Bilingual Education in Mexico

You may not have seen this article from Monday's Los Angeles Times Business section.

A FEW years after retiring to this Pacific resort city [Puerto Vallarta, Mexico], David Bender was bored with golf. His new hobby, the American decided, would be tackling Mexico's income inequality. He would do it by teaching English to Mexican children.

Never mind that Mexico didn't ask for his help. Or that the former advertising executive knew nothing about running a school. Bender saw working families hungry for affordable English-language instruction and a shot at upward mobility for their kids.

Credit a seasoned adman for knowing his market. Less than five years since its founding, Colegio Mexico-Americano has become the largest school in Puerto Vallarta. The nonprofit's tuition is 70% cheaper than that of the city's priciest bilingual academy. Enrollment has grown to 1,135 students, with dozens on the waiting list.

It's a wonderful article, with more great quotes than I can use here.

This is what bilingual education should be. It offers the students a chance for a better life, because with a command of English, these kids will be able to get jobs in the resorts that cater primarily to American tourists. Without English, they'll be stuck for life in the poverty that they and their parents are currently in.

Jose Rodolfo [a 9 year-old student at the school] helps out by collecting cans to earn recycling money. Fidgeting in a chair in the family's tidy home on a recent afternoon, he was too shy to practice his English with an American visitor. But the serious, handsome child knows what's at stake. "That's how you get a good job," he said softly in Spanish.

And why would David Bender take on this task in his retirement years? The article gives a few references, but doesn't quite come out and say it's because he's a Christian. Here's everything they say about his faith (emphasis added):

SUCH stories keep the balding, bespectacled Bender focused on what has become an all-consuming second career. Raised in Pittsburgh, the grandson of a penniless German immigrant farmer and the son of an evangelical minister, Bender parlayed a magazine writing contest into a college scholarship.

Conversations with the mostly Mexican congregation of his local church, the New Dawn Christian Center, led to the idea of launching a secular, nonprofit, bilingual school that working-class families could afford. The facility would give kids English skills to thrive in a global economy. It would stress character development to mold a new generation of leaders.

Old friends say his tenacity is characteristic of the hard-charging entrepreneur they knew from Chicago. So is the importance of faith and good works. Still, longtime pals such as Jim Hogan can't fathom why Bender would want to louse up a comfortable retirement with such a demanding do-gooder project.

Here's Bender's answer to that question:

"These kids are going to change Mexico," Bender said. "Wait and see."