Spanish children are sassy

One of the things I find the most interesting about the Spanish education system is the children, and just how mouthy they can be. Here's an example:

Nacho, a third grader, is sitting at the front of the classroom, already separated from the rest of the class for something grave he's done within the first hour of school. As the hour continues, so does Nacho's acting out. He picks a fight with young Pablo next to him, then he throws his pencils off his desk and does other disruptive things. While the teacher is trying to tame him without giving him too much attention (which is clearly all the kid wants), he begins to talk back to her, telling her he will not comply with changing his card (a system put in place to check behavior issues)and even going so far as to curse out loud (hearing "joder" come out of an 8-year-old's mouth wasn't something I was preparing to experience).

Additionally, all of the children are allowed to get up and do whatever they want pretty much whenever they want. While the teacher is lecturing them because they can't seem to be quiet for longer than 3 seconds, someone inevitably gets up, sharpen their pencils, blow their nose, or does something else nonsensical that has nothing to do with the task at hand. Now, I know I've been out of the third grade for some time now, but I don't recall ever being allowed to just get up and walk around the classroom without permission, and much less in the middle of a lecture when the teacher is visibly seething with rage.

In any case, this is the situation I have been dealing with over the last week and a half of teaching at La Encina. I help teach both third-grade classes at the elementary school every day for an hour, and I also help teach the science classes twice a week. I also spend 90 minutes teaching 5-year-olds, who are cute but find me quite unique. The first day I went to help with the 5-year-olds, one of the little boys turned to the girl next to him and asked her in Spanish, "Is she from Africa?" The following day, in another classroom full of kindergarteners, a little girl came up to me, gave me a hug, grabbed my arm and started stroking it, telling me at the same time that I was quite "morenita" (tan). Yes, all of this from children that are 5.

The irony of the situation is that the first kid who called me African looks Philipino himself, and the second girl who called me "morenita" was amongst the most tan in the classroom. Both kids are among the few that make the school look somewhat diverse, considering that the majority of heads I see on the playground have blonde or light brown hair and blue/green eyes. Ana, the coordinator and actual teacher I work with, told me that Las Rozas is one of the more wealthy suburbs in the area, which I could tell by the amount of gated communities I see along the bus route I take to school each day.

From speaking to other teachers about the behavior of these third graders, I came to the realization that they are indeed, spoiled brats. Their fathers are lawyers, their mothers stay at home, and they get whatever they want, whenever they want it. Because Mommy and Daddy treat them like princes and princesses at home, they feel as though they have the right to do whatever they want in the classroom as well. And worse, the parents are so aloof that they don't seem to want to help deal with the behavioral problems some children have at school. One teacher told me that once she kept a student after school because of his behavior. After about 30 minutes, the students' father burst into her classroom, demanding to know where his son was. After the teacher explained she kept the student after school as a form of punishment, the father yelled to his son -- and in front of the teacher -- "Well when these assholes let you go home, call me so I can come pick you up."

I know better than to paint everyone with the same brushstroke, and I'm sure there are parents at that school who are more than involved in their child's education and who do discipline their children. But I find it very interesting to reflect on my education in the United States and how it differs from the education given to students here in Spain, and even to the one I received while living in Mexico for two years. Never can I recall a student sassing back to a teacher, and if he/she did, they certainly were not applauded by their parents for doing so. It was disrespectful, and if nothing else, the issue was something taken up in private. The parents themselves were much less likely to be outwardly rude to the teachers, and even less likely to do it in front of their child -- Monkey see, monkey do.

Even more interesting is that parental involvement and a child's behavior isn't at all related to the income level of parents, much to my surprise. I'd always heard that children were better behaved when their parents were better-educated, but I guess I didn't have to look so far to disprove that theory. I mean, I did spend my senior year of high school obsessed with watching The OC. Those kids were rich and snobby, extremely spoiled and they did pretty much whatever they wanted. In Spain or in the U.S., rotten children are just rotten, and no silk stockings will ever change that.