Marquez watches with a smile as dozens of the 83 students who attend Valencianita's two-room high school spend a morning sprucing up the building and grounds. Some of the teen-agers plant rows of trees. Others sweep the classrooms and pick up trash from the yard. Several boys draw the school's logo on the front of the building and start coloring it in bright shades. Valencianita's is one of 200 so-called video high schools in Guanajuato.
Students learn by watching videotapes on topics ranging from history to physics.
After about 15 minutes of video instruction, the television is turned off and the school's three teachers lead students in reviewing the lesson. With 38 pupils per class, the school is crowded. Attention spans often wander as the videos play, teachers say. A jerry-built education, perhaps, but an improvement over the nothing Valencianita had before. And the school wouldn't exist if not for the village women's persistence at wheedling government pesos.