Bureacracy

I have so many compliments to give the schools and my experience in Chile. The students are so sweet. The teachers are so patient and take on very large loads. The administrators are very helpful and attentive. I have a lot of positive things to say. However, I am deeply frustrated by the bureaucracy here. Bureaucracy that has the teachers paying attention to the sacred black books rather than the students. Let me explain: each class has a black book that has attendance and a page for each student to mark behavioral comments. If a teacher marks anything incorrectly, apparently he/she will be fined an absurd amount by the government. However, they are expected to use pen and to mark it correctly the first time. My observation is that this leads to LARGE amounts of class time spent writing in these sacred books rather than teaching. What can a teacher do? It's not their fault and they do the best they can, but this system frustrates me so much. How can they give the students their best and how can the students receive the best when so much time is spent on such folly.