Reflection: A room with a view

           A room with a view, a film by James Ivory tha takes place in Florence, Italy. This movie shows how an external journey can be part of such an important internal journey in your life. Lucy struggles finding herself as a woman. Her trip to Italy gives her the opportunity to open up to other ideals different from the ones she was used to back home. Eleanor says in the move, “One doesn’t come to Italy for niceness, one comes for life.” This is an example of an important internal journey. We all go through experiences that shape us as a person, but traveling to other places gives us an opportunity to realize that there is other cultures, other ideas and values. It gives us the opportunity to really choose the ones that you want to be part of your truly self. I think that every human being has a point in his or her life that we go through a phase looking for something. Looking for inspiration, for love, friends, dream. Anything that makes us feel alive. Lucy is a young woman going through this phase in her life where she really doesn’t know what she wants. Throughout the movie she grows into a woman and we can see how she chooses to follow her heart. She discovers love with George.

Many important encounters are seen while Lucy is visiting Italy. She encounters the Emersons and meets George who rescues her from another encounter. But this time, it was with two Italian men who were in the middle of a fight. This is when she is kissed by him and everything start,  and after many ups and downs and change of decisions it ends as it started. Another important theme that we find in this film is the identity of a tourist vs. a traveler. Lucy first explains how she goes to Italy as a tourist and the Reverend replies: "We residents sometimes pity you poor tourists not a little...Handed about like a parcel of goods from Venice to Florence, Florence to Rome, quite unconscious of anything outside Baedeker. Their one anxiety to get done and flew and go on elsewhere else." This is a perfect explanation on how tourists do not really interact with the culture of the place they are visiting because in many cases they just visit certain places, take pictures and leave.

            In contrast, George is a traveler. He experiences interest in getting to know the people of Florence and England while he was staying there. He goes out, explores, talk to people; actually learning from the place where he is staying. This is what everybody should feel when going to a new place; the feeling of wanting to learn and experience the culture, the people, their beliefs and traditions. This is the only way that you could actually learn and experience not only an external journal but an internal one as well.

English Program back in the 1950's

If learn a new language is difficult, the task to teach it is even more complicated. This issue is present in the chapter 7 of Down on the Island by Jim Cooper.  By the economical and political changes that where passing at that time in the island affected enormously the educational system. It’s why the English language became the second language in the decade of 1950, and most of people had the interest to learn it. Cooper, talks about how challenging was to teach this a second language to the people of Puerto Rico.

            Many experiences like the students didn’t care about learning this language was the major issue for Jim cooper, which was an English Professor from Minneapolis in a college in Mayagüez during the 1950's. One of the biggest problems that were facing Cooper was that the majority didn’t know the language, and most of the students have the inspiration or motivation to learn this new language. And this probably was passing with the non-helping from other teachers. Many of this teachers was meant to follow the educational system without the most important interest that a teacher had to have, imparting knowledge to their students, taking care about their studies and making them loving what they were learning.

            Many decades has been pass, but the same issue persists. Many teachers doesn’t care about their students, some care about the money they are getting, some others, a little population of them, still care about imparting the knowledge and care about their futures. Like Cooper said: “There are other professors who really want to motivate their students and teach the way that they can improve and become better intellectual people”.

The Fine Line Between Cheating And Helping

"Helping” the idea presented could be summarize as the following, Puerto Ricans called cheating as "helping" your friend or your neighbor.  By definition “help” means to make it easier for someone to do something by offering services or resources.  Puerto Ricans took that literally and applied it to any circumstance, even during exams.  For Mr. Cooper and of all the other "Continentals" which are the American professors, this helping behavior was simply cheating.  Puerto Ricans didn't see it that way, for them what matter the most was that everyone could get the right answer to get the good grades and pass the classes.  One of the Puerto Rican faculty members once told the continentals their purpose for allowing this "helping behavior".  He said, "You miss the point completely. I'm interested in my students learning the right answer to the questions.  If they can learn more easily by copying from a neighbors paper than they can from me , what difference does it makes? You people don't really care whether a student learns anything or not.  You're only interested in how he learns it." It was hard for Mr. Cooper and the rest of the American English teachers to understand the roots of the cheating problem, until they discovered that this behavior was taught since first grade. Teachers told their students to look at their neighbor’s paper if they didn't understand.  It is clear that for Puerto Ricans, it was normal to cheat since they saw it as help.

This helping behavior started since the early childhood of the students.  Puerto Ricans were raised in a cooperative mentality.  You help others so that in the end everyone's gets a good grade.  No matter how unfair it may be to give the answers or do the job for others.  Puerto Rican students see it as okay to help their friends because they like them.  On the contrary, Americans were raised with a competitive mentality and for them you only need to look out for yourself.  The Education in the US is like a competition between you and your rival classmates.  Ultimately, your goal is to be the best in your class.  It's hard to choose which model works better but I think the competitive one creates a stronger personality.  With that mentality, you always want to strive for excellence.  It does not mean you cannot help others.   You can helped them understand the material by explaining how to do it and not by giving them the answers.  The true way of learning is by understanding what's been taught and practicing not by cheating.  At the end of the day, if you cheat you really don't learn anything.