In November 1998, the author arrived in Mascarilla, a small village in Ecuador's predominantly-black Chota Valley, to begin a six-month teaching assignment at the Escuela "Hernando Taquez" (the local primary school). Based both on his own observations and on the assessments offered by various former students, parents, community leaders, and Ecuadorean scholars, the author judges the educational performance of the Escuela "Hernando Taquez" to be grossly inadequate. Indeed, the various shortcomings attributed to the school (and documented as a case study in chapters two and three of this book) are so glaring that the author was led to question how such a dysfunctional school could be allowed to exist in a country where the government states that "to improve education is to improve the quality of life of Ecuador's people." Ultimately, the school's failure to provide quality education to its students forced the author to reconsider the true purpose of public education.