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Mexico schools embrace native tongues |
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Written by Xiuhcoatl
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Mar 24, 2006 at 01:38 AM |
Mexico schools embrace native tongues
Chris Hawley
Republic Mexico City Bureau
Mar. 15, 2006 12:00 AM
Source: Deuce75080
CHIMALAPA DE ACAXOCHITLÁN, Mexico - With its bare walls, battered desks
and worn but well-swept floors, the classroom where Floridalia Guzmán
teaches looks a lot like any other school in Mexico. But it doesn't
sound like one.
"Xi tlakuiloka nochi tlen istoke ipan ininchinanko," Guzmán said in
Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, as her third-graders scrambled to
get out their notebooks. "Make a list of things in your community," she
repeated, this time in Spanish.
The children don't understand much Spanish, but that's OK. At the
Benito Juarez Bilingual School, teachers introduce the national
language slowly, a few words at a time. By sixth grade, the children
will be bilingual.
In the United States, bilingual programs such as these have ignited
fierce debates as schools search for the best way to teach migrant
children who don't speak English. But in Mexico, where 7 percent of the
population speaks an indigenous language, the government has embraced
bilingual education.
Mexico's experience could offer important lessons for the United
States, Mexican educators say. Until 15 years ago, Mexican schools
enforced a strict Spanish-only policy, much like the English-only
education rule adopted in 2000 by Arizona.
Mexico eventually declared the policy a failure, saying it was creating
generations of confused students and adding to poverty and
discrimination.
"It didn't work," said Gudelio Treviño Cruz, director of indigenous
education in Hidalgo. "And if you (Americans) fill your students with
nothing but English, you're going to have the same problems we had."
Nationwide, about 1.2 million Mexican children attend bilingual
classes. The federal government publishes textbooks in 55 of the
country's 63 languages and actively recruits teachers who are native
speakers. Bilingual education is even guaranteed in the constitution.
Mix of tongues
María Rosa Martínez scrunched up her nose at the sentence in her
notebook, trying desperately to remember how to translate it to Spanish.
"In the water, there are . . . " she trailed off as her fifth-grade
classmates crowded around, racking their brains for the word for
axoxovili. One made a swirling motion with his hand.
"Whirlpools!" shouted someone in Spanish. "Yeah!" his classmates exclaimed.
Martínez nodded.
"I like science better," she said. "Spanish is hard."
Still, Martínez and her classmates are light-years ahead of the
third-graders. They slip easily from Nahuatl to Spanish and already are
reading history lessons in the national language.
In Chimalapa, 75 miles from Mexico City, most children enter school
without knowing a lick of Spanish. So for the first few years, the
teachers lecture mostly in Nahuatl (pronounced NAH-WATT).
The children learn to read and write in Nahuatl first, reading from
Nahuatl storybooks and sounding out the language's impossibly long
words, such as achiyamazchiuhqui (windmill).
Math and science also are taught in Nahuatl, but the textbooks are in
Spanish. So teachers introduce vocabulary words like "pistil" and
"stamen" in both languages simultaneously.
"If I speak to them only in Spanish, they won't understand," Guzmán
said. "So I try to mix it in. The idea is to get the information
across, not just teach them Spanish."
Arizona used to have similar bilingual classes but eliminated most of
them after voters passed the English-only education law. Most of the
state's 154,000 English-language learners now attend "English
immersion" classes where they are taught in English.
Of Arizona's 155,000 English-learners, 2,956 remained in bilingual
education in the 2004-05 school year because their parents obtained
waivers based on their children's needs. The waivers must be sought
each year.
Once children pass an English-proficiency test, they may attend bilingual classes.
Meanwhile, a federal court fined Arizona $1 million a day for failing
to put enough money into teaching immigrant children English. The fines
stopped March 3, when state lawmakers approved a plan that is now
awaiting a federal judge's ruling. All told, the fines reached $21
million.
Changing tide
Mexico wasn't always so tolerant of its native languages. For
centuries, Mexico's mixed-race majority tried to impose Spanish on
students at the expense of Zapotec, Totonac, Chatino and other tongues.
As Indians moved to Mexican cities in search of work in the 20th
century, education officials redoubled their efforts to "Mexicanize"
them.
"All the teachers were from outside our communities," said María
Antonio Tolentino, who now teaches the Hñahñu language in the town of
San Esteban Huehuetla. "When we spoke our language, the teachers
thought we were talking bad about them, so they punished us."
The policy created an atmosphere of shame, people who grew up under the system say.
"If your language is prohibited, you feel like less of a person,"
Treviño said. "It makes you reluctant to participate in public life.
You get stuck in this culture of poverty, and there's no way of getting
out."
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, things began to change.
After Mexican leaders botched rescue efforts during the 1985 Mexico
City earthquake, citizens nationwide began questioning their government
and its policies. The Zapatista uprising in Chiapas state and activists
such as Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu cast the spotlight on
Indian rights in Latin America.
The first bilingual programs were started in 1992. The government started printing textbooks in other languages in 1994.
"It was part of a recognition that we are a multicultural society and
that those cultures need to be valued," said Rubén Viveros, head of
Mexico's Indigenous Education Department.
In August 2001, Mexican lawmakers amended the constitution to include a
raft of new rights for Indians. One of the amendments requires the
government to "guarantee and increase levels of scholarship, favoring
bilingual and intercultural education."
Mexico now has 21,046 bilingual programs in elementary schools
nationwide and more than 52,500 teachers teaching in them. In Hidalgo
state, where Chimalapa is located, about 30 percent of all students are
in bilingual schools, Treviño said.
The government's textbook department now churns out colorful paperbacks
in Amuzga, Ch'ol, Tlapaneca, Mayo and dozens of other languages. "What
we learned is you have to teach children in the language they already
know," said Eleuterio Olarte Tiburcio, head linguist for the Indigenous
Education Department. "If your goal is to impose your language on
children, whether it's Spanish or English . . . then your objective is
no longer education."
One nation
Back at the Benito Juárez School, a group of fifth-graders practiced
for a contest for singing of the national anthem scheduled for the next
day. Eleven schools would be participating.
Like everything at the school, the competition would be bilingual. So
instead of the rousing refrain "Mexicanos, al grito de guerra," the
children bellowed the Nahuatl version: "Ihcuca yaotl tenochnotzas
mexihca."
Until last year, singing the national anthem in a language other than
Spanish was a crime punishable by a $4,300 fine or three days in jail.
But in July, Congress made it legal to sing the anthem in indigenous
languages and even directed the government to come up with official
translations.
Like bilingual education, it is a sign that Mexico is coming to respect its homegrown languages, Treviño said.
"In the beginning, there was resistance to what we were doing," Treviño
said. "People said, 'How are we ever going to teach these children to
be Mexicans?' But it has worked. We're a multilingual country, but
we're still one country."
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