The English Program of 1950's

Imparting knowledge from one human being to another can be quite a difficult task when the teacher is not familiar with the education methods of a certain place. In the chapter called Teaching English on the text Down On the Island by Jim Cooper, teaching english is presented as major issue that is present in most of the public education system of the time. Jim Cooper, English Professor from Minneapolis in a college in Mayagüez during the 1950's, writes about how challenging it was to come up with an appropriate syllabus and decent method to educate a second language to the Puerto Rican people.

This, in many ways, relates with the universal communication model. If broken down, one can assign the intended meaning with the teacher's purpose to educate while the perceived meaning is the way the student captures the knowledge provided by the educator. Nevertheless, each meaning, either the educator's or the student's, is tied to each one's reality. For example, in the text, Jim Cooper, English literate, had every intention in having a positive influence on his student's knowledge in English. On the other hand, many students had little to no interest on the matter. This wasn't necessarily because the message intended by the teachers wasn't important, but because their shared space, the English program, wasn't developed correctly. For this reason, Cooper and the other professors modified certain details in order to make it more efficient. Their new program, although not perfect, developed a certain interest in many non English speaking students who attended the Colegio.

At the time, Jim Cooper's approach to solving such conflict made teaching English a more viable process that resulted in more people passing the class. All it took was a slight alteration in the student's and teacher's shared space (English program) in order to obtain a development in the education system of the 1950's.