It’s too bad a certain poster from Jamaica isn’t on this thread to give his perspective.
- Thread starter aarhus
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What country will the DR be similar to?
NAL's has been trying to be oblique/stealthy about it (due to the ban about discussing racial matters on this forum), but he has a point when he says that British colonization on this island wouldn't have been better than the Spanish one we ended up getting, and this because the plantation complex would have entered with them here in full swing, while Santo Domingo under Spain only experienced the full rigors of it during the first half century of colonization, and then ended up being abandoned due to competition with Brazilian sugar and the gold colonies of the continent. The fact that this island (and Puerto Rico to a lesser extent) were marginal military outposts surviving on cattle ranching ended up producing more social/ethnic cohesion than the one the British/French/Dutch Caribbean holdings ended up getting, and this has been remarked not only by Moreau de Saint Mery (the one NAL's cited) but also by other foreign oberservers like Alexander Humboldt, Samuel Hazard and Harry Hoetink among others.
Auryn, just one example, have you asked yourself why DR (or Cuba and Puerto Rico, for that matter) failed to produce a creole dialect among their lower classes while the colonies of the rival powers ended up producing those, furthering the social gap between African slaves and European creoles? Think about it for a second.
How much money can be thrown to education to, for example, get most Dominican teachers to read a book?
And yet, that very system produces well rounded education for students intent on learning rather than going to school to socialize and killing time. Now Dominican public schools are into giving meals too, add getting a full belly to that too.
Well then, the next time give them a children's book and check up on that in a few months. One of the persons I mentioned previously grew up in a wooden shack with zinc roof and dirt floors. He went to the same public schools some are blaming for the education level and yet, he was able to get a scholarship and is now one of the highest income earners in the USA, among Dominicans he would most likely be in the 1%. Lets simply ignore him, because we all know the problem are the teachers and "the system" of Dominican public schools and not the students themselves. It makes it very hard to "blame the system" when this very same "system" produced him. Did I mentioned he also had a sister and has a brother who didn't have the grades to follow a similar path. They were like most of the other students in the same public schools, since all three attended the same primary and secondary schools.
More like some people don't want to accept reality. In the mean time, count your change the next time you pay at say Sirena. Some of the simplest addition seems to be extremely hard. One would think this issue was created by the schools they attended, but lets ignore the other students that went to the same schools as them and were their classmates but know that 2 + 2 = 4. Maybe what the teacher taught went in some ears and eyes much better than in others.
A person can be taught under a mango tree or in a very fancy school and if they don't want to learn, there is nothing anyone can do about it.
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It would be interesting to compare Spain to Puerto Rico. Even the Canary Islands are better off than Puerto Rico and most of the population isn't on some form of welfare. What would be of life if all the government programs used on a wide scale in Puerto Rico were eliminated. I think the sky starts to fall.
I wonder how well the education system in the French Caribbean islands is, considering they are still part of France and the French system is very good. I have worked with a number of Guadeloupeans and if they are an example, the system is good.
I believe the forum is allowed for left and right and liberals and conservatives.
There was definitely something very positive about the Spanish culture in that regard. I read in a history book that the Spanish would typically recognize their children outside marriage whereas other cultures considered it a scandal. The Spanish and Portuguese maybe mixed more.
It was explicitly commanded by the Catholic Church that any Spanish colonist would acknowledge their bastard offspring with the African and/or Amerindian slave/encomendada on the pain of jail and excommunication. In that sense one could say that Spaniards were better Catholics than the French ever were (of course, Huguenotism must have played a role in their being more similar in the treatment of the matter to the Germanic/Protestant countries).
I would argue that a good functioning education system is one where each and every child ( well, at least a majority ), are giving the tools to function and sustain themselves in a given society.
Just because a few % come out ahead does not mean the education system works, quite the contrary. Those same few % would have achieved no matter what.
I met a couple of wealthy, very wealthy Sierra-Leon guys ( no idea what the adjective is ), so i guess their education system is just fine.
Nobody in the DR wants any meaningful change to education, not the wealthy minority who are just doing fine, not the masses because they dont really know any better and are quite content with the little they have ( any guesses why ? ), not the embryo of a middle class who are just happy to raise a bit above the fray, not the tourists who just want cheap holidays, not the few expats who also just want a cheaper-than-back-home lifestyle.
As long as the dominican people do not realize they picked-- and are still picking--the short straw, statu quo will prevail.
Just because a few % come out ahead does not mean the education system works, quite the contrary. Those same few % would have achieved no matter what.
I met a couple of wealthy, very wealthy Sierra-Leon guys ( no idea what the adjective is ), so i guess their education system is just fine.
Nobody in the DR wants any meaningful change to education, not the wealthy minority who are just doing fine, not the masses because they dont really know any better and are quite content with the little they have ( any guesses why ? ), not the embryo of a middle class who are just happy to raise a bit above the fray, not the tourists who just want cheap holidays, not the few expats who also just want a cheaper-than-back-home lifestyle.
As long as the dominican people do not realize they picked-- and are still picking--the short straw, statu quo will prevail.
Modern day Dominican culture in a nut shell.
I have lived here long enough to have seen young
children with all the desire in the world to have a bright
future say the hell with it by the time they are a teenager
when reality kicks in and they realize what they are up against.
At the end of the day, Dominicans are wired differently and
there is absolutely nothing anyone can do to change it.
When cornered, most Dominicans resort to their tried-and-true trump card: the size of their bank accounts, and they're usually celebrated by fellow compatriots, with obvious disregard for the methods employed.
To most Dominicans, rico e' rico, y lo' demá' e' pendejá. Papeleta mató a menudo. Lo dólare son lo' dólare', y lo demá' e' monte y culebra.
The rich elites are not interested. When their kids go to Boston or Chicago to study they choose the soft career path. You will never see a Rainieri or Corripio taking on STEM career path.
Watch this video to see whats the 100 years and next 40 years are about:
Asia will leave Latin America in the dust.
Note. I am dominican raised, I read a lot (mostly in English, Spanish, some French).
Ricardo Nieve / La verdad de la Olgarquia 2
At the risk of sounding gringo, here's my answer to that: correctomundo.
I understand Frank Elías Rainieri studied at La Sorborne, but I'd venture to hazard a guess that dad pulled strings.
"He received a bachelor’s degree in business management from RWU in 1999 and a master’s degree in finance from Boston University in 2003."
Administracion de empresas is the order of the day
Too late to edit lat post.
But I do enjoy listening to Nieves, and I agree with most of what he says. Guerrero Heredia not so much, for he invariably resorts to his favorite topic, postmodernism, ad nauseam... and having studied at Yale.
In some circles, G. Heredia is known as Mr. Yale. I've met many, many Ivy Leaguers and a couple of Rhodes Scholars, and never heard them brag about their alma maters.
It's par for the course for most Dominicans: "Look at me, I attended a U.S. university, and Harvard/Yale, in case you're wondering."
But I do enjoy listening to Nieves, and I agree with most of what he says. Guerrero Heredia not so much, for he invariably resorts to his favorite topic, postmodernism, ad nauseam... and having studied at Yale.
In some circles, G. Heredia is known as Mr. Yale. I've met many, many Ivy Leaguers and a couple of Rhodes Scholars, and never heard them brag about their alma maters.
It's par for the course for most Dominicans: "Look at me, I attended a U.S. university, and Harvard/Yale, in case you're wondering."
I stand corrected.
With a Rainieri pedigree, he should've gone to Brown, then Wharton or MIT, or the only school Dominicans know, JALBAL.
You are aware that people like Frank Rainieri and José Luis Corripio weren't born rich, right? I don't remember anyone even mentioning Frank Rainieri over the 20 years that he devoted to creating Punta Cana and didn't made a single cent. The same with Corripio when it was one simple store and much smaller near the Parque Independencia. Most people would simply give up when their devotion is simply eating up their money with no return for decades and hardly anyone believe in them including the Dominican government.
Now it's easy to talk about the entire Punta Cana region with the thousands of jobs it creates, but all of that exists precisely because Frank never gave up.
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Same as the owner of Bravo supermarkets, CCN, and Sirena
Ip
You are aware They weren’t born poor! They knew how to read, converse and think! That is what that little trick of being educated can help with.