The Colombian government established The National Plan of Bilingualism in
2004 under the leadership of ex-President Alvaro Uribe Velez. Due to
globalization any country which
wanted to keep up with these new
conditions had to strive to
reach the level of
the current process.
That’s why Language got a lot of
attention; a monolingual community (Spanish) had to learn a foreign language:
English. And what about those minority
communities where nor Spanish neither English was spoken?
These communities played
an important role in this National Plan of Bilingualism; this plan was in charge of 3 sectors: Teaching and Learning English
as a foreign language, Teaching and Learning English as a second language and
finally; Ethnoeducation (languages of cultural identification, Spanish
as a second language, Spanish in boarders and other languages). (Plan Nacional de Bilingüismo, 2004)
Indigenous
communities in Colombia began to have the first contacts with settlers since the
50’s when people from Antioquia, Santander and Tolima arrived to their lands
due to the violence for those years. The
incorporation of the indigenous communities
into the national education system with the imposition of unicultural and monolingual Spanish schools in these zones
was one of the most significant influences that settlers brought to them with
their arrival.
It was only in
1978 when indigenous leaders began to claim for having a bilingual and
bicultural education; this became more evident in 2004
with the National Plan of Bilinguism. The National Plan of Bilinguism has had
serious criticism due to the inefficiency of their programs in the real world;
it appears to be simple to apply such a policy in the Spanish schools but the
results has shown us a very discouraging outlook. This program faces a bigger
challenge by hosting other contexts which are much more complex and richer in
languages: Spanish in
boarders and other languages; the
government must deal with a multilingual culture.
Nowadays in those regions there are two-language schools with different conditions and status, the teacher speaks Spanish and the student speaks
his/her native language; they
confront two semantic universes: the teaching of languages (Spanish /native language) and the language of
instruction (Spanish).
One of the main problems is that government translates
the National Spanish program into the native language without taking into
account their culture and believes; this is not a bicultural and bilingual
education, this is just a translation of the “little brothers academic system”.
The problem is even more complex; According to Jurado (2009) the Ministry of
Education does not design teaching methods and
programs consistent and coupled with the multilingual
and bicultural objectives, there is a risk of acculturate the child in the own language.
The
Ministry of Education is not ready for talking about bilinguism in Indigenous communities because there are several
situations that will have to face before
teaching Spanish to those communities; Trillos (19969)another difficult situation is that just
in La Sierra Nevada exists more than 6 native languages, so a child who speak wiwa, goes to the “bilingual school”
for taking classes from a “little brother teacher” who speaks Spanish,
nevertheless, there are other child who speaks kogui and other who speaks
arawak with him; there must exists an excellent official program for such a variety
of language and culture in which must be taking into account the students
diversity and the excellent preparation of the teacher; not just in the
cultural aspect but also in this rich multilingual context in which he is
teaching.
Another issue to
be taking into account in this pretense of teaching Spanish to the Indigenous Communities in
Colombia is that most of those native languages does not have writing system;
they are just spoken by the Indies in a 90% and a 10 % is left for a kind of
draws and signs. Instead Spanish is taught in its writing and reading system. It
is said that this knowledge (writing and reading Spanish) is not used outside
the classroom; although they are learning Spanish as a second language
they do not have the obligation of speak in Spanish in their social lives
because they go home and they continue using their native language for
communication. So it demonstrates that children do not use Spanish as a
language for communication; it is just a Government Spanish schools requirement.
As a conclusion it can be said that indigenous communities have fought for keeping their
native language through news generations; nevertheless they have worked for the
bilinguistic change (Spanish/Native Languages) in their schools and community
in general. But an adequate and well prepared program is not ready for carrying
out this important job. Teachers are not well prepared and the National Program
is not suitable for being applying in those multilingual communities.
An issue in which
The Ministry of Education must know and take into account is that those
communities have shown motivation for learning and teaching their own native language,
as well as they are working on drawing their own alphabet for each native
language and writing rules for being used in the schools. In this way; they can
learn new knowledge in their own language avoiding being acculturated, and at
the same time those native languages can be expanded and enriched
grammatically; opening space for these languages to become stronger and also
an official language in Colombia someday.
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