August 15, 2008

Bolivia to Open 3 Universities Teaching in Indigenous Languages

Bolivia plans to open three indigenous universities next year that will teach in Aymara, Quechua, and Guarani, which are co-official languages in the South American country, along with Spanish. The Bolivian president, Evo Morales, has said the universities would help “decolonize” the country ideologically, culturally, socially, and economically, El Pais reports (in Spanish).

The plan has stirred debate among some Bolivian educators, who have criticized the universities’ would-be teachers as inadequately trained, and who have worried about the limits of teaching exclusively in the local languages.

The Bolivian Education and Culture Department said the universities’ curricula would be completed by September, and so far they include subjects such as tropical agronomy, animal husbandry, and forestry, all of them “in great demand.” —Maria José Viñas

Comments

1. Proneekeka! O jniz rqipa 21 dkeeka!!

   Rough translation: No need to communicate, now that it’s the 21st Century!!

   — June Dania Quayle    Aug 15, 03:39 PM    #

2. Waliquiskiwa – Great

   Ray Petty
   Bolivia Peace Corps ’66-‘68

   — Ray Petty    Aug 15, 04:16 PM    #

3. If you really wanted to help the Indians economically, wouldn’t it be better to teach them Spanish or English? This move smacks more of identity politics than anything else.

   — Noodles    Aug 15, 04:47 PM    #

4. “Some Bolivian educators who have critized” and “are worried about” the planned bilingual universities must have been watching Lou Dobbs, Glenn Beck et al on US television.

   — Gera Rosy    Aug 15, 08:14 PM    #

5. The suggestion that the existence of institutions that make use of indigenous (and other minority) languages would be harmful to indigenous people in Bolivia is absolute nonsense and based on utter ignorance. I suspect that the commenters above are unaware of the many academic institutions that make use of, study, and promote the survival of indigenous languages in the United States, Canada, the U.K. and Western Europe. I suspect that they are also unaware of their accomplishments, both in promoting success among native speakers of these languages and in promoting the survival of (sadly only a few) of the world’s thousands of dying languages.

   To begin with, the notion that speaking indigenous language will somehow prevent indigenous people from speaking Spanish is totally unsupported by research on this issue as well as the many examples of multilingualism throughout the world. For an example that parallels this one, in Paraguay over 90% of the population speaks Guaraní, but this doesn’t stop the vast majority of them from speaking Spanish as well. But this is beside the point, because these universities would not be teaching these languages to its speakers; they would be offering education to people who are in all likelyhood already bilingual in Spanish and an indigenous language. What these universities do is provide an opportunity for people who have spoken Aymara, Quechua or Guaraní as a primary language for their entire lives to have access to higher education in their first language. I don’t know about the previous commenters, but I for one am thankful that my own years in college and graduate school have been in my own native tongue. I have witnessed how much harder my peers who did not speak English natively have had to work.

   Furthermore, anyone with an even basic familiarity with the literature on bilingual education (including every freshman who passes my classes) knows that students taught in environments that treat their native languages/dialects as linguistically and culturally legitimate and worth using in important/formal/official/public /etc. contexts (like the classroom) do better academically than their peers who are taught that only the native language of the culturally dominant group is worth of using to educate. They also know that the promotion of minority languages in educational contexts can be one of the most effective tools to protect threatened languages from dying. For millions upon millions of people, losing a language means an irrevocable loss from their culture.

   There is more to say here, but instead of going on I will simply suggest that people do some research and basically get clue before giving pronouncements on what the effects of language policies will be.

   — l.    Aug 17, 11:39 PM    #

6. Whoever the pedantic poster above is, I would simply ask him (or her) to refrain from such long and self-referential posts. I am from Bolivia and I have studied linguistics and individual “I”, above, (that is, the pedant) is a one of those reactionary types that thinks that because he/she studied my culture and my linguistic traditions he/she knows more than everybody else. My comment is that there are always two sides to every story — and Evo’s policy decisions are nothing if not political. This move is, indeed, unabashed identity politics that will do nothing to help Bolivians get out of poverty. That, my friends, is the number one issue facing my country — not self-esteem or sensitivity or the loss of cultural identity.

   — Guillermo    Aug 18, 12:25 PM    #

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