In honor of the holiday, an interdisciplinary independent working group on indigenous education is hosting a conference/panel "Indigenous Language in Educational Processes in Multicultural Contexts: Advances and Challenges." And representing the international component of the panel will be... yours truly.
What doesn´t kill you counts as another day of "Fulbright personal growth."
Government sponsored bilingual education in Mexico began much as it did in the US - as a way to assimilate language minority students into mainstream culture. The purpose seems to be shifting more toward an affirmation of the value of linguistic and cultural heritage. Implementation has been problematic.
One issue (similar to dual language schools in the states) is finding certified professionals who speak and read and write the language of the community. This problem is exacerbated because the government frequently sends any bilingual teacher to teach in a rural community, regardless of whether or not the teacher´s native language is the same as that of the community. Even if the teacher speaks the language, she frequently lives outside of the community. One chapter I read suggested that government organizations and politicians used bilingual teachers as liaisons with communities, and that many bilingual teachers ultimately landed advantageous political positions.
Another challenge has to do with the consciousness of teachers and families about the purpose of bilingual teaching. I have heard that both teachers and families frequently claim that the children already speak their home language - why do they need to study it in school? Two weeks ago I visited a supposedly-bilingual school, and the 4th grade teacher I met with gave that justification for only teaching the language as its own subject twice a week. There is a lack of education on the cognitive, social, and economic value of bilingualism and biliteracy - the fact that preserving your first language can actually help in acquiring a second. As in the US, many language minority parents grew up in a time of extreme racism and were severely punished for speaking their home language at school; they don´t want their children to face the same brutalities.
As in the US, educational materials in minority languages here are hard to find. The government has made an effort to produce textbooks in indigenous languages, but with 68 national languages, it is a difficult task. So far they do not come with a progression for different grades. Frequently, it is not just the language that makes texts inaccessible - the schema of students in rural indigenous communities is very different from a mestizo child in San Cristóbal. One teacher talked about a lesson on fractions that used the example of pieces of pizza. The children had never seen a pizza in their lives!
In spite of these challenges, there are some sources of optimism in the struggles for identity-affirming, language-preserving, biliteracy-promoting education. Sources like this working group and their conference this weekend. Like parents who advocate for their children to maintain their home language. Like community groups working to produce local literature.
This Sunday, don´t forget to wish your friends "¡Feliz día internacional de la lengua materna!"
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