Thoughts on Jim Cooper’s “Down on the Island”

                I found this text most intriguing. It’s a first person narrative enriching us with an American professor’s academic experience in Puerto Rico. The author relates how was his practice as an english teacher at the UPR Mayaguez, a.k.a. “El Colegio”. Jim used to teach in various places, but he was astonished when he arrived to Puerto Rico. He described is as a “new world”, yet he tells us that this world converts into the only world, as in the normal world. The text is filled with critics of how the education in Puerto Rico was in the early days of the university. Most students didn’t know English and the few that did were from private schools or emigrated from the United States of America. In fact, the whole experience I had reading this text was just how overwhelmed he was of what Puerto Rico was like. The author then evolves into understanding the culture and tries to shape it in the most positive way. He wanted to help the Puerto Rican community into understanding and achieving the English language.

                Jim Cooper tells us that most elementary, high school and university teachers didn’t even know how to speak English fluently, some didn’t even know how to speak it and were “teaching” the wrong way. The whole idea of the text surrounds us with conflicts in our country’s education in the English language, but nevertheless, it searches for the solution more than anything. The observations he makes at the time are fascinating, knowing that now a day in Puerto Rico it is of upmost necessity being bilingual, and at least speak English correctly. He narrates that most of the students didn’t take the English course seriously; they thought it was just one of their other classes that they passed automatically. But indeed they were wrong; the university staff took responsible measures to make this stereotypical thought disappear.

                Although it was very difficult to teach the young students, thanks to their unorthodox methods of learning English in their early stages of life, He did feel he achieved something. He wanted to help the students, he made the English curriculum, he wanted to make a change in this country, such as many other teachers and students alike (many from the states) who shared the same constructive values. Along the trembling path of atrocities the country’s English education guided him through, he never lost hope and never gave up on changing the way these students were taught the English language.

                As time passed, things began to change, some in positive and others in negative directions. One thing was for certain, Jim Cooper helped form the outline of our country’s education in the English matter. Being able to deal with students, their parents and other teachers as well had made him enrich his knowledge so much, getting ready to spread intellect in every way possible to our whole culture, who lacked the educational resources to learn such an important language such as English. May the bulldogs of "Maya" remember Jim Cooper for the rest of time.