On Jim Cooper: Helping

          In this writing, Jim Cooper exposes the educational differences between the American system and the "puertorrican" system. The big difference that he exposes is that the American system is competitive and the puertorrican system is cooperative. But where does this sense of competitiveness or cooperativeness comes from? Is it intrinsic from the educational system or does it has socio-cultural roots? In analyzing this we have to take in consideration the time at which this was written because the Puerto Rico, and the conditions in it, are not the same to the ones we have today. In other words we cant be ana-cronical about this. For instance back then we were not as "Americanized"as we are now, because we have now been under direct American influence for over a hundred years. Back then it was just a couple of decades so we were still as "boricuas" as we could have been.

     Now we have adopted a lot of customs and traditions from the US and we have lost some of our traditions, but I think its not that we surrender our traditions to adopt the ones from the US but that the capitalist system, in which virtually all country in the world are part of, has forced us to adopt certain customs that are more convenient in this kind of system. The fact that we take them from the US its due to he fact that first we are part of it and second they are probably the best ones in this capitalist system so why not copy the best one? Hey it is helping! In this same line of thought a competitive systems makes a perfect "training" for a capitalist society in contrast a cooperative system its not the best way to go in a system in which you have to fend for you're self and that if you don't know how to do something you will get run over by others.

     Now, I am not saying that being cooperative is a bad thing but neither I am saying that being competitive is also. But that a system is probably a reflection of the society and its circumstances. But here we are talking at a collective level, sociologically we should say. If we go down to an individualistic  level or a pshycologial level it takes a whole new meaning. This is because at an individual level we may have different motivators such as not liking the person at our side so we will not help them. Maybe we know the teacher personally or a family member does and we are afraid that helping others could bring a bad situation. But then again it comes down to the circumstances.

Jim should have tried this.