Education, citizenship and multiculturalism (1)
José Ignacio López Soria
In 2004 he met a group of professors from American universities to develop, from their institutional experiences in the pedagogical culturally relevant and conceptually renewed intercultural citizenship education for indigenous peoples. The group developed and launched, with support from the Ford Foundation, the project "Education intercultural citizenship for indigenous peoples of Latin America in the context of poverty ", with the aim of sharing experiences and systematize a process of shared learning.
From the beginning the group participated in PROEIB-Andes Program of the Universidad Mayor de San Simón in Cochabamba, the University of the Autonomous Regions of the Nicaraguan Caribbean Coast, the Centre for Research and Higher Studies in Social Anthropology in Mexico and Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru. Then he joined the Salesian Polytechnic University of Ecuador / Quito and the Federal University of Roraima in Brazil. Together these institutions have formed the International Network for Intercultural Studies.
As stated in the Introduction, the questions that guided the research and initial activities of the group and continue to guide their work today are: "What theoretical and methodological rethinking presupposes an intercultural approach to citizenship education for indigenous peoples?, How to make citizenship education from the concept of human rights illustrated in the context of community tradition, without falling into ethnocentrism buried?, how to get the classic doctrine of human rights acquire cultural legitimacy in contexts other than that which gave rise? , what is necessary to make educational innovations for people from other cultural backgrounds may find value and meaning to the full exercise of citizenship from their own worldviews, What can we learn from these other visions of the world to expand, and why not, reformulate our conception of citizenship and human rights, What presupposes the exercise of citizenship and intercultural dialogue in asymmetric contexts? How do civic education avoiding assimilationist approaches that are based on ideologies and categorizations, historically and culturally specific, that are presented as universal? "( p. 12)
To answer these questions or reformulated from of intercultural learning experiences that each member had previously developed, the group met in Quito in 2007. The book presented today (Alfaro, Santiago, Juan and Fidel Ansion Tubino (ed). Intercultural Citizenship. Concepts and pedagogies from Latin America. Lima: PUCP / Fondo Editorial, 2008), contains documents that there were exposed and ideas discussed ..
After an introduction that summarizes the contents of the book and draws important conclusions, the text is divided into two parts. The first focuses on the presentation of conceptual frameworks from which dealt with the issue, and the second to account for the education proposals implicit in the development of experiences. As there are six experiments, one per country, are also six conceptual frameworks and pedagogical proposals. A reflection at the beginning of each party places the item in the Latin American context.
often the authors of the theoretical are the same as they realize pedagogical proposals. This suggests that the initial conceptual frameworks, which were used to design educational experiences, were then enriched by those same experiences.
Coincidences and the specific contributions of the various conceptual thinking and pedagogical proposals are contained in the Introduction. With respect to the conceptual frameworks identifies three matches: first, awareness of the need to reformulate the classical notion of citizenship because it does not include the collective rights, it tends to confuse equality with uniformity homogenization and reduce cultural differences to the private sphere , second, the recognition that the liberal concept of citizenship has no cultural legitimacy because it is not the demand of indigenous peoples and is rooted in its traditions, and third, the very definition of multiculturalism, a concept which the authors see not from a functional perspective, ie as a file used to produce homogeneous nation states, but from a critical perspective, which leads to understanding intercultural conflict as an expression of symbolic violence, in turn, is related to unjust social structures.
These matches are enhanced and contrasted with specific contributions that are related to the contexts of each country. Both Bolivia and Ecuador, the indigenous movement reaffirms the idea that it is not possible to implement inclusive citizenship for diversity without at the same time, changing power relations and, specifically, the model state nation, building a multinational state to incorporate the cultural needs but also expectations and economic policies of nations. In Mexico, emphasizes the opposition to the prevailing system of domination and intends to return to the "territorial rootedness" or appropriation of the territory and the recovery of forms of "active democracy", specific to indigenous communities. In the case of Peru, however, the authors believe that "... indigenous movements do not pose a shift from the national state as a prerequisite for the exercise of cultural citizenship." (P. 19), but the organization of a community policy to reconcile individual rights with collective, allowing everyone to participate in political benefits, economic and cultural. Nicaragua is committed to the creation of mechanisms and opportunities for real participation in governance by indigenous peoples, while in Brazil the indigenous movement's demands are aimed at recognition of ancestral territories and ethnic identity, and the assessment of indigenous languages.
also in pedagogical approaches, most directly related to the practices of intercultural education and citizenship, they warn, as rightly pointed out the introduction, important meetings. They all share the same utopia, seeking a world without racism or discrimination, and think that intercultural citizenship education is part and on the way to that utopia. Moreover, consider that the principle should not be reduced to intercultural field of culture, but also the world designed macro. Also coincide in considering that a meaningful education must be culturally situated and, therefore, must be based on local knowledge, recognize indigenous authorship and assume and assert its own history. Are also consistent with the idea of \u200b\u200bintercultural citizenship education is for everyone, not just for Indians. And finally, insist that all transformative education as they seek must be comprehensive and not left alone in the cognitive aspects, and must, therefore, explore new methods and forms of organization of the processes and areas of learning.
After this overview, I recommend especially attentive reading of the two texts of synthesis, the first and second part, because they produced a systematic conceptual framework, in one case, and proposed teaching, on the other. I will not dwell on them, but I want to annotated conceptual framework proposed by the Chilean professor Álvaro Bello Maldonado, author of the systematization of the first part could be summarized in the following sentence: "... the public think from the difference and diversity, from multiculturalism, means the possibility of bringing the realization of economic, social and cultural rights of people to their own context, daily life and expectations, which means a change in current notions of state market and society. "(p. 38). For his part, Professor Maria Elena Ortiz Espinoza Ecuador, responsible for the systematization of pedagogical approaches, then present and discuss the two most common in American education today, the cognitive-constructivist and historical context, concludes that these two models have coexisted in the different experiences developed by the institutions RIDEI composing, and ends by noting that "... it is necessary to keep thinking about the model or models for intercultural citizenship education, taking into account the strengths and limitations of the models used in the institutionalized education." (232)
No I want to finish without letting loose a couple of thoughts to which the book calls me. The first thing I note is that the reading of the systematization of the conceptual framework leads me to believe that the proposed theory and policy it is born of a new way of teaching experience. It seems that the theoretical framework is designed from the development of pedagogical approaches. Ie Specific educational experiences are seen as a kind of hermeneutic field or horizon of meaning that includes both teachers and learners, and inviting to formulate new theories about intercultural education and citizenship. Given the variety of these experiences, it is not uncommon among the proposed conceptual frameworks have significant differences.
But curiously, the systematization of pedagogical proposals back to the traditional ways of thinking and educational practices: Read RIDEI experiences developed by the theories and established methods and practices considered these experiences as "validation" -Term especially dear to traditional pedagogy, of these theories and methods.
is not uncommon, therefore, that while the first systematic thinking invites citizens from difference and diversity and calls for a change in the present configurations of state, market and society, the second merely recommends systematic taking into account the strengths and limitations of traditional education for intercultural citizenship education design. This diversity of perspectives, referred to repeatedly in the book he says without saying that the institutions live together in RIDEI know the difference. But is, moreover, Nietzsche as I said earlier, in fact there are no facts only interpretations. And placed in the field of interpretation is particularly necessary for individuals and institutions that are committed to intercultural education and citizenship.
My second entry, not so different from the previous one, has to do with wealth and discutibilidad of concepts and questions of the book. The texts are full of key concepts, citizenship, multiculturalism, multiculturalism, intercultural education, intercultural citizenship rights, cultural, ethnic, territorial, environmental and symbolic nation-state, multi state, legal pluralism, conflict intercultural, etc. .- that, precisely because they are not used univocally, account for the diverse cultural backgrounds who enroll at those who thought, did and systematized the theoretical and pedagogical proposals. In the book, much like the other one become language, a language we speak and for which we are spoken, an inheritance that we have and that gives us the match, but also makes possible the expression of the differences that enrich us.
When you start this procedure realized the questions that guided the thinking and practices of multiculturalism that the book contains. Also in them, as in the case of systematization and concepts key disharmony and disagreement are noted. While some of them call for avoiding assimilationist approaches made from particularities that are presented as universal, to highlight the asymmetric contexts in which they developed the practice of citizenship, to understand the other as a source of joy and enrichment to facilitate the full exercise of citizenship from the cultural possessions of each, there are other questions, without saying so, suggests that citizenship education is intercultural approach to indigenous peoples as peoples with communal tradition assimilate and provide legitimacy to illustrated version of human rights. Not properly read these discrepancies but as uncertainties and inconsistencies in the exploration of an area we know is strewn with uncertainties, as perplexity or listen attentively to the complexity that surrounds us when we commit ourselves intellectually, ethically and politically with the search for a decent living, enriching and joyful the diversities that we inhabit.
Notes (1) Presentation of the book: Alfaro, Santiago, Juan and Fidel Ansion Tubino (ed). Intercultural Citizenship. Concepts and pedagogies from Latin America. Lima: PUCP / Fondo Editorial, 2008. Lima September 17
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