Language and education in Latin America : an overview
Cummings, S.M. | Tamayo, Stella
This paper provides an overview of bilingual education in several Latin American countries: Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay and Brazil. Bilingual education is defined in this paper as instruction to minority groups through the use of their mother language and, progressively, and mainstream language, such as Spanish or Portuguese. Studies have shown that the combination of providing education to minority groups in their own language and using teachers from the same group is highly effective. A bilingual program also increases learning when the group's history and perspective are included in the school curriculum. Other investigations show that bilingual education can have contradictory effects in the education process, depending on the child's language and socioeconomic status. Immersion programs -- such as the highly successful French Canadian immersion program -- are positive for middle-class students whose maternal language is prestigious; conversely, the immersion model is negative for lower-class students who speak a language of lower prestige. Bilingual education appears to offer a solution to the problem of repetition, dropout and low educational attainment among indigenous children.
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