeply with Claudia, that the long-run goal is empathy, not charity. If you interact with someone to contribute to your character development, then you are using that person. I think the healthiest interactions are ones where two or more people work together to achieve an external goal that they both see as valuable, not where it's a quid-pro-quo of "I give you money and you give me character."
Image Sources:
Image 1 – source
Image 2 – source
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