Abstract
In line with a broader Latin American turn to the left, since 2006, Bolivia’s ‘politics of change’ of president Evo Morales includes a new ‘decolonising’ education reform called Avelino Sinani Elizardo Perez (ASEP). This ‘revolutionary reform’ envisions a radical restructuring of Bolivian society and revaluation of indigenous heritage through education and aims to replace the former ‘imposed’ neo-liberal education reform of 1994. Geared towards broader sociopolitical processes of social justice, Bolivia’s envisaged education transformation is built around four pillars, being (1) decolonisation, (2) intra- and interculturalism together with plurilingualism, (3) productive education and (4) communitarian education. Taking the contemporary Bolivian societal and educational context of tensions and inequalities as a starting point, this chapter analyses how the ‘revolutionary ideal’ of a social justice-oriented education system to ‘vivir bien’ – as laid down in the ASEP reform – is perceived by the different actors involved to be both appropriate and feasible. With this aim, the chapter examines the various challenges and opportunities for the policy discourse of the new ASEP reform for decolonising education and the government’s idea of teachers as the ‘soldiers of transformation’ to translate into an educational reality. In conclusion, there is still a long way to go to bridge the gap between ideological intentions and a complex educational reality.
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- 1.
See BBCs video reporting, ‘Evo Morales sworn in as spiritual leader’, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8473899.stm (last accessed 01–04–2011).
- 2.
Although political rhetoric might mislead us to think otherwise, Bolivia’s interpretation of the twenty-first century socialism in practice has not signified dramatic shifts towards a pure socialist model. According to Kennemore and Weeks, Morales follows a model of ‘Andean capitalism’, a pragmatic strategy of a centre-left government that aims to ‘capture the capitalist surplus necessary for state spending’, mostly from the country’s natural resources (2011: 271). The nationalisation scheme of the MAS has made it possible for the government to fund various social policies, including the ‘Bono Juancito Pinto’, a cash transfer programme for school going primary education students of around twenty Euros a year.
- 3.
Translated literally this would mean something like ‘enspanishment’ of the population, aimed at imposing the Spanish language and culture.
- 4.
In this sense, the new Plurinational Constitution forms the legal basis for the refounding and transformation of the Bolivian nation.
- 5.
La Pachamama is widely recognised in Bolivia as a highly spiritualised and honoured Mother Earth, which has a reciprocal relationship with humans.
- 6.
This dimension does not only deal with the first level ordinary-political misrepresentations (denying full participation as peers in social interactions), it also deals with a second level boundary-setting mechanism of misframing in the context of globalisation, criticising the framework in which the national state is the sole political space that excludes marginalised groups from any influence. On a third level, it states that many injustices in the world are not territorial in character and that chances to live a good life are not fully dependent on internal (state) political constitutions but also on, for instance, regional political agreements such as those constructed through ALBA (see Chap. 3).
- 7.
The research is conducted in the context of the ‘IS-Academy’, a partnership between the University of Amsterdam and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands.
- 8.
In its initial documents of the new law, a trilingual education system was proposed, yet the approved version speaks of a ‘plurilingual (teacher) education system’. Depending on the context of the school, the first language of instruction will either be Spanish or an indigenous language (in case of more languages spoken by different student, a communitarian committee will decide upon the language(s) of instruction). In addition, all students have the right to learn a foreign language, and all teachers will be taught sign language as well (Ministerio de Educación de Bolivia 2010b).
- 9.
Without going into detail of the specifics of all foreign initiatives in the education sector here, I think the following quote of a Bolivian academic explains this new situation and role for international donors: ‘if international development cooperation organisations want to provide a helping hand [in terms of finances], they are very welcome, but the logic has to change, it has to be in line with our new logic of education’.
- 10.
Based on a historical strong divide between an urban and a rural education system, Bolivia similarly has a rural teachers’ union (CONMERB), and an urban one (CTEUB). The relationship between Bolivia’s teachers’ unions and the government for a long time has been and to a large extent still is, mildly speaking, uneasy. The military dictatorships, the financial crisis of the late 1970s and the neo-liberal political direction (including Structural Adjustment Programmes) afterwards provoked a defensive attitude of both teacher unions, fighting for their salaries rather than educational quality issues (Talavera Simoni 2011: 11–13).
- 11.
The CEPOs are the Consejos Educativos de los Pueblos Originarios or the Indigenous Education Councils. The codes mentioned in relation to quoted sections of interviews relate to a qualitative coding analysis with Atlas Ti.
- 12.
The CEPOs are also currently engaged with the design of the curriculum for teacher training institutes. According to a member of the CEPO in Sucre (CENAQ), there are seven different CEPOs from different regions working on their curriculum proposals, and these are then merged together with input from the ministry. For more information, see www.cepos.bo.
- 13.
The term mestizo refers to those from a mix of both Spanish and indigenous descent.
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Cardozo, M.T.A.L. (2012). Decolonising Bolivian Education: Ideology Versus Reality. In: Griffiths, T., Millei, Z. (eds) Logics of Socialist Education. Explorations of Educational Purpose, vol 24. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4728-9_2
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