An American's dream benefits children of Mexico resort city
Bilingual school aimed at serving working class

By Marla Dickerson, Los Angeles Times  |  April 15, 2007

PUERTO VALLARTA, Mexico -- A few years after retiring to this Pacific resort
city, 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 children.

Credit a seasoned adman for knowing his market.

Fewer than five years since its founding, Colegio Mexico-Americano has become
the largest school in Puerto Vallarta. The nonprofit's tuition is 70 percent
lower than that of the city's priciest bilingual academy. Enrollment has grown
to 1,135 students, with dozens on the waiting list.

Friends who thought Bender had gone off the deep end were right in one respect;
the private institution boasts Puerto Vallarta's only Olympic-size swimming
pool.

Not bad for a project that began in August 2002 with a few preschoolers learning
their ABCs. It is vindication for Bender, a preacher's son who never lost faith
when the current campus was a weed-choked vacant lot with no funding and plenty
of doubters.

"We saw a tremendous need," said Bender, 71, a former Chicagoan. "We are trying
to build a middle class in Mexico."

Some might chafe at the notion of an American who speaks little Spanish
presuming to remake Mexican society. But the school's enthusiastic reception
here speaks of parents' desire for their children to learn English in a town
where most of the good jobs require it.

There are few developing nations with more to gain by teaching its citizens
English. About 85 percent of Mexico's exports go to the United States. Americans
and Canadians constitute the majority of its international visitors.

More than 400,000 Mexicans migrate illegally to the United States each year in
search of work. The money these expatriates send home -- $23 billion last year
alone -- is a pillar of Mexico's economy.

But while Hispanic nations such as Costa Rica and Chile have seized on English
fluency as a key to global competitiveness, Mexico has done little to prepare
its youngsters. The state requires just three hours a week of English
instruction for three years during Mexico's equivalent of junior high school,
often by teachers who don't speak the language well.

"Pencil. Window. Door. It was useless," said Jose de Jesus Alcantar Delgado, a
Puerto Vallarta workman recalling his rudimentary lessons. Lack of fluency has
kept him from higher-paying employment in the city's air-conditioned resorts.

Specialists blame scarce resources, an inflexible teachers union and widespread
resentment of US hegemony. But Puerto Vallarta mother Kenia Salazar Torres isn't
buying it. English is standard in elite academies where the children of Mexico's
wealthy matriculate. Salazar wants the same chance for her three boys.

Her oldest son, Jose Rodolfo, 9, has a partial scholarship to Colegio
Mexico-Americano. Salazar earns the rest by rising before dawn to prepare
refried beans for local markets. Her husband, Arturo, is a ticket seller at the
bus station. He's trying to land a better job to earn tuition money for their
twin 5-year-old sons.

Jose helps out by collecting cans to earn recycling money. On a recent
afternoon, he was too shy to practice his English. But the serious, handsome
child knows what's at stake.

"That's how you get a good job," he said softly in Spanish.

Such stories keep Bender focused on his 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.