Almost all schools I have encountered in Central America that teach English or teach classes using English use textbooks from the United States. The reasons for this are obvious: Spanish speaking Latin American countries don't generally produce textbooks in English, and obviously the US education system produces a good volume of quality English textbooks.
Our school is currently experimenting with an American ESL curriculum that was written for classes of immigrants totally immersed in English. The books are challenging for our students, who are very new to English and have not been immersed in it to the degree that the American students have. They can struggle through most of the material, however, and most students can be moderately efficient using the curriculums.
There are some problems with using American textbooks, however. Our textbook is extremely patriotic, and constantly talks about United States history, government and culture. Patriotic American hymns are present in almost every chapter, and I’m talking about the really patriotic ones with the rockets and glorious colors of the flag and all of those huge globs of patriotism exploding in your face. I generally skip these things because I don't believe Hondurans need to learn so much American history, and especially coming from such a glamorized perspective. I would rather let them emphasize Latin American history with the Social Studies teacher, who is Honduran. But I know many Honduran teachers using curriculums can be very by the book and follow textbooks religiously, and will not skip any sections when teaching. Occasionally I meet students from top bilingual schools who know United States history and famous US folk songs but not the stories and culture of their own country and region. They know about the US struggle for independence, but not the heroes of Honduras who fought for freedom against the Spanish.
At the same time, I know many foreign teachers from the States also embrace the overemphasis of American history, believing it is right for the Honduran students to learn so much about our country, which is after all the greatest country in the fucking world as chosen by God and Jesus and superior firepower. I know of one teacher who wanted a small town Honduran marching band to make an O like the band in his native Ohio. Don't get me wrong, it is great for foreign teachers to teach about interesting things from their States, but I lot of teachers with these textbooks take it overboard, and many private Honduran schools raise little American children who identify more with the States than with Honduras.
Teaching textbooks also will often talk about concepts, ideas, or ways of life that are completely alien to the Latin American students, like maps of American suburbs used to teach vocab. I wrote earlier on my blog about a Honduran teacher who followed a textbook to teach 8 year old Latino students how to ask directions to the social security office.
I had a moment teaching the other day where I wondered if I was teaching something that had any relevance to the student’s lives. They were reading a story about how a boy in a small town in Pennsylvania decided to save an old historical theater that was going to be torn down to put in a parking lot. So he had fundraisers to raise money for the theater and ended up putting articles in the newspaper and meeting with the mayor. All the citizens rallied around him and they saved the theater.
Obviously in the States that is an overly optimistic view of citizen's power in their communities, but it is also does relate to the way democracy works in the States when it is working at its best. Yet in Olancho, Honduras where I live stories like this seem completely ridiculous. I try to picture an Olanchano version of this story. Let's say, for example, a student here wanted to save one of the national parks near the city that is rapidly disappearing under the influence of illegal yet unpunished logging. Well, the student might approach the government and then both the government and the student would be threatened by the loggers and their drug cartel friends to let them continue breaking the law. The student would back off or would end up being killed by the loggers and the mayor would be taken care of with a huge bribe and threat. The police would know who killed the student but do nothing in response because they would be afraid of the cartels. There is no local newspaper and the national paper probably wouldn't cover the event, so no one could even appeal to public opinion about the incident.
Maybe this seems like a cynical treatment of Honduran government, and it probably is but is also honestly the way business gets done here in Olancho. However, shouldn't students be learning about that reality rather than learning about a sugar coated version of organizing and democracy in a country so radically different from their own? Shouldn't they learn about heroes in their own country that are standing up for their rights, like Jeanette Kawas, a Honduran woman who was killed by loggers for lobbying to protect a national park? Because of her martyrdom the government protected the park in her honor. But there are very few textbooks used in Latin America that teach the many heroes of Latino cultures. The upper class Honduran children who end up going to University and being in positions to change their country grow up with American teachers and American curriculums. Not only do they know American history much better than their own, but they know American history as told from the US perspective. They learn about the US from the perspective of an American, but do they learn about the United States in relation to their own country? They learn that in the States you are free to work hard and get ahead and do whatever you dream of. The Honduran version of the US is that you are allowed to work for American companies here for 10 dollars a day, but forbidden to work even for minimum wage over in the States. The American dream for the children here is being locked out. What type of Honduran kid is going to want to read patriotic hymns to the US? Or maybe most are so brainwashed by American consumerism and the textbooks that they don’t even think about their own relationship to the USA.
No comments:
Post a Comment