Buenos Aires Centre:

We have received these testimonials about the Spanish Language learning experience in our school.

Testimonial of Professor Gary Orfield
Harvard Graduate School of Education,
Kennedy School of Government
People thinking about coming to Buenos Aires during the current economic crisis may be worried about issues of safety. Buenos Aires is a very large cosmopolitan city and it is experiencing a very highly level of joblessness and poverty in a country which prospered in the 1990s. I was warned about the risks of crime and violence, things that are worrying many people in the city. In two weeks of daily and nightly excursions around the city in summer, I saw a high level of police and security presence in the good neighborhoods and nothing unusual to be concerned about. I felt safer than in a number of very large cities I know in the U.S. and in other countries in Latin America and Europe. The truth is that care is necessary in all large cities and each has its special issues, such as the need to take "radio taxis" in Buenos Aires and each has neighborhoods where one should not go at night. People who come to study need to take seriously the advice of those who live here. I think that the city has had an usually safe situation and is becoming like other great cities, unfortunately.

The school has contacts with home-stay families in elegant and sophisticated neighborhoods.

The city is fascinating, full of culture, and the people are friendly and easy to talk with. For people with dollars or euros the entire country is on sale and the costs of good meals in elegant restaurants, of beautiful leather goods, of side-trips, of books and CD's, clothes, and many other things is remarkably low.

If you come you should do your holiday shopping here. You can live in a city that has many aspects of Paris or Barcelona, but with a delicious Latin tang, as if your income were much higher. And, because the schools here have been badly hurt by a precipitous drop in travel from other countries it is possible to obtain wonderful one-to-one instruction and conversation with gifted teachers with much experience and a love of their city. In many ways the economic crisis offers a truly rare opportunity to experience an amazing and unique city.

Gary Orfield
Professor of Education and Social Policy
Harvard University

Gary Orfield is Professor of Education and Social Policy at Harvard. He joined the Harvard faculty in 1991, coming from the University of Chicago where he had been Professor of Political Science and Education for nine years. He also taught at the University of Virginia, Princeton University, and the University of Illinois. He received his B.A. from the University of Minnesota, summa cum laude, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from University of Chicago in political science. He has been a recipient of Woodrow Wilson, Danforth, Falk, and Brookings Institution fellowships and a Senior Scholar fellowship from the Spencer Foundation. He received the American Political Science Association's Charles Merriam Award give to a scholar "whose published work and career represents a significant contribution to the art of government through the application of social science research" and the Gustavus Myers award for an outstanding book on race relations.

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