This groundbreaking volume describes unprecedented changes in education across Latin America, resulting from the endorsement of Indigenous peoples' rights through the development of intercultural bilingual education. The chapters evaluate the ways in which cultural and language differences are being used to create national policies that affirm the presence of Indigenous peoples and their cultures within Mexico, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Guatemala. Describing the collaboration between grassroots movements and transnational networks, the authors analyze how social change is taking place at the local and regional levels, and they present case studies that illuminate the expansion of intercultural bilingual education. This book is both a call to action for researchers, teachers, policy-makers and Indigenous leaders, and a primer for practitioners seeking to provide better learning opportunities for a diverse student body.
This groundbreaking volume describes unprecedented changes in education across Latin America, resulting from the endorsement of Indigenous peoples' rights through the development of intercultural bilingual education. The chapters evaluate the ways in which cultural and language differences are being used to create national policies that affirm the presence of Indigenous peoples and their cultures within Mexico, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Guatemala. Describing the collaboration between grassroots movements and transnational networks, the authors analyze how social change is taking place at the local and regional levels, and they present case studies that illuminate the expansion of intercultural bilingual education. This book is both a call to action for researchers, teachers, policy-makers and Indigenous leaders, and a primer for practitioners seeking to provide better learning opportunities for a diverse student body.
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Overview
This groundbreaking volume describes unprecedented changes in education across Latin America, resulting from the endorsement of Indigenous peoples' rights through the development of intercultural bilingual education. The chapters evaluate the ways in which cultural and language differences are being used to create national policies that affirm the presence of Indigenous peoples and their cultures within Mexico, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Guatemala. Describing the collaboration between grassroots movements and transnational networks, the authors analyze how social change is taking place at the local and regional levels, and they present case studies that illuminate the expansion of intercultural bilingual education. This book is both a call to action for researchers, teachers, policy-makers and Indigenous leaders, and a primer for practitioners seeking to provide better learning opportunities for a diverse student body.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781783090976 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Multilingual Matters Ltd. |
| Publication date: | 01/06/2014 |
| Series: | Bilingual Education & Bilingualism , #95 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 224 |
| File size: | 311 KB |
About the Author
Regina Cortina is Associate Professor of Education in the Department of International and Transcultural Studies at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her current research explores European aid to education in Latin America and its strategic importance for the field of international and comparative education. Dr Cortina studies the role of education in international development and poverty reduction, particularly focusing on ways in which greater opportunities can be created for marginalized groups.
Read an Excerpt
The Education of Indigenous Citizens in Latin America
By Regina Cortina
Multilingual Matters
Copyright © 2014 Regina Cortina and the authors of individual chaptersAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78309-095-2
CHAPTER 1
Indigenous Intercultural Bilingual Education in Latin America: Widening Gaps between Policy and Practice
Luis Enrique López
Introduction
With 30–50 million Indigenous inhabitants, over 650 Indigenous peoples and more than 550 different languages spoken in 21 countries, Latin America is one of the most linguistically and culturally diverse areas of the world. Nearly one-fifth of these Indigenous languages are transnational or cross-border. In most of the areas that configure the region, cultural, linguistic and biological diversity go hand-in-hand; as there are endangered biological species, so are Indigenous languages at risk. It is estimated that at least 111 of the remaining 557 living Indigenous languages (20%) are on the verge of extinction (López, 2009).
The size of the Indigenous populations varies considerably across countries. Most Indigenous peoples are concentrated in the Andean region and in Mesoamerica (approximately 90% of the total). In contrast, in the Amazonian basin and the tropical forests the population of a single Indigenous peoples averages no more than 250 (cf. Sichra, 2009). In countries like Bolivia and Guatemala, they constitute demographic majorities (66% and 40%, respectively); in others, like El Salvador and Brazil, they are small minorities (0.2% and 0.4%, respectively). Politically and socially, however, all Indigenous peoples ought to be considered as minorities and thus regarded as subaltern societies or communities (Spivak, 1988). Above all, structural racism, discrimination and exclusion, and the continuation of colonial policies and practices, hinder the exercise of Indigenous rights and of human rights in general.
Indigenous populations are no longer found only in remote rural areas in the highlands or in the tropical forests. Indigenous communities and individuals have extended their influence into cities and towns. Furthermore, there are instances where large sectors of a specific Indigenous group are urban, as is the case of most Nahuatls in Mexico, Kaqchikeles in Guatemala, Aymaras in Bolivia and also Quechuas in Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. For instance, 44.4% of Peruvian Quechua speakers live in cities and towns, as do 43.6% of their Aymara peers. The Mapuches in Chile and Argentina are predominantly urban (75% of the total) (see Sichra, 2009). However, living in an urban area does not necessarily imply that Indigenous peoples enjoy the rights that national legislation prescribes for all citizens or receive education that respects their cultural and linguistic characteristics. In addition, exceptional situations are beginning to arise in the present context of Indigenous relocation in society and in national politics. Countries such as Uruguay, which until recently did not report any Indigenous population, registered in the 2004 National Census that 3.5% of the population redefined itself as of Indigenous origin or ancestry (López, 2009).
It is highly probable that some of the people who acknowledged that they were Indigenous did so to signal to the hegemonic sectors of society that mainstream assimilation and uniformity efforts did not succeed. Indeed, identity politics is a new factor in contemporary politics that public education systems need to seriously consider.
The general sociolinguistic configuration of Latin America and the linguistic structure and functioning of Indigenous societies also challenge common beliefs about linguistic diversity and monolingualism. Even after individuals acquire the hegemonic language, they may retain their Indigenous language for communication within the family and the local milieu. Most Indigenous communities are now bilingual, with Indigenous monolingualism being exceptional: only 9.8% in Mexico, 12.4% in Bolivia and 14.3% in Ecuador. The exception to this rule might be Guatemala where Indigenous monolingualism is much more prevalent; it characterizes 43.6% of the Maya population. In general, monolingualism persists among women and children under school age.
Multilingualism within an extended and exogamous family structure can be the norm in certain Indigenous communities of Brazil and Colombia (Sorensen, 1967; Stenzel, 2005), although with sharp differences and more prevalence in the Vaupes River area of Colombia and Brazil (Stenzel, 2005). A school-age child might speak four or more different Indigenous languages, and, indeed, in many other parts of the Amerindian world, Indigenous individuals and families speak three or four languages. In Paraguay, for example, this is the case with many Indigenous individuals and communities who speak their own language, the neighboring community's language, Paraguayan Guaraní (the lingua franca) and Spanish (the language favored by the elites) (Meliá, 2009).
Societal multilingualism was difficult for early missionaries and educators to understand. They found it easier and more convenient to transform this anomalous situation into normality, adopting a reductionist monolingual perspective. To this date, limited knowledge of societal multilingualism and the sociolinguistic functioning of Indigenous communities, in general, hinder adequate and culturally sensitive language education programs. The effects of such ignorance and lack of cognitive flexibility are simply devastating and in many ways also ethnocidal.
The fact is that nation-state building ideologies had an early impact on all Latin American countries. Hence, monolingualism-monoculturalism was adopted as the normal and desirable state. From very early on, language-planning policies were informed by the belief that diversity was an obstacle. Schooling and education were thus seen, in general, as the means to achieve the desired political goal of the elites in government and, thus, to continue and even strengthen a colonial perspective over language and communication in a multiethnic society.
Although legislation prescribed equality for all, educational systems were constructed initially to exclude Indigenous children and adolescents, generally under pressure from landowners. Later, mainstream assimilatory strategies were adopted and education was provided in only the European language of power; thus, many Indigenous children reiteratively repeated or failed in schools and were early expelled from the system (Hamel, 2008; Lopez & Sichra, 2008). Those who succeeded generally fled into the cities.
Numerous and diverse strategies were implemented in order to keep Indigenous children in school and to secure more effective assimilation. The rural school's higher order mission was that of incorporating Indigenous students and communities to a new way of life: civilized, Christian, industrious, in urbanlike lodging patterns and, in general, integrated into the modern social and economic world. Nonetheless, after almost 200 years of public education in Indigenous territories, hundreds of Indigenous cultures and languages survive, although severely weakened and under threat.
The denial of the right to their native language and culture in schools has certainly had a negative impact on the educational achievement of Indigenous students. Depending on the specific country, Indigenous educational deficits range from generalized exclusion to limited access to the upper levels of primary and secondary education, with admittance to higher education being still exceptional. In this context, Indigenous adult illiteracy most generally remains high, particularly amongst Indigenous women.
In the same vein, a study by the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean identifies a divide in terms of Indigenous access to health and educational services, as a result of prevailing discriminatory structures (Del Popolo & Oyarce, 2005). In 3 of 10 countries studied, infant mortality in Indigenous homes was two or three times higher than among the non-Indigenous. In education, inequalities were also systematic: over 20% of children ages 6-11 did not enjoy their rights to education. Paraguay was the most severe case of exclusion, with 38% of Indigenous children out of school and only 21% completing primary schooling. 'Beyond the heterogeneities observed in the region ... in most countries, the scope for achieving the proposed goals established in international agreements is significantly lower in the case of Indigenous pupils' (Del Popolo & Oyarce, 2005: 14).
This introductory discussion has presented a general description of Indigenous peoples in Latin America. It provides a context for the remainder of the chapter, which focuses on the extent and quality of intercultural bilingual education in Latin America. The next section presents the history of bilingual education, tracing its evolution from a limited and often disparaged teaching strategy to a cornerstone of the effort to effectively educate Indigenous students and a central issue in the struggle for autonomy of Indigenous peoples. The following section discusses the two processes, neither particularly effective nor widespread currently, by which intercultural bilingual education can be implemented. It uses the experience of three countries as examples: top-down, initiated by the government or international donors (Mexico and Guatemala), and bottom-up, initiated by Indigenous grassroots and ethno-political organizations (Bolivia). These case studies are followed by sections that, first, provide evidence of a widening gap between policies that ostensibly respect the incorporation of Indigenous culture and language into education but in practice do not and, second, provide some signs of hope for the expansion of bilingual education in Latin America. The concluding section presents recommendations for improving and increasing intercultural bilingual education across Latin America, focusing on the need to involve Indigenous people in its development and implementation.
Overview of Indigenous Intercultural Bilingual Education
Indigenous bilingual education dates back to the first half of the 20th century, when rural teachers and Indigenous leaders took it upon themselves to introduce local Indigenous languages in youth and adult literacy programs. That was the case in Mexico, Peru and Ecuador, specifically. In Yucatán, an area where Maya is the major language, teachers spontaneously used the Indigenous language in schools and classrooms to make learning easier for Indigenous students (Heath, 1972). In the Andes, two outstanding women taught Indigenous children, adolescents and adults to read and write bilingually, unlike what Spanish-only national policies prescribed. In the mid-1930s, in Puno, María Asunción Galindo, a mestizo speaker of Aymara and Quechua, became the pioneer of bilingual education in Peru (López, 1988) and in the mid-1940s, Dolores Cacuango, a communist Indigenous leader in Ecuador, played a comparable role (Rodas, 1989). From different social strata but with a common objective in mind – making the written word in Spanish available to Indigenous populations so they could defend their civil and political rights – they used Indigenous languages in their literacy activities. In so doing, these two women transformed the educational and linguistic premises of their times regarding the education of Indigenous populations and the use of Aymara and Quechua as languages that could be written.
In Guatemala, the history was somewhat different since a United States protestant missionary taught Kaqchikel adults to read and write in their native language in the 1920s and 1930s while translating the New Testament. In Mexico, in the early 1940s, the option to learn in the students' native language was institutional; bilingual education emerged as the State decided to overcome the problems encountered with Spanish-only instruction by implementing literacy in Maya, Otomí, Nahuatl and Purepecha (Schmelkes et al., 2009).
The history of bilingual education in Latin America is heavily marked by the application of linguistics to education, and particularly of phonetics and phonology to the design of alphabets and to second-language teaching. Mexico and Peru were certainly fertile grounds for these processes since at the time there was a common growing concern regarding the Indigenous issue vis-à-vis the nation-making process. Academics and educational authorities were then in search of linguistic and cultural assimilation strategies, and hence, the use of modern linguistics in the implementation of bilingual education programs was seen as an adequate scientific solution.
Due to disagreements with the Catholic Church after the Mexican Revolution, in 1936 the postrevolutionary government and the protestant Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) became allies in the development of Indigenous education. SIL helped implement educational programs in the most heavily populated Indigenous regions (Schmelkes et al., 2009). Alphabets were designed, teachers were trained and educational materials were prepared on the basis of a common grid in Spanish or in an Indigenous language from which translations to different languages were then made. These approaches were next transferred to other countries using the international platform of the congresses of Indigenism.
The first Pan American Seminal Congress took place in Patzcuaro, Mexico, in 1940 (Marzal, 1993). Its aim was to introduce transitional bilingual education to contribute to the nation-making process through the generalization of the Spanish language and the written word. SIL provided technical support to a number of countries and took advantage of the strategic role of bilingual education in order to fulfill its ultimate objective: Bible translation and dissemination. Emphasis was placed on the native language but not on the Indigenous culture, as it was clear that education had to trigger a profound cultural change among the Indigenous population (Townsend, 1949):
Once he can read, even if he initially does it only in his own language, he loses his inferiority complex. New things attract his interest. He becomes interested in buying manufactured goods – tools, mills or grinders, clothes, etc. To buy such things he needs to work more. Production increases and so does consumption. The entire society profits from it, except for the canteen-tender and the witchcraft doctor. Everyone discovers that an Indian is worth more as a cultivated person than as brutal force submersed in ignorance. (1949: 43, author's translation from Spanish)
These objectives were shared by the elites in government and SIL, perhaps with the only exception of the emphasis SIL placed on the evangelization of the Indigenous populations they worked with. Anthropologists and linguists generally agreed on the transitional orientation since Indigenism had cultural assimilation as a goal (Marzal, 1993). One of the areas where SIL missionaries worked the most was the Amazonian basin where they still operate in countries like Brazil and Peru.
The Shift toward Respect for Indigenous Languages and Cultures
In general, submersion in the hegemonic language has been the most generally used education strategy, including an explicit prohibition against speaking the Indigenous language in school. When submersion makes room for the implementation of bilingual education, three basic theoretical models or orientations are implemented in Latin American schools: transitional bilingual education, maintenance and development bilingual education and enrichment bilingual education, with major emphasis on the first two.
The boundaries between theoretical models in intercultural bilingual education (known as EIB, using the acronym in Spanish for Educación Intercultural Bilingüe) are not always clear-cut. A given program could strategically begin under a transitional orientation, but once the confidence of teachers and parents regarding Indigenous language use in schools and classrooms is gained, it could embrace the maintenance and development paradigm. Then, in times of increased Indigenous commitment and engagement, an enrichment orientation could come into play. The opposite can also be true. Maintenance and development bilingual education programs can end up as transitional and even early exit, when due to technical and political implementation problems they are only offered in early primary education. Nonetheless, this three-tier taxonomy helps explain policies with reference to the political aims underlying a specific educational proposal and allows us to break away from the supposed neutrality of education.
Strictly speaking, submersion strategies share objectives with transitional bilingual education. They have a common higher order mission: cultural and socioeconomic change of populations seen as backward or even primitive and believed to threaten the nation's capitalist economic development. Therefore, the strategies aim at a gradual substitution of the ancestral languages and cultures.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Education of Indigenous Citizens in Latin America by Regina Cortina. Copyright © 2014 Regina Cortina and the authors of individual chapters. Excerpted by permission of Multilingual Matters.
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Contributors
Regina Cortina: Introduction
1. Luis Enrique López: Indigenous Intercultural Bilingual Education in Latin America: Widening Gaps between Policy and Practice
2. Regina Cortina: Partnerships to Promote the Education of Indigenous Citizens
3. Bret Gustafson: Intercultural Bilingual Education in the Andes: Political Change, New Challenges, and Future Directions
4. Carmen Martínez Novo: The Tension between Western and Indigenous Knowledges in Intercultural Bilingual Education in Ecuador
5. Sylvia Schmelkes: Indigenous Students as Graduates of Higher Education Institutions in Mexico
6. María José Aragón: Beyond Cultural Recognition: Training Teachers for Intercultural Bilingual Education in Guatemala
7. Luz Jiménez Quispe: Indigenous Leaders and the Challenges of Decolonization in Bolivia
8. Laura A. Valdiviezo: Political Discourse and School Practice in Multilingual Peru