The American School

Although I disagree with Silvana Paternostro is basically everything she has said so far in what I've read, I can relate with what she says about the school she used to go. The author grew up in Barranquilla, where she attended the American school. She doesn't talk about it much but what she has said made me reflect about some aspects of my life.

As I go to CNG, Bogota's American school, I can understand the what Paternostro says. Paternostro shows her school as being a very different American environment, which is probably true in regards to the teachers. I feel like in CNG, even though it's not a completely separate world from the rest of Colombia, students do live in a bubble from the rest of society. The author shows her school as a unconnected place with society. While students at CNG are not ignorant about their country and do relate with the rest of society, a lot of times we do it as if we were looking at it from the outside. Most Colombians feel poverty and inequality, but I am only aware of it from the reading about it in the newspapers or being shocked by statistics. I do notice the superficial side of it, people asking for money outside my car's window, or simply seeing the inadequate houses that cover Bogota, but that is not living the problem. The author talks about her seeing an M19 sign outside her house and just going into her school where everything was different. I don't see anything related to the guerrillas before going to school but it is right next to a slum and, even though the school helps the people who live there with the Hogar, we live in separate cities.

Another thing that Paternistro reminded me of are the classist expressions students at CNG use. The author says that people at her school used the word corroncho. At CNG people use the word pacho or pacha, which refers to anything middle class and below. Paternostro has helped me notice that this commonly used slang is offensive and very politically incorrect.
Even though I disagree with Paternostro in a lot of things, mostly political, she does convince me that Colombians can be very wrongfully. classist.