Uruguayan Education from Both Directions

Hoo-nelly! Well, there’s a lot to get to about yesterday – it was such a full day I didn’t get a chance to blog about it until now. But, since we’re here, let’s get ‘er done, and try to be efficient about it. We shall so do by supplying captions and explanations for a number of photographs. All in favor? (Aye.) The “aye”s have it. Proceed.

I left the hotel about 8:00, having seen a couple of fellow Fulbrighters, and headed straight to the Liceo #9. Natalia and I were giving class an hour later, and I did, I think, three more presentations. Hard to tell – they’re blurring together a bit. I also went with Natalia on two different occasions to sit in a classroom for an hour, and wat and see if students came in looking for extra help. They did, both times, and we split them in half and each took a group, to give them helpful hints on English skills. Very attentive and dedicated students, all who showed up.

Our day at the liceo ended a little earlier than it usually does, and Natalia was doing no lessons at the instituto, so we headed off to a museum. But before we did, I noticed, and got some pictures of, their area on the wall where they post things from their union. I thought those were interesting. I saw soooo much evidence of poitical activity – I would love to hire a car and drive around the city, just looking for things to take pictures of for my left-versus-right class. We saw, out the bus window, a meeting going on at a neighborhood center for the party that lauched their president, José Mujica, a former poitical prisoner and guerrilla fighter, to national prominence; graffiti that were clearly pro-leftist…Fascinating stuff. But the bus goes too fast, and you can’t snap pics of everything.

"In defense of public education, for a bigger budget - General raise in salaries; Repairs, construction, and maintenance of the facilities; The creation of positions; No to reductions."

That's the wall itself.

"Union Postings"

But we headed to the Blanes museum. Blanes is the most celebrated Uruguayan painter, and his images of national mythology, as well as his portraits of gauchos and Indians from Uruguay’s past, are emblematic of the Uruguayan sense of self. It was very cool to see them, housed in what was apparently his family home.

(Natalia’s father tells a story that holds that the little tower on top of the house was designed to hold the master of the house’s wife, who was known to enjoy the company of men other than her husband. She was walled up in there and went crazy. True? Hey, it sounds plausible. And interesting. That’s all I really ask for.)

"La cautiva" - A prominent piece, and a theme in a great deal of Southern Cone literature: The white female, captive among Indians.

Gaucho portraits.

"Los treinta y tres" - There's a departamento,  or political division (similar to a province or a state, but with no government of its own) named "Treinta y tres", or thirty-three. I haven't counted the people in this portrait, but I think that somewhere around that number did something important in the history of Uruguay at some point. It's a hunch.

We then took the bus to the National Univeristy's Engineering campus. When we got out, we saw this sign:

"WIthout English" vs "With English from Alianza". That's all I needed?!

The Engineering Campus, not unlike some public universities I have seen (and attended), has a real Soviet-style, hulking, practical, utilitarian grandeur about it. This is the main entrance.

The seal of the University above the main entrance.

The bookstore at the Engineering campus.

Loved this title - "Consumption World".

The founder, I think...? Can't recall.

This is in the library. Note the mate being drunk by the diligent future engineers of Uruguay.

Hallway leading to the office of this man:

Ing. Daniel Schenzer, tenured preofessor of fluid mechanics, husband of Natalia's employer at IECO, the English institute where she works, and our phenomenally generous, knowledgeable, and informative guide for the afternoon.

It's difficult to know where to begin when trying to relate all the things Ing. Schenzer told us about with regard to university-level education in Uruguay. I'll try to give the highlights:

Higher education is completely free. Everyone who has graduated from high school can come; many do, but not all stay. It's rather Darwinian. There are, once one reaches the last two years of high school, tracks that one must choose; the sciences track is what will get you into the Engineering School. Once there, there are no dormitories, and the only campus in the country is in Montevideo, which makes it hard for people with little in the way of economic resources, or who do not have family in Montevideo with whom to live, and must therefore rent a room. So it's not perfect. But the access to a University education is extremely egalitarian.

This was a point Ing. Schenzer made repeatedly throughout our time touring the school: Equality is king in Uruguay. "It's in our DNA", he said. Anything that smacks of elitism or of exclusion is beyond the pale. The university is occasionally subject to calls to have students pay fees or tuition instead of having the institution receive all its funds from taxation and grants and contracts that the University generates, and he says the faculty and the administration are always absolutely united against any such move.

The entire engineering class in Uruguay comes from this University. The national electric companies, gas companies, all the construction engineers who do the work of maintaining the bridges and dams and roads in the country, pass through the doors of this institution. And it is in many ways a world-class place, by his (and my) estimation, doing research in collaboration with UCLA and other universities. He took us to see the wind tunnel in the basement:

That's the front door. The drawing is probably five feet high. 

"Wind-dynamics section"

This dusty, broken, forgotten thing is the scale model that they used in determining what the eventual wind forces would be on this building.

Following our extensive tour, for which I just can't express sufficient gratitude, we took the bus to my hotel, where we picked up a suitcase full of my dirty laundry, and then headed to Natalia's parents' house, where we had a fantastic dinner, and where I left my laundry to be done. And again, I am incapable of expressing sufficient gratitude to these wonderful people who have opened their home and their hearts. Here they are:

Whoah! What a day that was - I got home around 12:30. And what a day today was - it started at 6:15 AM. I'll have to catch you up on that one a little later, though - I still haven't had dinner. Stay tuned!