Chloe is really happy to be back at school with her friends. She is not happy to be back doing homework. In Spain they listened (or didn't) to the teacher, took notes, and went home and studied. Few assignments to turn in, mostly just tests. And certainly none of this:
Spend an hour alone in a quiet, natural setting. Open your senses and pay attention to what you observe, hear, touch, smell. What might be the essentials of life according to this place? See if you can learn what it has to teach.
You're guessing that this is a Psychology of Humankind's Place Within the Cosmos class? Don't be silly: it's American Studies. I can just see the head-shaking and muttering of Americanos back in Spain. Alicia's parents could not understand why we have school sports because playing games has nothing to do with school: school+sports=wasted time better spent on academics. When told that kids sometimes miss class to participate in those sports, they felt that the conversation had taken such a preposterous turn that there was no use discussing such nonsense any further. Imagine what they would think of the above assignment.
I have to say that I like Chloe's school and the teachers there. I know why they do this sort of thing (and it has a lot to do with the last seminar they attended). Teaching the whole student, engaging all the senses for a hands-on learning experience instead of rote memorization, etc. But this is my twenty-third year as the parent of school-age children and I'm just a little tired of assignments that ask the students personal questions that demand that they analyze their psyches in public. Other than that Chloe is an American, I'm not getting the connection between "the essentials of life according to this place" and American Studies.
The school day here is much more fun and Chloe is happy to be a part of it. Not just fun in the goofing-off sense, but in the interactions between students and teachers, extra-curricular activities, a much more relaxed attitude, the various teaching methods. She often lamented the amount of studying (reading and memorization) she had to do in Spain. But (of course, but), after last year she feels like many of the assignments here are not much more than busy work, that the students aren't trusted enough to simply study and pass tests to prove their success at remembering what they've been taught. She's also afraid that's a snobby attitude. And she's probably partly right on both counts.
One indication of Chloe's maturity: she's figured out that her year as an exchange student in a foreign country is a goldmine laden with buzzwords that come in handy when answering the many self-examination questions: grown, matured, other cultures, ethnocentric, tolerance, bigotry, broadened, acceptance, culturally sensitive, self-reliant. A twenty-minute walk to Hemingway Plaza in Pamplona is the source material for a five-page paper.
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