Undefended Children in the Classroom? Looking at Textbooks, Cultural Difference, and Other Aspects of Indigenous Education in Mexico


English

Tojolabal

I told you.

I told. You listened.



(Lenkersdorf, 1996, p. 30)

This phrase in Tojolabal illustrates how the object disappears and a dual structure emerges. In it, two subjects (I and you) are carrying out equally important functions. “I told … you listened.” In other words, if you are not listening, I, in reality, didn’t tell “you” anything. The Tojolabal language requires two distinctive phrases with two verbs to convey this idea. On the other hand, the phrase in English contains a direct object pronoun, which is subordinate. This object does not carry out as important a function nor is it a subject of action. The “intersubjectivity” of the Tojolabal language enters into contradiction with the subordination in English or Spanish and illustrates a distinctive view of the same reality. In other words, the same reality is perceived in different ways by different individuals and cultures.



The Concept of Authority


Ja ma’ ‘ay ja’tel kujtiki mandar ‘ay kujtik. Translation: The government, which has been chosen by us, has to obey us.

This phrase is representative of the Tojolabal worldview and demonstrates what being an authority figure means to the Tojolabal people: a community servant who simply carries out the wishes of the collective. In this context of “obeying authority,” power hierarchies have little or no place, which makes the presence of a teacher, an outsider who arrives to take a power position, so problematic. We also observed that in this language there exists no concept or translation for the verb “to order” or “to command,” rendering it necessary to borrow from the Spanish and to utilize the verb mandar. In a classroom, however, discipline and order are of utmost importance, and power is concentrated in the hands of only one agent, the teacher, who commands, orders, and disciplines the students.

By contrast, power is distributed horizontally in a Tojolabal community and depends on a total consensus of all involved. There is no above or below, no asymmetrical power relation. Thus, all members of the community have the same clout when it comes to decision-making. Consensus and unanimity are mandatory, and any “authority” figure is subjugated to the desires of all of “us.” In order to assure that all are on board, often the least committed or most marginalized of the community is elected leader so that he/she is obliged to commit. To be present at an assembly meeting in a Tojolabal community is fascinating, because all present speak in unison, and when the voices die down, one person, usually an elder, summarizes the opinions and thoughts of everyone involved. This phenomenon attests to the definition of Tojolabal as people who know how to listen. Do teachers and school officials or government representatives know how to listen to the Tojolabal people? Can Indigenous children be considered subjects of action within an authoritarian classroom setting? This brief discussion of the concept of authority of the Maya-Tojolabal people gave us a basis for further deepening our study of how it is that Indigenous children may be considered undefended in a classroom setting.


Incompatible Concepts of Education


Horizontal power relations are also apparent in child-rearing practices of the Tojolabal culture as well as other Indigenous cultures of Mexico. Anthropologist Chamoux explains:

Indigenous people apparently do not consider direct repression a valid disciplinary technique for use in the process of socialization or education. […] One common characteristic found during the three stages of socialization—early infancy, infancy, and preadolescence—is the extreme rarity of an authoritarian tone used with children. A militant tone, so common in a school system and classroom setting, as well as within the mainstream mestizo family structure, is almost completely absent among Indigenous peoples. It is totally absent during early infancy and is an exception—looked upon very poorly—in the later stages. The same can be said for verbal violence and insults. All in all, the typical tone and conduct of the instructor-student relationship is the exact opposite of what prevails in a classroom and in mainstream culture (Chamoux, 1992, p. 79).

Children are, therefore, considered subjects from birth and are not “subordinated” or subjugated. Because of this, their first encounter with a classroom setting can result in a chaotic situation, a clash of cultures. The teachers, who are often Indigenous, have been trained to be traditional instructors and absolute authority figures. They are met with considerable difficulty when instructing and spend most of their time disciplining and trying to maintain order, so valued in the classroom. Moreover, these children are entering an enclosed space where they are made to sit still for long periods of time. There is no precedent for this sort of behavior or setting within their community. “Education” takes place out in the open and does not require hours of sitting still in a classroom. The classroom is, thus, an alien or foreign environment that is often hostile, torturous, or simply boring. An Indigenous teacher2 elaborated:

When the children arrive for the first time in the classroom, they feel claustrophobic. And the attitude of the traditional teacher—“I know, you don’t, and I am going to teach you”—still persists. It is chaotic, especially for preschoolers, even though it is only three hours. Those who are in first grade suffer more because it is five hours that they have to be seated. The children need to be in constant activity. Many objectives are not reached due to the level of distraction of the children. When Fridays rolled around, they became ecstatic. One day I told them that the following day there would be no class. They all jumped to their feet and shouted for joy. I asked myself, why? They should enjoy coming to class. So I asked them. They told me that they only come to school because their parents make them. They gave me no more explanations as to why they didn’t like to come. This is especially true for the girls. They are made to come, and they show little or no interest. By the fifth grade, there are very few girls. They are aware that schooling has no relevance to their lives if they have decided to stay in the community.

When visiting schools in Chiapas, I observed an overall level of “chaos” and distraction of the students, a situation which pressures the teacher to become even stricter. Unfortunately, the old saying in Spanish, Con sangre entra la letra—letters enter by blood—becomes more poignant in these contexts, and sometimes students are still being physically punished for speaking in their native languages. Indigenous teachers, cultural intermediaries as such, are “educated” within a Western institution and become convinced that Western cultural values are superior to their own and often bring this attitude to the classroom. One of highest values of a Western classroom setting is order.

The question of relevance of schooling in this context is important and may help explain the high levels of absenteeism and scholastic failure among this population, not only in Mexico and Latin America, but also in other countries around the world. Additionally, the types of jobs available to people who decide to leave the community are largely low paying and generally undesirable, i.e., domestic servants or construction workers. Schooling is not a requirement for these types of jobs. Another teacher affirmed:

The argument of many parents and children is that schooling is not practical for them. It does not put food on the table. Why? It is such a long process. If they finish sixth grade they will not find work. These days not even after finishing middle school because the rules have changed and you have to have a high school education to become a teacher. Of all of the students who do finish grade school, of, let’s say, a hundred, maybe two or three will go on to middle school. There is no money and no middle school facilities in the communities.

Rather than becoming easier, it is becoming more and more difficult for Indigenous people to see how schooling is relevant and practical for their lives. As the mounds of new programs and policies for intercultural education pile up, the door is closing even tighter on Indigenous individuals who wish to become teachers of their own people. These blatant contradictions are widely ignored as the new policies and “pluriculturalism” of Mexico are heralded. The same is true for the teaching of the Indigenous languages. The “bilingual” character of most schools stays on paper. There are many reasons for this, not the least of which has to do with most bilingual teachers are sent to communities where their native language is not spoken (Interview DGIE,3 2005). One teacher observed:

About this new policy of teaching the languages, I don’t say that it is not occurring at all, but it is minimal. The teachers speak in Spanish. We return to the original problem, we are not speakers of the same language of the children we teach. I am Tzeltal but was sent to a Chol community. I do not speak Chol nor can I learn it from one day to the next.

Another reason was explained to me by an Indigenous teacher, whose argument is that the cornerstone of Indigenous identity, resistance, and persistence in Mexico is the languages:

They are to be guarded and protected. The pretention of the government to teach the Indigenous people their own languages is absurd and dangerous. Very few non-Indigenous people in Mexico speak these languages, and their mode of expression is oral, not written. Many parents send their children to school so that they learn Spanish, citing that teaching them their native language will be done at home.

Suffice it to say that the teaching of Indigenous languages is highly controversial in Mexico. For the purposes of this chapter, what further contributes to a feeling of alienation of children in the classroom is that most Indigenous children do not speak Spanish, nor do their parents. The teacher may be bilingual, but not in the language spoken in the community. This problem constitutes perhaps the most fundamental contradiction of the new “bilingual” and “intercultural” programs for Indigenous children in Mexico.


Indigenous Education


How do Indigenous teachers describe their own education within the community? What is Tzeltal education like? It takes place in the home, in the family, through observation of parents and other adults. Many things that are learned are practiced later. A boy is never told, for example, “Let’s go to the fields.” The steps are not mapped out or made explicit. Everything is through observation. The same occurs with the girls. They are never told to make to tortillas or to knit. Nothing is authoritarian; it is implicit. The Tzeltal society knows that everything comes from the family. Another Tzeltal teacher shared:

The education in my culture is much more open, much lighter. You are never made to feel as if you were being taught by the adults, you just do it. I remember learning how to make tortillas. I began by grinding the corn when I was very young. I was told if it needed to be finer or not. The same happened with planting potatoes, beans or zucchini. The children are there and the adults help us. We have so much fun. There is such happiness among the children during those times and it is a beautiful experience.

Thus, children are not separated from adults but accompany them throughout the day, constituting another major cultural difference. Author and anthropologist Maldonado reasoned that the long, time-consuming process of schooling distances Indigenous children from their traditional cultural practices and generates ignorance of their own culture (Maldonado, 2002). Education takes place in the “real” world for these children, not behind closed doors under the watchful eye of a lone authority figure. They are subjects of action, not objects.

Consistent with this view, as Chamoux (1992) pointed out:

Informal education is, by definition, education which is transmitted outside of institutional structure. Within indigenous communities there exists no organized institution or systematic form of instruction. There are no rigid courses, quantified stages or grades, initiation rituals, and no exams. (pp. 74–75)

Additionally, Carlos Lenkersdorf, a philologist who lived and worked among the Tojolabal people for more than twenty years, noted that while teaching a literacy course to Tojolabal adults, exams quickly became collective affairs as the entire class would come together to try to answer the questions. When he asked them why, they responded that many minds working together are much better than one (Lenkersdorf, 1996). Herein lies another key cultural difference. Individualism and competition are not considered valuable in many Indigenous cultures. Thus, children in the classroom are pitted against each other and made to compete for grades, another reason for a general feeling of discomfort, confusion, and cultural defenselessness.

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Feb 14, 2017 | Posted by in PEDIATRICS | Comments Off on Undefended Children in the Classroom? Looking at Textbooks, Cultural Difference, and Other Aspects of Indigenous Education in Mexico

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