Education

How to Learn Spanish
Although many of Panama’s well-educated people speak English (and many English-speaking foreigners live permanently in Panama), Spanish is the official language. Anyone who seriously plans to live or retire in Panama should know Spanish. Frankly, you will be disadvantaged, handicapped, and be considered a foreigner to some degree, without Spanish. Part of the fun of living in another country is communicating with the local people, making new friends, and enjoying the culture. Speaking Spanish will enable you to achieve these ends, have a more rewarding life, and open the door for many new, interesting experiences. Knowing some Spanish also saves you money when you’re shopping and, in some cases, keeps people from taking advantage of you.

If you take our advice and choose to study Spanish, for a modest fee you can enroll at one of Panama’s intensive conversational language schools. In addition to language instruction, most of these schools offer exciting field trips, interesting activities and room and board with local families—all of which are optional. Living with a family that speaks little—or preferably no—English is a wonderful way to improve your language skills, make new friends, and learn about Panamanian culture at the same time.

Panama’s Universities
If you wish to continue your education, university level courses are available to foreigners in subjects such as business, art, history, political science, biology, psychology, literature, and Spanish, as well as all other major academic areas.
Panama has four main universities. The University de Panamá is the largest university in the country and official university of the Republic. Its main campus is located in Panama City’s El Cangrejo section. It also operates six smaller campuses in other provinces of the country. The Technological University (Tel: 236-0444), also know as La Tecnología, has its main campus in Panama City and several smaller regional campuses in Chiriquí (Tel:775-4563), Bocas del Toro (758-8373), Azuero (966-8448), Coclé (997-9623), Colón (473-0337), La Chorrera (244-0377) and Veraguas (999-3991).

The Universidad Santa María la Antigua (Tel: 230-4011) is a private catholic university with campuses in Panama City and Colón. La Universidad Latina de Panamá (Tel: 230-8600, E-mail mercadeo@ns.ulat.ac.pa or see www.ulst.ac.pa) offers excellent MBA and doctorate programs in marketing, banking, finance, human resources, and business administration. There are regional campuses in David (Tel: 774-3737), Santiago (Tel: 998-5412) and Chitré (Tel: 996-1179). They even offer group and individual Spanish classes for foreigners. Their classes emphasize conversation, vocabulary and grammar. Five levels are offered and the duration of each class is six weeks.

Private Schooling
For those of you with children, Panama has many public schools, numerous private bilingual schools, and an English-language, or American schools.

Public schools tend to be crowded and even have two sessions per day to accommodate the large number of students.

Legal foreign residents are entitled to attend public schools. All public schools and most private schools operate on the Panamanian school year which is from March to December. All students from pre-kinder to twelfth grade are required to wear uniforms in both public or private school. However, since all instruction is in Spanish, you should not even think of enrolling your children in a public school unless they speak, read, and write Spanish fluently. If your children are not Spanish speakers you may have to enroll them in a private school.