4 Values Revisited: Social Justice

I find social justice to be the hardest value to practice here. Crossing cultures means spending so much time and energy just trying to understand what is going on. It would be arrogant to show up and start decrying social injustices without even understanding the society.

We are witnesses to so much social injustice. One of my first graders regularly told me about how drunk her father was the night before and how she and her older sister would hide “Ai, profe!” she would say as she skipped along beside me after school on our way to the parish “my father shouldn't drink so much.” It was just a fact of life for her, like it is for so many of my students. It's so obvious how I'm treated differently than the rest of my community mates because of my maleness; machismo is such an entrenched social injustice.

But through the year I've come to see how the programs/institutions we work for are part of the fight for social justice in Quispicanchi. One of the four core subjects taught at FyA 44 is “Personal y Social.”* It's a class devoted to understanding the self and society. Part of it's aim is to fight teen pregnancy through good sex education (yes there are catholic schools that goes beyond abstinence-only education, they're here in Peru. Catch up, USA). It also focuses on the dangers of alcohol abuse, the realities of puberty, self-esteem building, etc.

The parish's after school program is bursting with social justice initiatives. There's the hot lunch program. Poor parents pay S/.5 a month (the cost of one lunch at a cheap restaurant) and their children get to eat hot meals every day after classes. This helps parents who don't have time or money to cook their children lunch, the biggest meal of the day in Peru. There's the homework help and literacy programing in the library. Admittedly, this should be more highly valued by the parish staff, but the fact that it exists says something. And there's the ludoteca – the playroom where kids are encouraged to be children. Childhood is severely undervalued by many parents here in the hurry to have mature, self-sufficient children. In the ludoteca the children relearn how to play.

I think that part of the connection between social justice and this experience will be born out after I return to the States, when I can apply a lot of the expanded worldview I'm learning to life as a member of the most powerful nation of the planet.

*I don't need to translate this one for you, they're exact cognates.