Multilingual policies put into practice: co-participative educational workshops in Mexico

Abstract

In a national context where the language rights of indigenous people have been recognized constitutionally since 2003, we deal with the following questions: How can bilingual education programmes in Mexico be clearly defined and applied? And what exactly are the final objectives of a bilingual education programme? We shall address the issue of the potential forms and contents of bilingual education from the standpoint of our experience working with schoolteachers, in co-participative educational workshops in two multilingual areas in Central and South-Eastern Mexico, from 2009 to 2012. Indeed, the multidimensional use of native languages and knowledge through workshops held in a number of Mexican languages, in which the participants produce texts and drawings in their own languages, directly raises pedagogical issues on language planning in the classroom. The dominant model for bilingual and intercultural education (BIE) in Mexico today corresponds to that of incorporation through subtractive bilingualism: teaching in the native language, switching then to Spanish in order to teach the official pedagogical contents, and in detriment of language and culture specificities. Our work suggests that BIE could represent a constructive, empowering alternative adaptable to local community contexts.

Keywords:

• education
• applied linguistics
• indigenous languages
• language planning
• reflexivity
• agency

Notes on contributors

Jean Léo Léonard is an associate professor in general linguistics and phonology at Université Paris III, where he has been teaching language documentation, sociolinguistics and languages in contact since 1996. In 2009, he launched the Meso-American Morphophonolgy project supported by the Institut Universitaire de France, whose goal it is to explore new horizons for geolinguistics and language documentation in Meso-America, focusing on Mayan and Otomanguean languages and Ombeayiüts (Huave).

Julie McCabe Gragnic is a post-graduate student in linguistics at Université Paris III (UMR 7018) and participant in the Labex EFL. She is currently working on her PhD documenting and describing the Tének (Maya) language spoken in San Luis Potosí, Mexico, under the supervision of J.L. Léonard.

Karla Janiré Avilés González is an external researcher at the Labex EFL (University Paris 7, UMR 7597). She is a Social Psychologist from UNAM (Mexico), and received a PhD in Social Anthropology from CIESAS (Mexico) in 2009, on the paradoxes and challenges of Nahuatl language rehabilitation.

Notes

1. Among these institutions: CMPIO (Coalición de Maestros y Promotores Indígenas de Oaxaca), EIBI network (Educación Indígena Bilingüe Intercultural), SEP (Secretaría de Educación Pública), CEDELIO (Centro de Estudios y Desarrollo de las Lenguas Indígenas de Oaxaca), ENBIO (Escuela Normal Bilingüe e Intercultural de Oaxaca), ENHP (Escuela Normal de la Huasteca Potosina).

2. See http://lenguasindigenas.mx/mazateco.html.

3. All the languages are processed in the Meso-American Morphophonology Project (MamP) through databases and research in descriptive and theoretical linguistics (Léonard, 2010; Léonard et al., 2012), and each member of the team has specific training in at least one of the languages: Jean Léo Léonard and Antonia Colazo-Simon with Otomanguean and Mayan languages, Julie McCabe Gragnic with Tének, and Karla Janiré Avilés González with Nahuatl and Otomanguean languages. We thank the IUF (Institut Universitaire de France) for the substantial funding, which has made seven fieldwork sessions of 6–8 weeks in Mexico possible, in the period 2010–2013, and the Labex EFL, strand 7, operation EM2, for additional support for data processing (2012–2013).

4. These conventions are often the product of various sources, such as the SIL Bible translations, local booklets of myths and tales published by government institutions, and the SEP's coursebooks in the local variety. They may be formalized into “normative language” booklets (see, e.g. Maximino Cerqueda García's ALFALEIM method for Highland Mazatec, available in school libraries).

5. Due to a lack of space, this article does not claim to analyse in detail the works created in the workshops described here.

6. See http://www.cronicaoaxaca.info/informaciongeneral/4832-cedelio-impartio-curso-de-narraciones-cruzadas-para-profesores-de-educacion-indigena.html.

7. See http://redeibi.wordpress.com/colectivos-de-trabajo/memorias-pedagogicas/; http://redeibi.wordpress.com/2009/12/02/taller-de-produccion-de-textos/.

8. For information on operation EM2, Labex EFL, strand 7, see http://axe7.labex-efl.org/em2-description and http://axe7.labex-efl.org/em2_bilan.

9. Foro interdisciplinario y cooperativo comunitario ‘Diversidad lingüística, cultural y ambiental en el vértice tehuacano’: UTT (Universidad Tecnológica de Tehuacán) and IEU (Instituto de Estudios Universitarios), see http://www.lajornadadeoriente.com.mx/noticia/puebla/haran-un-foro-para-analizar-la-diversidad-linguistica-cultural-y-ambiental-de-tehuacan_id_14462.html.