Puerto Rico

Apart from kindergarten with which children age five normally begin their primary education, the public school system does not as of yet universally provide preschools or nursery schools. Parents desiring to place their three and four year olds in such classes must have recourse to private facilities. The K-12 system characteristic of the United States is used for Puerto Rican preprimary, primary, and secondary education; it corresponds (ideally) to the age cohort of the pupil. No private nursery or preschooling enrollment figures have been found. Schools are coeducational, and, as said earlier, attendance is in theory compulsory by law. A single curriculum has been designed to be universally applied throughout the ten regional areas of Puerto Rico. Facilities for special education have been made available throughout the island's schools. Great efforts have also been made to provide cost free textbooks and other learning materials.

Public Primary Education: Virtually all public school facilities throughout the island identify primary education with the seven year K-6 grade sequence. First grade constitutes the initial year of proper schooling. Grades one through three constitute the first primary level, and grades four through six make up the second level.

All instruction is in Spanish with English introduced (usually in the second year) as a required foreign language. The subjects emphasized on Level I are basic reading, writing, and arithmetic with some exploration of English; drawing and a very elementary introduction to computing are also required. The visual arts and dance are introduced, along with basic hygiene, physical education, and music. Level II builds on the knowledge acquired; for example, there are more advanced mathematics that include elements of geometry within the context of measurements, the metric system, calculation, etc. The social sciences (history and civics) are introduced, as well as beginnings in science and technology (food chains, the physical properties of objects, health, plant structures, weather and climate, the atmosphere, etc.). The history of Puerto Rico is emphasized. Spanish grammar is taught "functionally," i.e., not in isolation but in connection with texts and writing. The Fine Arts, such as the visual arts, dance, theater, and music, are continued.

In 1993 Charter Schools (Escuelas de la Comunidad) were initiated. In principle the entire school system will eventually be converted to a variant of this system.

Public primary schools generally occupy buildings of their own, but this is not always the case in poorer, remote districts. Thus, the small community of Culebra, for example, crowds primary, middle, and upper secondary schooling into a single dilapidated building where the youngest children find themselves ignored by the older ones (El Nuevo Día, 12 February 2001). According to an English teacher there, whose real specialty is accounting and computer technology, material resources are very scarce and/or difficult to come by. The sole special education teacher takes care of 28 pupils at all age levels. The hygiene and health teacher has no classroom, yet she is required by law to teach kindergarten, third, eighth, ninth and tenth grade pupils; she does so beneath a staircase and wherever she can improvise a space. There are no laboratory facilities for science classes (middle and high school levels). The school has received no computers whatsoever from the Department of Education; 15 older models were made available by a private business for graduating seniors so that they might have at least some exposure to computing. Alienated, unhappy, and bored, Culebra's school population has a significant dropout rate, and, in part because all pupils are thrown together, the understandable cynicism of the older pupils exerts a powerful influence on the younger, primary level group.

About 86 percent of Puerto Rican public school pupils are from families whose incomes fall beneath the poverty level. Some 75 percent of the inhabitants of Adjuntas, Jayuya, and Utuado (small towns in the island's mountainous interior) live beneath the poverty level. It is in such towns that the illiteracy rate is highest. Thus, the child begins his or her schooling under unfavorable conditions.

Very shortly after the story of Culebra's single school broke in El Nuevo Día, the Governor of Puerto Rico, Sila M. Calderón, announced an emergency plan to immediately begin the much needed repair and remodeling of some 1,000 school buildings in the island (there are a total of 1,600 such buildings in Puerto Rico). It is hoped that this work, costing about $82 million, will be concluded by August 2001, in time for school reopenings. Finally, the sum of $105 million has been set aside for the acquisition of computers to be placed in the schools.

The Department of Education is also preparing to undertake a thorough study in order to determine what the island's illiteracy rate truly is and the socio-geographic features that characterize the places where this rate is particularly high. According to the 1990 census figures, out of a total population 10 or more years old of 2,904,455 residents, 307,915 did not know how to read or write.

Enrollment figures officially given by the Department of Education for the public primary schools of Puerto Rico during the academic year 1997-98, which are the latest available, were 360,700 (188,794 males and 171,906 females).

The middle or intermediate school corresponds to the seventh, eighth and ninth grades and, ideally, to pupils aged 12 through 14 or 15. Intermediate school enrollments during 1997-98 school year were 149,863 (77,506 males and 72,357 females). Given its adolescent clientele, the middle school is properly considered as forming part of the secondary education sector. No sharp curricular break occurs between the primary and the middle school, nor does one prevail between the middle and the senior high school, but the pupil's needs and interests reflect his and her growing maturation to adulthood. The task of the school is to respond adequately to these important mental, physical, social, and emotional changes. Thus, in both Spanish and English, the pupil is taught actively to write, think, do an initial draft, revise, correct, and "publish" his or her work. Reading requires analysis and evaluation. Mathematics became more content-oriented, involving (with geometry and algebra) matters of relation or pre-algebra. Elementary algebra, advanced geometry, and intermediate algebra constitute the sequence followed. Science introduces the pupil to the basic principles of biology, physics, chemistry, and the earth sciences. In the social sciences, emphasis is placed on the human being and his historical effort. The subjects taught are the history of Puerto Rico, Latin America, and the world. The fine arts, health, and physical education complete the intermediate cycle.

Efforts are made to provide adequate individual and group counseling, especially to forestall the dropouts that tend to begin at the middle school age. Problems of motivation are severe. Also, it must be said that social issues—delinquency and narcotics—increase in severity at the middle school level and ought to be better dealt with.