COLUMN ONE: U.S. retiree's bilingual school wins hearts in Mexico

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.

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 the former Chicagoan, 71. "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 kids to learn English in a town where most of the good jobs require it. It's also a testament to how badly government educators are failing many of Mexico's youths.

There are few developing nations with more to gain by teaching its citizens English. About 85% of Mexico's exports go to the U.S. Americans and Canadians comprise the majority of its international visitors. More than 400,000 Mexicans migrate illegally to the U.S. 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 Latin nations such as Costa Rica and Chile have seized on English fluency as a key to their 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.

Experts blame scarce resources, an inflexible teachers union and widespread resentment of U.S. hegemony. Puerto Vallarta mom 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 daily before dawn to prepare refried beans to peddle to 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 Rodolfo 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.

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.

He found his calling in advertising, eventually starting his own agency, Chicago-based Bender, Browning, Dolby & Sanderson. Bender prospered. He and his wife, Gloria, moved into a stylish oceanfront home north of Puerto Vallarta in 2000. It was time to slow down, enjoy the good life.

But the kinetic Bender found he could only golf so many rounds. The chasm between Mexico's haves and have-nots gnawed at him. So did the corruption that stifles so much entrepreneurial activity here. Education, he reasoned, was the remedy.

He helped raise scholarships to keep low-income children in class with money for uniforms, supplies and other extras not covered by the government. Then he got a good look at the public schools. There he saw teeming classrooms, crumbling facilities, poorly trained teachers and pitifully low expectations for students. "I thought, 'Oh, my God, what are we doing to these kids that we're supposed to be helping?' " he said.

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.

Bender spearheaded a fundraising effort, hitting up friends in the U.S. for seed money to clear an old junkyard and build three classrooms on rented land. Colegio Mexico-Americano opened its doors with 35 preschoolers and the goal of adding a grade every year all the way through high school.

But as the school expanded, Bender spotted a trend that disturbed him. Slots were being taken by the children of well-heeled parents who knew a bargain when they saw one. Annual tuition and fees are $2,645 for a grade-school student. That's 40% below the city average for comparable private schools and less than one-third the annual cost for the American School, the city's priciest academy.

"I'm looking at all these fancy cars pulling up and I'm thinking … we're not here to perpetuate the society that Mexico already has," Bender said. "I don't want to be a revolutionary. I just want to give ordinary Mexican families the chance to get on the bottom rung so they can climb up themselves."