New citizens in the making
A case study on citizenship education in a public secondary school in Sucre, Bolivia
Anna Katalin Forgács
Master International Development Studies August 2014 Wageningen University New citizens in the making
A case study on citizenship education in a public secondary school in Sucre, Bolivia
Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of: Master of Science
Name of the student: Anna Katalin Forgács Registration number: 851124-243-190
MSc student International Development Studies Chair Group of Sociology of Development and Change Specialisation Rural Development Sociology Thesis code: RDS-80433
Supervisor: dr. Elisabet Rasch Examiner: dr. ir Monique Nuijten
August, 2014 Wageningen University, the Netherlands
i ACKNOWLEDGMENT
In April 2013, for the first time I entered the room of dr. Elisabeth Rasch, presenting some ideals of what I desired to research. I clearly remember telling her that I was really interested about the latest developments in Bolivia, the educational setting and how children are being educated about their rights. I also told her that in the literature the term citizenship came across multiple times, but I wished to leave it out, as I just didn’t have a feel for this concept. Now, more than a year later, I have just finished my master thesis exactly on this term, researching how citizenship has been constructed through the educational setting in a public secondary school in Sucre, Bolivia. Writing my thesis was a process of Pachakuti. By reading literatures about Bolivia, I learned about this Andean word, referring to the traditional Andean notions of time, where time elapses between catastrophes and renovations (Rivera Cusicanqui, cited in Thomson, 2011). This is exactly how I feel about writing my thesis. I believe my field research went smooth, I came home confidently, saying that I know how citizenship is being constructed, but in reality, when I had to put citizenship education into words, it proved to be a catastrophe. But rethinking and rewriting my data over and over, I believe that I found renovations to understand how citizenship is constructed in a public secondary school in Sucre. Therefore writing my thesis proved to be a great learning experience both in terms of developing my scientific knowledge and skills and also in a personal level as my world extended through this journey. I could not have done this without the guidance and support of a number of people to whom I own my sincere gratitude. First and foremost, I could not have realized what lies in front of you without the scientific input, encouragement and patient of my supervisor dr. Elisabet Rasch. Her guidance not just helped me to rethink and develop my understanding over citizenship, but her feedbacks also motivated me to develop my scientific writing skills. Special thanks go out to my friends in Bolivia. Thinking of you with love and gratitude that I lived with and I worked with during my 3-months stay in Sucre. Their precious time, effort and friendship supported me and my thesis process. Last, but not least I would like to express my thankfulness to my family and friends for supporting me in my catastrophes and sharing their personal experiences, assuring that it is part of the process.
Anna Katalin Forgács August 2014
i Abstract
Social movements in Bolivia brought forward a new citizenship understanding with a new meaning and practice by raising attention that citizenship is cultural and citizenry is not a legal status, rather a social process. Social movements brought Evo Morales to the presidency, who also acknowledged these new insides of citizenship within legal frameworks, namely in the new constitution of Bolivia. The thesis researches these new understandings of citizenship through the educational setting by taking the argument that schools are practice grounds of implementing nation-led citizenship projects. To tackle down these new insides qualitative research approach was adopted, applying methods as participant observation, fieldnotes, fieldjournal, desk research and informal and semi-structured interviews during a 3-month-long field work in Sucre, Bolivia. In this thesis I argue that schooling constructs the meaning of citizenship by making students feels to belong to cultural and social entities. While in reflection to the new practice the term active citizenship emerges, however I point out, that schools are both sites of passive and active form of citizenship. By reflecting on students’ responses, the thesis brings forward that students do not fully feel interconnected with these narrations and practices of citizenship, which can be rooted that the Bolivian schooling has a quite traditional outlook and the youth in their everyday practice is more assimilated with modernity.
Keywords: citizenship education, Bolivia, cultural and social belonging and active citizenship
ii 1. Introduction ...... 1 1.1 Analytical framework...... 2 1.1.1 Rise of globalization challenging citizenship understanding ...... 2 1.1.2 Conceptualizing citizenship...... 3 1.1.3 Citizenship education...... 5 1.2 Citizenship and educational projects in Bolivia ...... 6 1.3 Methodology...... 9 2. Zooming on ...... 13 2.1 The plurinational context of Bolivia...... 14 2.2 The socio-cultural context of Sucre ...... 15 2.3 Liceo Julio Quezada Rendón as a public female school...... 16 3. Who are we? – Who we are not? Narration of cultural identities in the curriculum...... 19 3.1 The narrations of cultural identities ...... 19 3.1.1 Local identity...... 20 3.1.2 Regional identity...... 22 3.1.3 National identity ...... 23 3.1.4 Global identity...... 27 3.2 The performance of cultural identities...... 29 3.2.1 The Day of Independence – as hora civica...... 30 3.2.2 The Day of Independence – as parade ...... 35 3.3 Gap in cultural interest ...... 36 4. Building our community...... 38 4.1 The sense of community and networks...... 40 4.2 Common principals of the communal life...... 42 4.3 Escaping from the control...... 50 5. Active citizenship ...... 53 5.1 Engagement and betterment ...... 54 5.2 Pedagogy and critical thinking...... 57 6. Conclusion...... 59 References ...... 61 Appendix...... 65
iii 1. Introduction Social movements arose across Latin America from the 1980s. Bolivia got in the spotlight from the mid-1990s, when social movements rebelled against the neoliberal structural adjustment development programs as these reforms just deepened the struggle of poor indigenous Bolivians, who contested the majority of the society. Not just these neoliberal reforms failed, but the decades of hardship overturned the inequality discourses in the country between rich and poor, lowland and highland and between different ethnic-cultural groups; re-waking the poor highland indigenous population who began to give voice to their own interest. The indigenous culture served as a capital for these marginalized groups, where in a bottom-up organized social movements people became agents of their own development. (Postero, 2010) These social movements in Bolivia not just aimed to win some rights, but rather targeted to restructure the society by redefining the ‘boundaries of citizenship’ and claiming full membership for themselves within a new citizenship framework (Yashar, 2005). The years of resistance and claims of social movements brought new perspectives on citizenship understanding, which new understandings have been legally recognized in 2009 within the framework of Bolivia’s new constitution by expanding the liberal citizenship understanding with a new meaning, where cultural as a dimension appears and with a new practice, claiming that citizenship is not a legal statement, rather a social process (Albro, 2010; Lazar, 2010). By now 5 years has been passed since the new citizenship project has been approved, but still the question remains what this new meaning and practice exactly implies in contemporary Bolivia. To put in other worlds it remains unexplored: what does it mean and what does it take to be a citizen of Bolivia in 2014? For that reason the main interest of this thesis focuses on to study the new meaning and practice of citizenship in contemporary Bolivia, where these questions has been taken to the formal educational setting. The thesis understands that schooling provides a good entry point to investigate these new insides of citizenship, by taking the academic argument that schools are practice grounds of implementing nation-led citizenship projects (Gellner, 1983; Arratia, 1997; Hornberger, 2000). As schooling is viewed to be a primal agent of constructing the nation-led citizenship understanding, the research central question respectively investigates the following:
How has the new meaning and practice of citizenship been constructed for students in a public secondary school in Sucre, Bolivia?
In regard to the scientific relevance, there are plenty researches about the current developments in Bolivia in perception of discussing the theoretical understanding of the new citizenship, constitution or education reform (e.g.: Postero, 2007b, Albro, 2010; Lazar, 2010; Strauss, 2010; Cardozo, 2011), whereas studies are more absent in the empirical level, where the construction of the new insides of the Bolivian citizenship understanding has been researched through practice. Consequently this research aims to fill up this knowledge gap on this matter and discusses how citizenship has been constructed through education. In the following section the thesis continues with the analytical framework, which serves as a backbone of the research. By laying out the main concepts, these references will guide me to analyses
1 how the new meaning and practice of citizenship has been constructed in a public school setting in Sucre, Bolivia. As the analytical framework takes citizenship as the main concept; firstly I reflect on how the concept of citizenship has been changed in the 20th century, secondly I conceptualize citizenship and thirdly citizenship has been interlinked with the educational field. After clarifying these points, I reflect on Bolivia, where the different citizenship projects coupled with educational reforms will be described. I end this chapter with details about my field research, where I describe the applied methodologies in respect to the research approach, methods and techniques.
1.1 Analytical framework
1.1.1 Rise of globalization challenging citizenship understanding Citizenship has been a concept with a long history, originating back to the Greek era. Through the millennia, this concept acquired multiple meanings and practices what citizenship consists of. But, let’s not go back too far in time and here I begin with the modern concept, namely the liberal citizenship understanding. The liberal understanding of citizenship began with T.H. Marshall’s (1964) work. According to this view citizenship in practice is a legal status between the nation-state and individuals, encountering the meaning in form of rights and duties among these parties. Marshall based on the 1940s England experience, discussed the meaning and the practice of citizenship in 3 elements, namely civil, political and social rights. In this framework the state warranties rights to individuals, while on the other hand individuals are obliged to do their duties such as pay taxes, vote, and complete compulsory education and above all obey the law of the country (Janoski, 1998). Marshall’s explication of three elements of citizenship have been influential and widely cited in the field of citizenship studies, but due to the global developments this liberal citizenship understanding has been also widely debated. As Solomos (2008) writes, Marshall was unable to foresee the upcoming rapid changes in the next decades so he did not include these elements in his citizenship understanding. In the second half of 20th century, the mass migration of people, increasing cultural, ethnic, racial, linguistic and religious diversities in nation-states, challenged the understanding of the liberal citizenship concept (Banks, 2009; 2013). As the liberal view understood the nation-state as a culturally neutral body, lacking recognizing culture as a dimension, this citizenship view did not fit the new outlook of the new fast changing world. Banks (2009) writes due to the ethnic revitalization movements in the 1960s and 1970s, cultural claims surfaced by ethnic and language minority groups in societies and introduced multicultural citizenship discourses. These cultural claims rose globally within diverse societies and challenged what Yashar (2005) has called the ‘boundaries of citizenship’. Moreover the ethnic revitalization movements not just reclaimed the new formation of citizenship boundaries, but their claims, based on cultural arguments, also brought forward a global discussion over democratic ideologies about equality and social justice. Draschsler and Kallen (as cited in Banks, 2009) point out, that these cultural movements revoked discourses about ‘cultural democracy’ as an important character of democratic societies.
2 These global discourses over multicultural citizenship and cultural democracy influenced many Latin American countries locally, where marginalized ethnic groups claimed new boundaries of citizenship. These cultural claims in Latin America differentiated from lands in Europe or North-America - dealing with in-coming migrant groups across borders, as in Latin America these cultural claims expressed attention for the cultural pluralisation within the ‘natives’ of the nation-state (Delanty, 2002). Since the 1980s, bottom-up indigenous social movements emerged across the whole continent, namely in Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Argentina and Bolivia, using citizenship as an important notion in their “political vocabulary” (Dagnino, 2003, p.211). This question was extremely crucial in Bolivia, as the majority of the population belonged one of the many indigenous cultures1. Bolivia got in the spotlight from the 1990s, when series of social revolutions lined up after each other claiming the renegotiation of boundaries of citizenship (Albro, 2005). The marginalized indigenous groups in Bolivia applied the ‘politics of difference’ and employed collective action as a way of claiming full membership for themselves (Dagnino, 2003). By refusing their marginalized position in society, bottom-up social movements called for recognition of cultural differences based on democratic discourses and claimed remedies in new citizenship formulation. In the end, the years of resistance and claims of the Bolivian social movements’ paid off by electing the used to be ‘cocalero’ (coca grower) union leader, Evo Morales who the world got to know as the pullover wearing, folklore dancing indigenous president, who kept a close connection in politics with Venezuela and Cuba. In 2009 the new government ratified the new constitution by Evo Morales victoriously declaring “Here begins the new Bolivia” (Taylor, 2009, para 5). In this new beginning, Bolivia was renamed as the Plurinational State of Bolivia, contesting a new citizenship understanding, expanding the liberal understanding of citizenship with a new meaning and practice (Albro, 2010). Postero (2007b) building on Hale’s neoliberal multiculturalism definition, named this new citizenship project as post- multicultural citizenship, which extends the Marshallian citizenship understanding by considering that citizenship is cultural and viewing citizenry as a social process rather a legal status. As it shows, the post- multicultural citizenship project expresses a double demand, where both liberal and multicultural citizenship views are represented. Postero (2010) argues that today’s democracies needs to break down the dualist thinking over liberal and multicultural citizenship understandings and consider that these two views are both present in the society and their existence together is revitalizing the real democracy society.
1.1.2 Conceptualizing citizenship Concluding form the above described the liberal framework of citizenship has been challenged by the rise of globalization, where nation-states had to deal with the claims of differentiated cultural groups, who were ready to take action for their own interest to become recognized full members of the society. These factors impacted the concept of citizenship with a new meaning and practice. In the following I describe these new insides by two borrowed terms from Postero (2007b) called the ‘politics of belonging’ and the ‘political culture’. These terms will guide me to conceptualize citizenship, where I view the new meaning of citizenship both as a cultural and social belonging, where members are bonded
1 Census 2001, National Institute of Statistics. Available at www.ine.gob.bo.
3 through cultural and social patterns; while by the new practice of citizenship the term active citizenship has been introduced, viewing citizenry as an active participation for the betterment of the society.
Citizenship as belonging Postero (2007b) introduces the term ‘politics of belonging’ in her citizenship understanding, signifying citizenship as a process of belonging to a political community, where societies answer to that fundamental question of ‘who is being qualified to be a citizen?’. As sequenced, citizenship has been tended to be equated as a membership, where members are join together through a “sense of belongingness” (Zajda, 2009, p. 3). Literature argues that the concept of belonging is closely interrelated with the notion of identity and Smith (1991) adds that there is a straightforward understanding of the concept of “identity” as “sameness”, where members of particular group are alike to each other (p. 75). Benhabib (2002) writes indeed citizenship is a politicized project, but citizenship imparts a cultural and social meaning, where citizens are being attached through a cultural and social membership. The last decades’ social movements brought forward that citizenship is cultural, extending citizenship with a cultural meaning, where members are attached through a sense of cultural belongingness. Traditionally citizenship has been understood in term of the nation-state, as the Oxford Dictionary’s definition referring to citizenship still points this out: “the position or status of being a citizen of a particular country”2, but due to the increased cultural diversities within countries and global discourses over cultural democracy, nation-states are being challenged to construct national identities. Where until nation-states have been the only dominating agent to construct its citizens and unite them under the umbrella term of national identity, now nation-states need to deal with different localized and regionalized cultural identifications. Also the global discourses over cultural democracy entrenched with concepts like human rights, equality and democracy just broadened the complexity of belonging with the introduction of global identification (Okuma-Nyström, 2009). These new developments pointed towards that individuals can belong to several cultural communities, as Yuval-Davis (2010) argues for multileveled citizenship by saying “people are citizens simultaneously in more than one political community”, where people’s lives are shaped by local, regional, national and global communities (p.160). In replay Banks (2009) suggests that nation-states are being challenged to construct and hold a delicate balance between diversity and unity, where they both need to accommodate space for these differently localized cultures while in the same time they need to create unity within diversity. As it unfolds creating unity in divided societies is a paramount aspect of citizenship. Banks (2009) points out that members of local cultural group often become marginalized in their national culture as they cannot live and function effectively in them. Therefore I understand citizenship not just a shared cultural belonging, but a social as well, recognising that citizens are embedded in social systems which has utility in organizing their members (Schuller et al., 2000). Hence, citizenship is viewed as a socialization project, where citizens are attached through common goals and principals. These developed common reference points guide the social relationship among members, with the objective to glue members together and advance social functioning (Print and Coleman, 2003). Applying the words of Lazar (2008) calling these “everyday practices and experiences of citizenship”, she indicates that these
2 http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/citizenship?q=citizenship 4 common references are surfacing in the everyday through the daily interactions between the members of the community (p.3). These shared resources among members within a society are often referred as social capital, where academic literatures most commonly defines its elements as networks, norms and values (Woolcock and Gamarnikow, 2011). Indeed social belonging is not a fully new emerged inside of citizenship meaning, how the cultural aspect arose, yet social movements in Bolivian and the government of Evo Morales renovated, transformed and reemphasized this form of belonging as a paramount reference point of citizenship. Therefore I also include this form of belonging within my conceptualization of the new citizenship meaning.
Citizenship as active participation Social movements in Latin America not just brought forward a new meaning of citizenship, but also introduced a new practice how to be citizens. Postero (2007b) introducing the term ‘political culture’ within her citizenship understanding sheds lights that citizens make citizenship meaningful through participation. The essence of political culture steps over that view that citizenship is a set legal status, rooted in the observation that states do not guarantee equality for everybody within societies, and so “citizens take increase responsibility for their own well-being, rather than relying on the state” (Brooks and Holford, 2009, p.88). This highlights the term active participation within the concept of citizenship by conveying citizenship as a form of action, rather than an obligation (Dagnino, 2005). Nyamu- Musembi (2002) writes that citizenship has been shaped by the actual struggle of the people, engaging into action for the betterment of the society. This has been also evidenced in Bolivia, as the marginalized indigenous population in Bolivia refused their oppressed position in the society and engaged in action in forms of demonstration, marches, road blocks or even hunger strike – to reform the society for the betterment (Albro, 2005). Social movements shifted patterns from the liberal legal rights-duty form of participation within societies and introduces the concept of active citizenship (Dalton, 2008). Active citizenship advances that the relation between the state and the people are not static, rather it assumes a vivid correlation, where the parties are continuously affecting and forming each other. Active citizenry means engagement to the society, implicating a different political attitude and behaviour, where citizens are political agents, who continuously play an active role to influence decision. Gonçalves e Sliva (cited in Banks, 2009) argues that engaged citizen not just work for their own interest but they work for the betterment of the whole society, as she writes: “A citizen is a person who works against injustice not for individual recognition or personal advantage, but for benefit of all people. In realizing this task-shattering privileges, ensuring information and competence, acting in favour of all-each person becomes a citizen” (p.11). Due to this new practice of citizenship, social movement in Latin America has been hailed positively in the academic literature as the ‘the third wave of democracy’, believing that these movements bring more democratic regimes in these countries (Huntington, 1993).
1.1.3 Citizenship education After having conceptualized the notion of citizenship by its new meaning and practice, I turn my attention towards the educational setting. The research focuses on citizenship education in the
5 framework of formal education setting, namely in a public secondary school, located in Sucre, taking the academic argument, that schooling is understood as a practice ground of citizenship construction, implying that that educational policies, the design of the curriculum and the pedagogical strategies are expelled to reflect the state-led citizenship project (Gellner, 1983; Arratia, 1997; Hornberger, 2000; Canessa, 2004). Strauss (2011) writes that the education systems envision the states’ vision of development, which has been coded in the educational curricula. Regalsky and Laurie (2007) just support this idea of politicized education and discuss the “hidden curriculum” of education by stating “the reproduction of a system of meanings and values materially” are deeply linked with “rooted power structures” (p. 234). Delanty (2003) titles his paper “citizenship as a learning process” indicates that schools are vital agents of ‘making citizens’, where the developed school programs focus on to construct students into citizens matching the nation-led citizenship vision. Veugeler (2011) writes that citizenship educations are differentiating based on county context as citizenship education also embedded in different meanings rooted in the social, cultural and political orientations. In relation to Bolivia, due to the rise of globalization the meaning and practice of citizenship has been transformed which new outlook of citizenship has been also adopted by the educational field. In 2009 the new constitutions of Bolivia was ratified, which was accompanied a year later with a new educational reform, being positioned as “the highest function of the state” (Proyecto de Ley, as cited in Cardozo, 2011, p.2). In this sense, schools are important nation-led agents of transmitting the new meaning and practice of citizenship through the curricula, sequencing that citizenship education aims to make students think and feel that they belong to shared cultural and social community, while in the meantime education encourage students to become active participants of the society.
1.2 Citizenship and educational projects in Bolivia In 1523 the Spanish colonist arrived in the region of Bolivia, when the Inca Empire was disturbed by inner civil war. This platform served the Spanish invaders to take the power over for about 300 years, till 1825, when Bolivia became an independent state. Since independence three main state-led citizenship projects has been implemented, namely assimilation, multiculturalism and extended in last years by post-multiculturalism. These citizenship projects without exception were paralleled with educational reforms, where the vision of citizenship was translated into these educational reforms. In the followings these citizenship projects and their translation into education will be looked at.
Assimilation In 1825 Bolivia won its independence from Spain, however these broken chains did not significantly changed the lives of the poor indigenous population as they “continued to live in conditions of selfhood until the 1952 revolution” (Luykx, 1999, p. 2). In 1952 the class conflicts, political repression and economic situation of indigenous people bought forward the Bolivian National Revolution, where indigenous people used the “Somos todos bolivianos” (We are all Bolivians) slogan, indicating that their exclusion from society was coming to an end (Canessa, 2007, p.189). Followed by this year, the government offered universal adult suffrage, carried out land reforms, voting rights and nationalized the country’s largest tin mines. However suffrage was offered by the government, in effect, if indigenous
6 people abandoned their indigenous identity with the purpose to incorporate them in the political plan of modernization of the government (Kohl, 2003). The new measurements served to assimilate the indigenous population to the national politics, where the norms and values were served by urban non- indigenous class with the focus to create homogeneity among the citizenry (Delany-Barmann, 2010). Followed by this revolution, the first educational reform, the so called ‘Código’ was introduced, aiming to assimilate indigenous people into the single national identity where normative system of white culture determined the national vision (Cardozo, 2011). The negatively charged ‘indio’ term was dismissed and indigenous people were renamed as ‘campesinos’, meaning peasants (Canessa, 2007). Hispanicization campaigns took place where Spanish as a common language was reinforced in the educational system, undermining indigenous languages with the aim to create linguistic and cultural homogeneity, as diversity was believed to be dangerous and unnecessary (López and Krüper, 2000). Albo and Anaya (2003) also support this point in their research by writing that till 1982 children were still punished at school for speaking their own indigenous language.
Multiculturalism Since the years of the 1980s, Bolivia faced great economic crisis due to over-reliance on foreign debt. The Bolivian government response to these years of hardship led to adopt neoliberal structural adjustment programs guided by international organizations, such as World Bank or International Monetary Funds (Postero, 2010). By implementing the neoliberal restructurings, the new Bolivian constitution was reformed with new citizenship project (Kohl and Farthing, 2006), moving away from assimilationist citizenship model “inspired by the adoption of International Labor Organization Convention 169, the 1994 constitution described the state as multicultural and pluriethnic” (Albro, 2010, p.75). By engaging with these new reforms, it sequenced a new “relationship among individuals, communities, and the state that took into account a more differentiated citizenship” (Lazar, 2010, p. 185). As an example of the new relation, in 1994 Sánchez de Lozada launched the Law of Popular Participation changing the social and cultural landscape of citizenship in Bolivia by transferring responsibilities to municipalities to deal with local issue. This law has been seen as crucial turning point in the Bolivian history, as this was the first time since the Conquest, that indigenous people were legally recognized and had the chance to participate in local planning (Albro,2010). This new relation was further introduced in the new educational reform, launched in 1994, promoting bilingual education, following the global educational tendencies shifting away from the monoculture ideology to multiculturalism. Even though the bilingual education was approved, in practice it was hard to achieve (Lazar, 2010). It was partially implemented across Bolivia and even in places it was realized, teachers lacking engagement continued to teach on with the old school practice. However the most interesting response came from the parents’side; García (2005) studying Quechua communities in Peru, notes the paradox situation that indigenous communities protested against the bilingual education reforms. Indigenous families claimed monolingual education in Spanish for their children as they believed that this knowledge would serve their children better. This experienced happened in Bolivia as well, as the former minister of education of Bolivia, Felix Patzi, in regard to the question said that these bilingual educational reform “drawn indigenous people into complicity with an integrationist cultural project” by rejecting the individual needs of the people (cited in Lazar, 2010, p.185).
7 Post-multiculturalism The neoliberal politics did not result in glorious development; rather the economic crisis raised poverty measurements and worsened inequality in Bolivia. Thanks to the Law of Popular Participation the decentralized municipalities served epicentre for organizational bodies and opened up a space for political participation. The economic struggles supplied the indigenous identity awaking and strengthened the indigenous discourses across the country, which was associated with poverty and exclusion. The collective struggle influenced cultural dialogs and fuelled the organization of people through local memberships (Chaplin, 2010). Indigenous people re-entered to the political arena and citizenship became an important notion to win membership for them in the national sphere. In-between 1994-1996 coca-farmers organized themselves to challenge the government’s coca leaf eradication policy, claiming that the coca production is a “traditional dimension of everyday Bolivian life” (Albro, 2005, p.4). They named coca-leaves as sacred leafs and reclaimed that they serve for traditional health benefits. The ‘water war’ was a response to the privatization of water resources by foreign companies of hiking up the water prices to the double in Chochabamba. Bolivians rebelled against these implementations, questing that the land is a heritage from the Inca tradition and therefore the water in the land is a collective heritage for the descendants. The ‘gas war’ was centring the issue of exploitation of the country’s vast natural resources, once again using the discourse that the natural resources belongs to Bolivians as a national sovereignty (Albro, 2005). From 2000 on, continuous rebellions were on the agenda proclaiming fundamental changes. In 2005, the new changes arrived with the election of the indigenous leader Evo Morales, as his words in his inauguration ceremony all indicated: “One state has died, and one state has been born. The colonial state is no longer, and the national state has arrived, bringing hope, for all the people of the world” (Cardozo, 2013, p. 21). In 2009, the new constitution was ratified which encompassed the new citizenship project with a new meaning and practice of citizenship.
n°70 Avelino Sinani and Elizardo Pérez3 No surprise the post-multicultural citizenship project was also followed by an educational reform incorporating the new state-led citizenship understanding. Evo Morales soon after his election demolished the donor- and market driven education and started to work on the new Bolivian-owned reform being positioned as “the highest function of the state” (Proyecto de Ley, as cited in Cardozo, 2011, p.2). Described by the Ministry of Education (MoE) the law n°70 Avelino Sinani and Elizardo Pérez (ASEP) is built respectively on four pillars as 1)decolonial, 2)intra- and inter-cultural, 3)productive and 4)communitarian education (Strauss, 2010; Cardozo, 2011). These four pillars of the ASEP resettle a new direction of citizenship education centring cultural and social reproduction by summarizing its goal to “create a new society of solidarity, justice, harmony, and supporting its cultural identity” (ASEP, cited in Strauss, 2010, p.32).
3 The new educational law, called n°70 Avelino Siñani and Elizardo Pérez (ASEP) was named after the indigenous founding fathers of the alternative indigenous educational school, the Warisata, dating back in the 1920s. (Strauss, 2010)
8 The first and the second pillars encompass the new understanding of cultural belonging by resemble the ambition to decolonize the Bolivian nation from the Western world and re-recognise the Bolivian culture-rooted nation and implement social justice. These two pillars open up for different knowledge towards critical awareness of the Bolivian reality, where discourses about cultural heritage, cultural diversity and ideologies striving for social justice through notions like equality and rights are surfacing. In the National Congress of Education (as cited in Cardozo, 2013) decolonization was explained as: “putting an end to ethnic borders that influence opportunities in the area of education, work, politics and economic security, where no one is privileged on the basis of race, ethnicity and or language. It also signifies to avoid favouring conceptualisations of the Western world as if they are universal, yet valuing the knowledges, skills and technologies of the indigenous civilisations, both of the Amazonian and Andian regions” (p.4). While the third and fourth pillars of the ASEP, realized in productive and communitarian education purpose to reinforce a closer and dialectical relationship between the school and the surrounding community, with the drive to construct students’ sense of social belongingness to the commune and create unity in divided society. Further on, the ASEP also signs that this new understanding of the Bolivian reality will be instructed through “liberatory pedagogy” by encouraging the critical awareness of reality “in order to change it” (ASEP, cited in Cardozo, 2011, p.6). In this framework this fosters not just the construction of the new meaning of citizenship emphasizing cultural and social belonging, but fosters the new practice of citizenship by applying critical pedagogy to teach engagement and encourage students to participate more actively in the society (Cardozo, 2011). Followed by this, the thesis has taken this new framework of Bolivian citizenship education under investigation in a public school setting, researching the new meaning and practice of citizenship, by conceptualizing citizenship firstly as a belonging, where members are interlinked through shared cultural and social patterns, while secondly citizenship are seen as active participation, where students are educated to become engaged and active members of the society. To unfold how citizenship has been constructed in the public secondary school the research adopted the following sub-questions to be researched in a 3-month-long field research:
1. What is the socio-cultural context of Bolivia/Sucre and the school? 2. How cultural belonging has been narrated to the students/performed in events? 3. How social belonging has been narrated/practice or performed through education? 4. How students are educated to become active citizens of the society? 5. How the different actors (students, parents, and teachers) in the school reflect on citizenship education?
1.3 Methodology Before proceeding on to the empirical chapter and answering to these sub-research questions, I described my research approach and methods applied in my field research. To unfold the new meaning and practice of citizenship in Bolivia, the research adopted qualitative research approach. Qualitative research applies a more interpersonal data collection, aiming to answer questions about ‘what’ ‘how’ and ‘why’ rather than ‘how much’. Among the different qualitative
9 research designs, I chose ethnographic research approach which stresses an up-close research method to the subject by emphasizing participation. In this approach participation is carried out in a relatively extended timeframe, where the researcher immerses into the local setting and become active participant of the field (Hammersley and Atkinson, 2007). This chosen methodology has been justified by that assumption that the naturally occurring oral accounts and settings in a school already serve rich evidence about citizenship education. More explicitly for this research a 3-month-long field presence was accommodated, which was facilitated by a 2 month preparatory literature study. Prior to my arrival, the access for a secondary public school in Sucre was secured through the Fox Language Institute, which next to languages lessons, offered optional services as homestay and volunteer opportunities. Through them I won access to a public secondary school, named Liceo Julio Quezada Rendón (further referred as Quezada) in Sucre as a teacher from the Fox Language Institute used to teach there as a replacement of an absent teacher. This opportunity made it possible to conduct an up close participant observation in the school. I fully emerged into the research setting, where I attended through a period of 3 month from Monday to Friday from 8AM till 13.00PM. In the Quezada I primary helped out with assisting English classes, tutoring students in English, helping the distribution of the breakfast, replacing absent teachers and supervising students. Besides these activities I participated in all school-based programs, celebrations, teachers meetings, organized teachers training, and reunions for parents and outside school activities with the teachers and students as well. By continuously being present in the school, the daily settings encompassed multiple data about the everyday narration and practices of social belongings and also school-based events served me to gain data about the performances of cultural and social belongings. Further on by participating in the daily life of the Quezada I gained insides how teachers encourages or not encourages students for active participation. However to advance validation of the data, participant observation was coupled with diverse research method, namely fieldnotes, fieldwork journal, desk research, informal interviews and semi-structured interviews. Fieldnotes in principle are written notes which are made about the observed or heard information (Hammersley and Atkinson, 2007). Fieldnotes were continuously taken throughout the 3 month fieldwork time to support the research. They were taken in the daily base, based on daily accounts of the school life where events, conversations and observations were noted down. Fieldnotes are considered as a method where selective data can be collected, as it is not possible to capture everything. For example during conversations I did stop to make notes, rather these data were noted down in the afternoon, when probably my memory shaded some details away. Therefore to advance my data collection about citizenship construction, information was triangulated by other methods. Fieldwork journal was a used methodology to deal with the newness of the research setting in relation to a person account, where I reflected on my personal feelings thought the research process. As reflexivity is an important accounted issue in ethnographic approach, in this way, I managed to reflexion on myself and my relation to the field. As I got emotionally connected with the participants of my research, it helped to reflect to the reserved happenings, feelings, emotions and thoughts to minimalize my subjectivity about the research participants. Desk research comprises gathering information in already existing resources. In this research this method was applied to study the books of the students. From three students from different grades all books, notebooks and albums were borrowed in order to study citizenship narrations through the
10 educational curricula. This gained information not just helped me to understand better the narrations of citizenship meaning and practices, but all well these data help me to analyse school-based events. Informal interviews are open dialogs, without a necessary structured form. Informal interviews served me not just to gain new insides and confirm information, but in the first hand these natural conversations were crucial and essential in the formulation and in the foundation of relationship with the field participants. These informal interviews facilitated changing information about myself and them and allowed the field relationship becomes more natural and opened among me and my research participants (Hammersley and Atkinson, 2007). What more, building a good field relation was also crucial as I relied on these relations to conduct my semi-structured interviews as well. In general informal interview were conducted both in the school and outside of the school setting. In the school setting informal interviews were carried out in the daily base from the beginning till the end of the research period with teachers, parents and students. I used this method to gain responses from students, teachers and parents on citizenship education, but also to just confirm some question that I had. Besides the Quezada, I had two important sources of informants, whom with I carried on many hours of informal conversations. In the afternoons, I took Spanish lessons and my teacher happened to be a primary school teacher, while where I was living, the grandmother also happened to be a kindergarten teacher, whom helped me to understand better the Bolivian developments, educational system and citizenship education. Finally the research conducted semi-structured interviews as well. These interviews mainly served the research to confirm information, collected through participant observation, fieldnotes and desk research rather than giving new insides. The interviews were pre-guided, however with an open framework, allowing the interview to move into different directions, provide spaces for new questions during the interview and allow both parties to express issues. It advantaged that the interview felt like a two-way communication (Hammersley and Atkinson, 2007). Semi-structured interviews were conducted in the last 3-weeks’ time with teachers, administrative staff of the school and with parents. More precisely interviews were conducted with 11 teachers (including one administrative staff) and with 5 presidents of the parents. Interview participants were selected after being present at the school for 9 weeks, which allowed me to discover the dynamic and relations of the school. Teachers for interviews were chosen on two measurements, based on the relevance of the subject and based on teachers’ impact on the students. In the first place subject relevance counted as it was assumed that sociology class had more relevance to citizenship education as mathematics, while secondly teachers’ influence on students were also taken into account, as teachers’ personality, even educating mathematics, influenced the students’ citizenship formulation. Also the presidents of the parents were interviewed with the purpose to get parents responses about citizenship education. Out of 6 grades I managed to interview 5 parents. These classes were selected based one which class I had the most contact with. In my interviews all participants were informed about the nature of my research and they knew that the said information might be used. In the thesis I refer back for these informal or formal interviews, where I use pseudonyms for the individuals that I spoke with. This is not for fear, as the research does not oppose danger for their identities, rather than it is applied to protect their privacy. Therefore the names in the thesis are being invented by me.
11 Limitations Carrying out and ethnographic qualitative research it is unavoidable not to take into account the limitations of the research. I believe that the main limitation of the research is that it concentrated on an in-depth understanding of citizenship construction in a certain setting. The local realities, such as the Quezada was a public girl school located in Sucre already determine the research, bringing up the question how citizenship education is being constructed in a private male secondary school in Santa Cruz. Besides, the research needs to take into account the ever-changing Bolivian reality, where citizenship education as well continues to change. And as so the research stopped in a certain point, its relevance also applicable for a certain period. Based on the personal account, the limitation of the research includes that I am not a native Spanish speaker. Previously I studied 3 year of Spanish and during my fieldwork I took almost every day classes, however, it should be counted as I missed information due to language barriers.
As it proceeds on In the followings the research continues with the empirical chapters, built up to discuss the how the new meaning and practice of citizenship has been constructed in the public secondary school in Sucre. It proceeds as: Chapter 2 offers an important contextual information over the socio-cultural context of Bolivia, Sucre and the school itself as citizenship constructions are not just diverse countrywide, but the regional and local milieu also defines the outcome, namely ‘what kind of citizens’ will be constructed. Chapter 3 focuses on how the cultural belonging of citizenship has been constructed through the curriculum. Firstly I show that citizenship education constructs multilevel cultural belongings in differentiated levels, where education develops students’ local-, regional, national- and global identification. Followed by this the performances of cultural belongings have been described, through the detailed description of the Day of Independence. Finally this chapter closes with students’ responses on the cultural aspect of citizenship education. Chapter 4 titles ‘building our community’ studies how the social belonging of citizenship has been constructed through narrations, practices and performances. This chapter discusses how the elements of social capital as networks, norms and values are being constructed through the curricula. Next to these it is also pointed out, why the Quezada as a public school fosters the construction of this form of belonging. The chapter ends by reflecting on students responses on this social aspect of citizenship education. Chapter 5 reflects on the new practice of citizenship. The term active citizenship is introduced and taken to the school setting, where I reflect on how engagement, betterment and critical thinking is being educated for students through the curricula. Chapter 6 is the final chapter, drawing on a conclusion on the research by answering to the research question namely How has the new meaning and practice of citizenship been constructed for students in a public secondary school in Sucre, Bolivia?. Hereby I also point out a possible research recommendation and from the point of view of this citizenship study I reflect on Bolivia in a broader scope.
12 2. Zooming on
Map 1: Political map of Bolivia (www.justmaps.org/maps/la/bolivia/)
13 Veugeler (2011) points out that citizenship education varies on a country base, as citizenship education is embedded into different meanings rooted in the social, cultural and political orientations. However in this chapter I argue that citizenship education does not just vary on a country-base, but it is also rooted in regional and local socio-cultural and political meanings. Therefore this chapter gives important socio-cultural and political contextual information not just about Bolivia, but about Sucre and about the Quezada as well, pointing out that these localized attributes are also determining the meaning and the practice of citizenship.
2.1 The plurinational context of Bolivia Bolivia is located in the heart of Latin America, landlocked by its neighbouring counties, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, Basil and Peru. The country is extended over a vast area of 1,098,581 square kilometres4 -which land mass equals 26 times the size of the Netherlands- but hosts only 10 million inhabitants5. It territory is spread through a vivid variation of biodiversity; from high snow-capped mountains reaching over 6000 meters to the lowland tropical wetlands and forests. The newly named country into Plurinational State of Bolivia is divided into 9 regional administrative units, called departments. These 9 regional units are divers each other not just geographically, but also these departments strongly position themselves based on their socio-cultural and political orientation (Kohl and Farthing, 2006). Bolivia is known as the “demographically the most indigenous country in the Americas” (Zoomers, 2006, p. 1024). Anthropological literature about Bolivia, citing the 2001 national census data, often starts with: the 62 per cent of the Bolivian population, all walks of life over 15 self-identified as indigenous (e.g. Lazar, 2007). Indeed many inhabitants identify themselves with one of the 37 officially recognized indigenous groups6; yet the Bolivian cultural palette is even more colourful, enriched by the descendent of the Spanish colonials. These ethnic groups have a quite visible geographic division as well, where the majority of these indigenous groups are located in the Western Highland regions, while in the Eastern Lowland regions there is much less indigenous presence, hosting the white-mestice elites of Bolivia (Fabricant and Postero, 2013). Social movements in Bolivia brought these cultural differences to the forefront allied with different political standpoint, where the poor indigenous highlanders in departments as La Paz, Oruro, Cochabamba, Potosi, Chuquisaca and Tarija confronted with the rich white-mestice lowlanders in departments of Pando, Beni and Santa Cruz (Postero, 2007a). From the 1990s on Bolivia faced great social tension within these two cultural segments of the country and by the years 2000, the country broke into two socio-cultural and political divisions, when the highlanders rebelled against neoliberal development supporter lowlanders (Postero, 2007a; Dunkerley, 2007). Social movements in Bolivia changed the power balance in the country, shifting the centuries hold power of the lowlanders to the hands of the highlander indigenous population, and introducing a new agenda of Bolivia advancing their own socio-cultural and political interest. The Eastern part is still opposed to the
4According to the 2005 projections from the Instituto Nacional de Estadísticas (National Statistics Institute, or INE). See the INE’s web site: www.ine.gov.bo. 5 http://www.ine.gob.bo:8081/censo2012/ 6 http://www.ine.gob.bo:8081/censo2012/PDF/resultadosCPV2012.pdf 14 new national agenda of Evo Morales and against his efforts to overturn neoliberalism, where the lowlanders’ economic and political interest lays (Postero, 2010). These social movements in Bolivia revoked the discourse of cultural identification, what the politics of Evo Morale just reinforced. Chaves and Zambrano (2006) called for attention for the phenomenon of ‘reindigenizacion’ in Bolivia as more and more inhabitants identify themselves to be indigenous. The study called Democratic Audit (Seligson, Morales, & Blum) carried out in 2006, repeating the 2001 census question in regard about inhabitants’ indigenous belonging, showed that in 2006 71% of the population self-identified with one of the many indigenous groups, compared to 2001’ 62% result. This amendment is linked to the change of identity, where inhabitants become indigenous again. Poster (2013) argues that indigenousness in open concept, which is constantly negotiated by individuals and groups. She further argues that to understand indigenous identity, first the political, economic and social context needs to be studied, which from the identity concept arises from. Hall (1996) described identities as resources to meet the contingent needs, rather than permanent characteristics of the individual. In the contemporary politics of Bolivia indigenousness became an important standpoint in the national concept, where the government redefines Bolivia based on indigenous principals. Evo Morales fosters pro-indigenous developments, where the government contributes tremendously to benefit, support, legitimize and raise indigenousness and take non-indigenousness development supporters as the enemy of the government (Postero, 2013). These politics also are embedded into the educational settings, where indigenous roots and principles becomes an important focal point of cultural and social belonging of citizenship.
2.2 The socio-cultural context of Sucre The Western part of Bolivia intensely supports the politics of the current government, while the Eastern part works against it (Postero, 2013). Sucre, situated in the department of Chuquisaca, geographically located in-between the Western and the Eastern regions of Bolivia, pops the question forward: where Sucre can be placed in its orientation on this colourful socio-cultural and political map of Bolivia? Based on my fieldwork, I understood that Sucre in terms of socio-cultural and political orientation, it showed more interconnection with the Western part of Bolivia, which is mainly reasoned by a shared cultural past. Chuquisaca and its capital, Sucre host a great number of inhabitants, who belong to the Quechua ethic group, sharing an utopic indigenous heritage with the Aymara cultures, as cultural members of former Southeaster provincial regional part - called Kholla Suyu - of the great Inca Empire (Postero, 2007a). Nowadays Sucre hosts around 300.000 inhabitants, where the population stretches over the 2800m high valleys of Sucre. Sucre originates back to the 1530s and since it has been titled for centuries the juridical, religious and cultural centre for Bolivia. As inhabitants of Sucre narrated to me, that due to the mining boom in Potosi in the 19th century, Sucre developed further into a recreation and cultural town, as the mining families found the climate in Potosi too harsh, so they marked Sucre as their recreation city, as its all year around pleasant climate and distance from Potosi was favoured. These families also invested in the development of cultural lives in Sucre by building parks and theatres. Although the city was always nourished culturally, in terms of economic development the region did not attract great interests for investments like other parts of Bolivia. The Eastern part not just being rich in forestry, but in
15 the recent years its economy boasted further on by holding a huge amount of gas reserve. Although the Western part is being poor in natural resources, but its development is protected by the fact the government is located there and the mines of Potosi also well-serving its stability. Actually Cochabamba’s holds almost the same potentials as Sucre, still its development expanded further thanks to its closer location to La Paz and also the fact that the Bolivian military base is accommodated here. Sequenced by these, in the 19-20th centuries Sucre was left out of the scope of economic developments while other cities moved faster forward in the ladder of modernization and Sucre was left behind with its title to be a cultural and religious centre of Bolivia. Sucre nowadays is known as a ‘preserved city’ where not just the colonial white-washed walls could be admired in its original condition, but as well the citizens of Sucre also remained to be more ‘preserved’. Bolivians usually refer to Sucre as a tradition city as it is known where life is calm, relaxed and safe. Families from other departments advance sending here their children to study in Sucre, as it is a common knowledge that people in Sucre are more traditional thinkers, advancing strictly morals and good behaviour, which views are influencing the local citizenship education in term of social belonging.
2.3 Liceo Julio Quezada Rendón as a public female school Sucre is stretched over a valley, with easily reachable distances, where the city expands in circles around its central square, the 26 of May. The Quezada located just one block away from this central square; celebrated its 44 years of anniversary in 2014. The school is built around a patio, where classrooms circulated around this open space in two levels. The Quezada accommodated approximately 660 students, from the age of 12 till the age of 18, divided into 19 classes through six years, educated by 53 teachers and for 21 different materials. The school year is divided into 4 semesters where each semester contains 2, 5 month of workload.
Picture 1: The inside of the Quezada
From all these the Quezada just seems to be a general secondary school just like the others in Sucre, but if we take a closer there are two important attributes which influence citizenship education, namely that it was a public secondary school accommodating only female students.
16 The Quezada is a public secondary school, run by the government. In Sucre approximately 140 primary and secondary schools can be found, divided into 3 school types namely public, semi-private, and private schools. Indeed all school types in Bolivia are subject to the guidelines and rules of the MoE as it maintains control through the production of school textbooks and educational programs; still the different school types are diverse one another in their educational approach and education profile, which impacts the education about citizenship as well. Based on my field experience the main divine among these schools types could be rooted back to the phenomenon of tuition fee. All private schools require the payment of tuition fees, which fluctuate from 200-650BS7 per month; semi-private schools due to the co-founded system between the state and private institutions (usually the church) made some of them to be free, whereas some required tuition fee, however this amount was still much lower compared to the private schools; while public schools run by the government are free of charges. Due to the establishment of tuition fee, schools already divide classes of society, based on who can afford and who cannot afford the required tuition fee. This most commonly consequences that just the upper-class members of the society could afford sending their children to private schools, middle-class parents send their children to semi-private schools and the lower-class parents’ children will attend to public schools. Although the new education law theoretically assigned education to be a vehicle of dissolving inequalities in the society (Cardozo and Strauss, 2012); in reality the existing school types rather than overcoming inequality just reinforce them. I found the following graffiti on the walls of Sucre, signed by U.R.U.S a Trotskyist political party raising attention for the Bolivian school system, which rather to resolve just affirms inequality in the society.
“La education es un derecho, no una mercancia” (Education is a right, not a commodity)
Sequenced from the just mentioned, it indicates that the majority of the students of the Quezada were children of low class families. This was also supported by a 2012 conducted survey by the government, studying the living situation of 164 students, which showed that 67% of the students live in the marginal situation, 16% works, 18% lives only with the mother, 16% lives with grandparents, brothers or uncles and 1.2% lives alone8. Most parents of the Quezada belonged to the working class of the society by obtaining jobs as taxi or bus drivers, tailors but most commonly they worked in the market re-selling products. Parents were working long days in Sucre or even away from Sucre to be able to supply the family with the required household needs. This socio-economic situation of the parents resulted in that they had limited time to invest in their children education, which attribute impacted the education profile of the Quezada in citizenship education. Other special character of the school was that it accommodated only female students. In Sucre there were just a hand full primary and secondary schools which host only males or females students. Indeed I was told that according to a law all schools should be opened for both genders, but this implication remained just a theory, as no males wanted or could enter to the Quezada. The majority of the students did not live close to the school; they commuted even long distances, compared to the fact that they
7 For example a full-time monthly salary of a teacher fluctuate from 1500-2400BS 8 Saurce: Annual curriculum plan for material philosophy and psychology (2013) 17 could attend to other schools which were much closer for their home. The explanation for this commuting can be rooted back to the school’s special characteristic that the Quezada hosted only female students. As many parents were working long hours in Sucre or even in other cities, they felt their children were more protected and controlled in such a school where no males were present. In Bolivia pregnancies at young age are pretty common, hence parents in this way try to avoid and limit their daughters’ contact with the other gender. I clearly recall how the school ‘protected’ its students by closing its big wooden doors by 8.30AM and just reopening it by 12.30PM. Lately arrived students had to knock, reason why they came late and wait for permission to come in. I remember also boys from another secondary school came by to collect some donation for a sick classmate, but rather than letting them in, a teacher of the Quezada went around the school to collect some contribution in the name of these boys, while they were waited outside. This special attention of control also impacted the education profile. In this chapter I have discussed that the socio-cultural and political environment of the country, the region and the school influence citizenship education. In the upcoming empirical chapters these impacts will be more elaborately unfolded. Until then the thesis continue with chapter 3, where I discuss how education in the Quezada constructs students’ cultural sense of belonging through narrations and performances.
18 3. Who are we? – Who we are not? Narration of cultural identities in the curriculum ‘Who are we?’ and ‘Who we are not?’ - These questions are all important questions of citizenship education, centring the construction of cultural identities, where citizens share a common membership based on shared cultural patterns. Hall et al. (1998) writes that „much of the rhetoric of citizenship is about citizenship and identity- encouraging young people in particular to think of themselves as citizens” (p.309). Traditionally citizenship education fosters the construction of national identity, but due to the global influences the position of nation-states has been challenged, which brought forward that perspective that individuals can belongs to multiple cultural communities. As the world became more interconnected, the notion identity also became more complex, where identities are interlinked simultaneously with different cultural communities where local, regional, national and global belongings could emerge. Banks (2009) contesting this new phenomenon brought forward that nowadays nation- states are challenged to balance these differentiated cultural belongings with unity and he further argues that keeping a delicate balance of diversity and unity should be an essential goal of democratic nation- states. In 2009 with the approval of the new constitution, Bolivia changed its official name from Republic of Bolivia to the Plurinational State of Bolivia, which shift offered a new concept of cultural belonging. The plurinational concept in its essence can be described as ‘unity in diversity’ as it fosters the construction of differentiated cultural belongings while in the same time it promotes unity under a joined national identity. This view has been also transmitted to the education system, where the intra and inter-cultural pillar of the ASEP aims to foster education about cultural diversity by constructing differentiated cultural belongings, while in the same time the pillar decolonial resembles the ambition to join these differentiated cultural identifications under the umbrella term of national identity (Strauss, 2010; Cardozo, 2011). In the upcoming I unfold how the curriculum constructs students’ sense of cultural belonging in different levels, namely local, regional, national and global level through narrations and performances. The chapter closes by reflecting on students’ responses on this aspect of citizenship education.
3.1 The narrations of cultural identities The construction of multileveled cultural identities in the Quezada is pulled through the entire educational experience, where subjects as social studies - integrated in subjects like history, geography, political science, civic classes, music and art - are most closely associated with constructing multileveled cultural belongings. In the Quezada the study books in relation to real subjects, dated back to the years of 1990s, when social study books were re-printed in 2012, indicating that these newly printed textbooks are being refilled with the new Bolivian understanding of cultural belonging. Identity narrations utilize a great palette of tools to narrate the ‘who are we’ by explaining the meaning of belonging. Smolicz (2002) sums up that there are three models that countries construct membership based on 1) shared values, 2) culture and language and 3) ancestry relying on the past. Although he discusses countries by one model, here I apply all models at once, where I argue that citizenship narrations in the Quezada utilize all three models to construct students’ multileveled identities, where local belonging is being narrated by shared values, regional belonging is by shared
19 culture and language, national belonging is by a shared past and global belonging once again by shared values. These three patterns of belongings are being narrated through histories and tales or often these meaning are being interchangeable in symbolic elements like colours, flags, hymns, dances and heroic figures which summarize and substitute these three mentioned references of cultural belonging. Also common reference point in these constructions the ‘who are we?’ are emerging through the narration of ‘who are we not?’ by separating the ‘us’ from the ‘them’. This points out that crucial point about identities, that they are constructed in relationship between belonging and not-belonging (Martin, 1995). Yuval-Davis (2010) by saying „the gaze of the Other” supports this argument that identities are becoming conscious in present of otherness where the cultural identities have been defined in relation to those who are non-members, who have been seen different from members of the community (p.274). Taking all these into account, in the upcoming within the framework of citizenship education, multileveled identity narratives will be looked at, where the meaning of belonging in different levels are narrated by emphasizing shared values, culture and language and ancestry. To construct these differentiated cultural belongings, the meanings of these narrations are often encompass in symbolic elements like colours, flags, hymns, dances and heroic figures, through a dualistic compartment where the cultural identities become to the forefront in the presence of the other.
3.1.1 Local identity The education in the Quezada constructs local belonging for students in a school-based level. In Sucre school communities distinguish themselves from each other by holding their own symbols of belonging in form of flags, coat of arms, uniforms, hymns and dances. Schools through these internalized symbols communicate values what the school stand for, which narrations construct students’ sense of belonging in the local school level. Colours are common reference points in the flag, coat of arm and uniform of the Quezada. In the morning hours, when the youth was busy to march to their school, just by standing in a busy crossing, among the dozens fast moving students I could easily pin-point the students of Quezada based on their blue-red uniform. Schools in Sucre define its uniform individually, which standardized school uniform creates an identity for a school and for student as well. The code of uniform of the Quezada was laid down in the yearly given out booklet, called ‘Regulation standards of disciplines and coexistence in the Julio Quezada Rendón’ (Rendón, 2013) such as: “White apron, navy blue sweater with red lines, which colours respectively identify the school, white socks and black shoes” (article nr. 3). Not only once I heard, Mrs. Camila who was charge of keeping the order in the school, scolding students by wearing a black sweater and telling them: “Are you a student of the Mujía?... Not… then come tomorrow in your blue sweeter”, as the students of the Mujía owned a similar outfit as the Quezada with the difference that their sweater was black. This not just support that the local identity is being constructed in the present of the otherness, but also shows that attribute such as the colours of uniforms are also vital elements of belonging. The red and blue colours of the Quezada are not just incorporated colours of the uniform, but the flag and the coat of arm of the school own these symbolic elements as well. I often heard teachers and the director referring to these colours in speeches, where they linked these colours with values, where the blue represented respect and red represented love, which values were paramount guidelines of attitudes and behaviours in the Quezada.
20 Students’ local sense of belonging was further constructed in a school-based Picture2: The patio of the Quezada, decorated by the celebration, called the Anniversary of the red and blue colours of the school College. I was told that the anniversary is actually one day, but indicating the importance of this celebration, a whole week-long of programs are being scheduled to honour this event. Beside activities such as common cleaning, museum and church visits and workshops, the program must include to honour the foundation of the school by learning or repeating hymn of the school. A music teacher, Edith told me that the hymn of the school was written by an already pensioned music teacher, which hymn encompasses important value implications guiding the education approach of the Quezada. Picture 3 shows two paragraphs of the school hymn narrating over these values by saying ‘fight with honour ‘and ‘triumph with pureness and love’.
Picture 3: The hymn of the school in a music textbook (Self translated)
Youth from the Liceo Quezada Rendón go ahead, non-stop ahead we will always fight with honour
For our fatherland and progress we work at high school improving our selves is what life teaches us we will triumph with pureness and love
Students’ local identification was also further enforced by competing with other schools. The Entrance of the Virgin Guadalupe (the Saint of Sucre) in September is such an event, where all schools in Sucre parade through the city by dancing their school-owned dance. As this is a highly scored event in the school curriculum, the preparation for this event stars 2 months in advance, where students practiced the school-owned dance, called the Kullawada 4 times a week, two times with the allowance of the director in the last 1, 5 hour of classes and two times in the afternoon hours, when students returned to the school to practice. I often watched students in their rehearsal and although Kullawada is a playful and happy dance, students always danced it fairly seriously, what seriousness I tended to understood as a sing of dedication to the dance as students wanted to perform it preciously to stand out with their dance from the other schools' performance. When I addressed this question to another dance-observing teacher she replayed: “Yes, they don’t smile… they want to do it right, it is important. You know in the Entrance of the Virgin there will be so many schools performing and we need to be good there, everybody is going to watch the dances. That is why we start to prepare in time, that we won’t make mistakes.”
3.1.2 Regional identity Bolivia expands in a massive landmass, which hosts culturally vivid and divers inhabitants. The new educational law fosters education about cultural heterogeneousness, where students in subject like music, art, geography and social studies are being educated about the different cultures in Bolivia. The curriculum focuses on describing these differentiated cultures based on geographical regions, where students study about them in terms of flora and fauna, resources and history. Indeed the cultivation of these regional cultures had many forms, but most commonly and most enjoyably Picture 4: Music notebook describing different it emerged through teaching dances. In the regional dances Quezada the educational curriculum fostered the education about traditional dances as these dances were considered to encompass important narrations about plurinational context of Bolivia. For example symbolic elements like the rhythm of the dance indicates the attitude and the character of its local inhabitants, the thickness and the layers of the clothing directs the weather of the regions, while the accessories are representing something of the local cultural heritage, which elements continued to forms students’ understanding about Bolivia’s diverse cultures. To take one step further, the education system not just cultivated the education about diversity, but as well it supported the construction of students’ regional identification. Indeed schools need to follow the main educational guidelines of the MoE, but schools also hold the right to tailor the educational curriculum to meet the regional needs. Therefore in the regional level education develops students’ sense of belongingness toward its own departments by using cultural and language narrations of belonging. As being said this most obviously can be captured within the language education in Bolivia. The government subscribes that every student in the secondary school need to study 3 languages: castellan an indigenous language and a foreign language. The order of the languages are determined based on the regional characteristics and needs, meaning if the majority of the region speaks an indigenous language as a mother tongue, than it will be signed as a prime language at the school, castellan as the secondary and finally a chosen foreign language. In case of the Quezada this order applied, that as a first language castellan was taught, secondly Quechua and finally English, indicating that Sucre assimilated with the colonial culture, still Sucre host many citizens with the Quechua ethnic background and by students studying the Quechua language and its culture, the education develops students’ regional attachments to Chuquisaca. Also further on just like in the local level, the curricula promoted the narrations of the regional importance of Chuquisaca by prioritizing and emphasizing the regional culture, often in-cooperated in symbols like the flag, the hymn and the dance of Chuquisaca. By doing so, school education constructed, strengthen and deepen students’ regional identification. This regional belonging has been further reinforced by the yearly held 3-days long celebration of the Anniversary of Chuquisaca. Schools in Chuquisaca organize school activities honouring and embracing the region, where the program palette must encompasses the hymn, the poem and the dance of Chuquisaca narrating about the regional culture. Also these belongings were further cultivated in form of sport competitions -where the best football of volleyball player of the Quezada joined the united regional team to play against other regions of Bolivia- and in dance events, where students through their dance performance showcase their pride of belonging of the region. These settings of competitions of regions aimed to form unity, but as well the presence of other regions supply students sense of regional belongingness towards Chuquisaca.
3.1.3 National identity It has been discussed that due to the rise of globalization the concept of nation-state has been challenged. Indeed the position of nation-states has been weakened, but still constructing nation identity is a paramount aspect of citizenship education. The narration of the Bolivian nationhood is built around the common shared cultural memory of ancestry, which narrations foster unity within the culturally diverse nation. Anderson (1991) by describing nation-state as an ‘imagined communities’, as members will never know most of their fellow-members, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion just shows that national identity has been constructed through a sense of belonging to an imagined national community. Wash (2004) writes that these narrations of belongings “explains to the rest of the world how this remarkable society has evolved into a nation”, bringing forward that national belongings has been constructed based on shared past. In the new nationhood of Bolivia the concept decolonization became a common discourse to construct national identity (Cardozo, 2011), connoting a counter-discourse of the colonial order by “undoing the wrongs of history, and releasing colonized subjects from domination, injustice, and oppression” (Howard, 2010, p3). This discourse of decolonization divides the Bolivian history into two dominant segments, where this dualistic narration of the past constructs students’ national belonging.
The ‘Us’ - the pre-colonial time It has been already indicated, that in contemporary Bolivia, indigenous peoples and their customs have become icons in the new nationhood; Canessa (2012) supports it by writing that indigenousness is “the foundation for a new nationalism” (p.18). With the introduction of the ASEP, the educational curriculum has been modified, so called ‘folkolized’, where the pre-colonial time has been reimagined and the indigenous past re-entered the curriculum. Yapu (citied in Strauss, 2010), a director of a research institute in La Paz argues that “we don’t know much about indigenous knowledge. There is very little research about it… “ (p.79) and he adds that this pre-colonial period has been politically idealized as this
23 period represents the origin, the roots of Bolivians that the nation grow from. Therefore this cultural memory is filled up with positive memories, which serves the foundation of the national identity. The indigenous interrelated studies in the curriculum have adopted many forms, where the main sources of narrations over indigenous past are covered by subjects of history, science, languages, geopolitics, music, art and religion. These subjects’ narrations root back to the pre-colonial time, discussing the pre-colonial cultures. By studying the students’ school materials, it became clear that indigenous cultures has been represented in a simplistic version, where pre-colonial time is being romanticized, described where unity, harmony, reciprocity, equality, solidarity and integration existed among members in the society. Moreover this era has been described as a beautiful, spiritual and peaceful stage of history, where indigenous worldviews such as cosmovision, the Mother Earth, live well and the ayullo system were extolled. The political segments such as the Inca invasion and the hierarchical Incaico social structure are not emphasized nor represented in a dark shade. The following text was found in a history schoolbook of grade 3, where the area of Kandire and the Tentayepe group were explained as a sub-indigenous group of the Guarani. In the text we could evidence the idealization of the untouched indigenous area and the so called last existing real indigenous group, who managed to resist all evil - that no other parts of Bolivia could not have done - and therefore they live in a kind of the ‘nirvana’ on the Earth.
Picture 5: Schoolbook of history (Self-translated)
Kandire: The land without evil, the land with good people, the land of plenty and the land of love and joy. In Kandire there are numerous groups, where people are hardworking, humble, peace-loving, generous, solidary, respectful for life and for each other and they offer love for visitors whom with they share the joy of life. They formed a unity of freedom, where they defended the dignity of their lives. They resisted the Inca, the Spanish and finally the republican oligarchy treason.
Tentayape is the living community who own all the heroic stories of chiriguanos to preserve their culture, their land and feeling of freedom. Tentayape means in chiriguano “the last community”.
Based on my interviews teachers of the Quezada also agreed that this knowledge needs to be accommodated in the curriculum legitimized by the “this is our past” sentence. In one geopolitics class Carmen explained the indigenous past to the students as so: “Nowadays we are mesticos… but we don’t forget our past… it is still with us, just think about a festival… we still give the first taste of our drink to the Mother Earth”, following the indigenous ancestors, who poured a bit of their drink to the ground as a respect and gratitude toward the Mother Earth.
The ‘them’ – exploitation Yet the Bolivian national identity becomes far closer readable in comparison with the ‘other’, where the ‘who are we?’ more clearly emerges. The narration of the Bolivian history proceeds as the harmony
24 of the pre-colonial time was disturbed by the greediness of the imperialist countries. In relation the Bolivian history next to the Spanish colonial time, the white-mestice overruling, the territory loss of Bolivia caused by the greediness of the neighbouring countries and the era of neoliberal politics are mentioned under this label. Bolivia feels injured by these imperialist countries by pushing Bolivia into poverty as the geopolitics books in grade 6 narrates “they wished to grow in the expense of Bolivia’s land and natural resources” (Lizardo, n.d, p.45). These narrations over the others are important elements of contracting the Bolivian nation identity. As the Spanish occupation took almost 300 years the curriculum is rich in legends, tales and histories comparing the pre-colonial era with the colonial time. In these narratives the ancient indigenous culture is being romanticized, while the colonial era is pictured to abhor down on indigenous people and culture. In order to understand the two opposed words the symbolic contents of these narratives needs to be looked at. The following summary was written in the language exercise book of a 3rd grade student, representing the idealized pre-colonial past with its good valued human characteristics and his respect and close connection for the nature, while on the other side a rich Spanish father represents the colonial area, who does not own good human values as being discriminating indigenous people.
The legend of the ‘molle’(pepper tree) One upon of a time, in the valley of Tarija lived the indigenous Teneke, who was studying the science of nature. He was well-educated, humble and friendly. Teneke fell in love with the beautiful Marison who was a daughter of a wealthy Spanish family. The lovers met each other by the river Guadalquirir. As the father of Marisol was bothered by his daughter was seeing an indigenous, he sent his daughter to Spain. Teneke suffered from the loss of Marison, and he died of this pain of sorrow. When Marisol returned and she got to know the death of Teneke, she cried and cried at his grief. Her pain blossomed in a molle tree, which tree is now known for its health benefits.
Just like the legend of the molle, the following two photos of a science album also demonstrate the narration of these two eras. The picture titled ‘Agriculture of the Incas’ describes agriculture to be scientific, while the landscape has been presented in harmony and purity with no presence of humans, while under the title of ‘Agriculture of the colonial time’, a difference scene could be observed, where people and animals are both working, while a white person monitors the work by holding a whip behind his back. Picture 6: Agriculture of the Incas Picture 7: Agriculture of the Colonia
25 Further on the geopolitics textbook at grade 6 also promotes this division in more recent correlation by describing the different countries’ geopolitics, where Bolivia distance itself from the imperialist countries (Lizardo, n.d). Under Britain’s geopolitics it has been said that Britain aims to dominate the world (p.13), in regards to Germany racism is mentioned as Hitler created the discourse of the superior cast (p.14), by the United Stated the idea of status quo in cited as without discussion the Unites States ultimate role is to cover this position and they used this reasoning to dominate Latin America (pp.17-18), Argentina aims to be the predominant nation in Latin America (p.24) and Chile alongside with Brazil is characterized by its aggressive geopolitics (p.21). In contrast these imperialist nations, the geopolitics of the Soviet Union and especially the politics of China are being well-regarded as Bolivia share same ideologies with these non-imperialist nations. Under China it can be read, that it doesn’t aim to disturb the neighbouring countries living spaces; while besides the urbanization and population control question was mentioned, where China rewards families having one child and also support those who wish to move to live in the rural area (p.19).
National symbols These narrations have been also translated Picture 8: National symbols of Bolivia into national symbols. In the reference to civic class students explicitly studied about the Bolivian national symbols. Picture 8 taken from accessorized booklet of the civic class, shows these national symbols, where the coat of arm of Bolivia, the national flag, the kantuta blossom, the rosette, the whiphala and the patujú blossom can be viewed (see right to the left). These symbols are easily recognized entities, which are means to communicate the Bolivian history and its citizens who constitute the nation. Incorporated in the narrations of their Picture 9: The history of the Bolivian flag colours, designs and forms these symbols aim to impact students’ sense of belongingness to the Bolivian nation. For example let’s just take the most obvious symbol, the national flag of Bolivia. Students’ civic album narrates the history of the flag by describing its 3 different forms through the Bolivian history. The first form of the national flag was created after declaring Bolivia’s independence from Spain and in this sense it holds the narration of the colonial time, patterned with oppression, while green-red-green stripes with five stars in the
26 middle represent the 5 province of the country had at the time. Just after a year later the second version of the national flag was adopted replacing the 5 stars by the national coat of arms and changing its colours to yellow-red-green, adding the yellow stripe by, which represents the country’s great mineral richness, red the blood lost during the battles for independence and green stands for Bolivia’s’ territory and rich vegetation. The last, present version was adopted 20 later with the change of newly reorganized colours, which the motive to reflect the order of the colours found in the kantuta and the patuju, the two Bolivian national flowers.
3.1.4 Global identity The narration of the Bolivian history continues more interconnected with the present, where notions as human rights and social justice emerge. As the world became more interconnected global discourses influenced countries locally, where global identification is consistently found to be mediated in local perspectives (Reysen and Katzarska-Miller, 2013). For example the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, approved in 1948 is universal in its scope, but allows people to apply them locally. Therefore I assign these narrations under the construction of global identity, where education envisages narratives about the establishment of a new, just and humane world order. Reysen and Katzarska-Miller (2013) define global identity by endorsing of intergroup empathy, valuing diversity, environmental sustainability, intergroup helping and felt responsibility to act. Golmohamed (2008) suggested that global membership is psychological in nature, referring for a mind-set or attitude. In the Quezada global identification in the curriculum were tightly interwoven with notions of rights, narrating global belonging with a shared value of justice and equality. In the curriculum these values have been often narrated with images of fighters. In the Bolivian history names as Simon Bolivar and Antonio José de Sucre were highly rated names, but due to the new indigenous centred nationhood, names of indigenous leaders and also female independent fighters reappeared as recognized heroines, which images also foster education about rights.
Picture 10: Indigenous fighter Picture 11: Image of female fighter
27 In Bolivia education about rights, especially human rights enter the curriculum already in kindergarten education. In April the day of the children is held, which day honours the rights of the children where children learn about their rights in form of games. Teachers often mentioned that student entering the secondary school, had already mastered their rights and they were not afraid to use them as they applied them verbally in sentences such “Professor, the bell was on, we have right for the break” or “Professor, we have right now to enter the class” as late arrived students need to wait outside until the first bell. Yet teachers reported that rights never go along, rights exist alongside with obligations that students need to accomplish. The booklet called, Regulation standards of disciplines and coexistence in the Julio Quezada Rendón (Rendón, 2013) encompasses both the obligations and rights of the students, which by the beginning of every year needed to be signed by students, parents and Picture 12: Biography of Evo Morale as a human right the headmaster of the school as the sign of fighter in the civic album accord. Even though students are said to be sharp about rights, the secondary school education further continues its education. The civic album in grade 5 was just a rich evidence of this, covering historical figures (Abraham Lincoln, Gandhi, Pope John Paul II, Pope Francisco, Mother Teresa, Mandela, Barack Obama and Evo Morales) who fought against oppression and fought for a just and equal social order. The album dedicated a page for each person encompassing a decorated biography with a picture. What more education about rights also Picture13: Recycled toilet rolls pencil case holder extended about environmentalism. Student in science class in grade 1 already acquired in- depth knowledge in related to environmentalism, where next to the global environment issues and the protocol of international conferences, they learn about the fundamental rights of the Mother Earth. Also these narrations were also carried out in practice, where in the framework of technique class students recycled plastics and papers to make bags, photo-frames, pencil cases or toys.
28 3.2 The performance of cultural identities In the focus of the previous section it has been discussed how the educational curriculum constructs multileveled cultural identities of belonging through narrations by building on shared values, culture and language and the past. Indeed not in the focus, but I also mentioned several school related events; pointing forwards that these cultural identities are further constructed and depend in school related events. In the upcoming I unfold explicitly these practices, demonstrating that cultural identities have been also constructed through performances. Most commonly I refer these events as performances supporting the argument, that “constructions of belonging have a performative dimension” (Bell, 2002, p.15). Taylor (2003) studying the rift between the textual and the played out narrations contested that actually these two systems are being interconnected and complementary with each other. Taylor calls performances as “embodied knowledge”, viewing performances as played-out narrations (p.2). As so, in the central of attention in these performances embodiments are being principal reference points, where the narrations are being embodied through actual physical experience -where partakers are able to see, hear or feel them- and through the utilization of series symbols in form of colours, flags, hymns, dances, which symbolic elements encompass and display multileveled cultural belongings. In the Quezada the calendar year, with its 200 planned educational days holds multiple planned events with the aim to construct, re-construct, deepen and strengthen students’ cultural identities through performances. Table 1 gives a quick overview over those events in the curricula, which purpose in mind to construct students’ sense of cultural belongings.
Table 1: Summary of events constructing cultural identities Datum What? With the focus to construct belonging: 23th March Day of the See This day commemorates the loss of the see, when Bolivia lost its coastline against Chile. This event builds on the shared past of Bolivians to construct students’ national identity. 22nd -29th April Anniversary of the The week-long event dedicates to honour the anniversary of the school, College which the aim to construct students’ local identity. 25th-27th May Anniversary of This 3-day–long event honours the anniversary of department with the Chuquisaca focus to contract students’ regional identity. 21st June Aymara New Year and This is a newly establish national holiday with the aim to promote Amazonia indigenous past in reference to national identification. 6th August Day of Independence The day commemorates the independence of Bolivia, building on a shared past of Bolivia to construct students’ national identity. 17th August Flag Day The day honours the flag of Bolivia, commemorating the Bolivian history by the narrations of the different forms of the Bolivian flag. This celebration aims to construct students’ national identity. first week of Entrance of the Virgin The day honours the Saint of Sucre, the Virgin Guadalupe. Schools in September Guadalupe Sucre parade through the city by dancing their school-based dance. This event aims to construct students’ local identity.
These events in the educational curriculum have been organized year after year with a pretty structured and formalized content. Indeed performances of these event might vary under different political agendas, but
29 in principle the build-up structure of these events are solid, which points forward that student through their 12-years-long school carrier, by repeating over and over again these performances, they ritualize these practices, which ritualization construct, re-construct, deepen and strengthen students’ cultural sense of belongingness. Although these events vary in content, still in their structure they follow the same patters in a sense that they are meant to perform cultural identities trough the experience of the body and symbols. In the upcoming I am not going to describe all these events, rather I serve a detailed description of the Day of Independence in form of hora cívica and as a parade. Indeed in principle this event focuses on to construct students’ national identity, but the display of this event also includes embodiments of differentiated levels of belongings through the experience of the body and symbols. These performances of the body and symbols are viewed as subjects filled up with cultural meanings; while through the repetitive display of these students’ multileveled cultural belonging have been constructed, reconstructed, deepened and strengthened.
3.2.1 The Day of Independence – as hora cívica Schools for the most paramount events in the calendar organize so called horas cívicas (civics hours). These special events in the curriculum are meant to bread the everyday schooling ritual and purposes to recreate special environments to transmit important messages and ideologies. Although the numbers and the dates of horas cívicas vary by schools, on a national level four horas cívicas are being celebrated in Bolivia, where the Day of Independence was one of them, commemorating one of the most important milestone in the Bolivian history, when Bolivia became independent from Spain after signing the Declaration of Independence on 6th August, 1825 in Sucre. The Day of Independence in form of horas cívicas was celebrated prior 6th August. In the Quezada students could feel indeed independent as the school’s door was still opened after the set 8.30AM arrival time; nobody closed or stood in the door and students could freely flee in, out and around the school during the Picture14: The flags preparation. When I arrived students were already busy to decorate the central ceremonial place, where flags were attached to the background, embodying visually the multilevel cultural belonging of Bolivian citizens. Three flags were adjusted to the wall; in the right the red-blue stripped flag stood for the Quezada representing students’ local belonging, in the left the white- based-red-diagonal flag of Chuquisaca represented regional belonging, while in a bit lifted above these two, the red-yellow-greed stripped flag of Bolivia was hanged, visually communicating that above all we all united under the national identity of Bolivia. When all decoration elements found its own place and all students were gathered around, the memorial started with the National Anthem. Students standing up and embodying the words of the hymn through singing „This land is free, free at last” after „the horrible clamour of war” Bolivia finally reached its „sweet hymns of peace and unity” and strongly emphasizing in the refrain „to die before we would live as slaves!”,
30 they took a quick 3-minutes-long journey in the Bolivian history, reminding them for their past. When the notes ended, students fail back to their chairs and to their present as well. In the followed up program Maria in her opening speech greeted the audience and summarized why we were here today; she closed her words by reminding students to keep fighting by saying: „In 1825 we finally got our independence, but still… since than we are still fighting every day for a better Bolivia”. According to the program brochure (See appendix 1) the Hymn Salve Oh Patria9 (We Salute You, Our Homeland) was listed. Through the Bolivian school education students learn a whole palette of hymns and songs, with the intention that one day each of them will be sang once for a certain event. The hymn Salve Oh Patria is a song just like that, which is being sang only this day of the year. Once again the ritual repeated itself: music teachers up to the front, students elevated… and another journey in the Bolivian history by praising the now free Homeland and its treasures and predicting a glorious future to this glorious land. This patriot hymns was followed by another narration of the Bolivian history by Professor Carlos, who reminded students of ‘who they are’ in the gaze of the other. The professor narrated over the colonial time by saying that “Bolivians were slaves of their own land” and continued questioning the audience “Who owns the land?“. After narrating Bolivians resistance against the imperialist, he embraced the politics of Evo Morale as under his governance “equality among people and unity in the land was established”, which was absent before. In his closing the very respectful, modest and eldest professor unexpectedly shouted out with emphasis: “We will never forget them who took our blood! Congratulations Bolivia!” The program continued with the performance of class 4a, commemorating the signing of the independence declaration in 1825, with the opening scenes where all 9 Bolivian departments leaders and wife were present. Students preparing for their roles needed quite a time and effort to embody their performance, not just learning their lines and perform, but also to prepare their physical appearance, as their hairdo and make-up had to fit the 1820s’ Bolivia. Students playing the role of the wives clearly more enjoyed re-experiencing their past than students playing the departments’ leaders, as they walked around elegantly with a straight posture and kept on playing with their fans. Also these students must have been enjoying their ‘legal’ beauties in front of the whole school as students were banned wearing make-up in a usual educational day (with exception of the graduating classes).
Picture 15: Scene from the play
9 http://himnosycancionesdebolivia.blogspot.nl/
31 However despite of all these displayed parade of wealth, the leading role was given to a modest- dressed student, playing the Sucre-born female guerrilla fighter Juana Azurduy de Padilla, who fought for the independence of Bolivia and also for the rights of indigenous people. In one scene of the play she was speaking with a campesino and even these few lines were said in Quechua. Although I don’t speak Quechua, but I still heard out through the 1minute-long dialog the word of Pachamama at least 2 times, assuming that there must be a conversation in connection with indigenousness and the their right of the Bolivian land. Also one teacher told me this Quechua conversation was a new element of the Day of Independence, probably with the purposed to deepen and strengthen students’ attachment to their indigenous past and their regional culture as well. During the performance I found myself smiling on the acting skills of the student playing the leading role as Juana as I personally found her exaggerating body language unusual and comical. However this dynamically performance of her body by continuously gesturing with her sward and walking up and down all meant to communicate the injustice, pain and persistence of the indigenous population through the language of the body. The play ended with a scene, where Juana was surrounded with the Spanish descendants’ females, while the department leaders remained next to their seats and by holding the Bolivian flag, she proclaimed the independence of Bolivia. Based on the historical evidence the declaration of the Bolivian independence happened differently, but this reinterpretation not just aimed to strengthen students’ regional identification of being proud of Juana as he was a Sucre-born heroine figure, but by re-emphasizing these heroic acts of fighting for justice and equality, it strengthened students’ global identification.
Picture 16: Juana speaks with a campesino Picture 17: The independence of Bolivia
Yet the play lasted only about 20 minutes, teachers continuously had to go around during the performance and tried to soothe down the clearly not that interested audience. Students finally remained in silence, when Maria introduced the next program, where the dance performances were
32 scheduled, dividing the dances in 3 cultural units. Dances are being understood as essential educational materials, encompassing embodied knowledge about the plurinational nature of Bolivia and strengthen students’ regional identification. The different dances represented the different departments of Bolivia, where elements of the dance gave clear indications of the regions, where the rhyme indicated the attitude and the character of its inhabitants, the thickness and the layers of the clothing indicated the weather, while the accessories were representing something about the regional cultural heritage. Displaying the regional importance the first unit was opened with the cueca of Chuquisaca. During the dance performances I was educated by a music teacher, Martha that cueca is a tradition dance in Bolivia in departments of Chuquisaca, Cochabamba, La Paz and Tarija. However the dance has a pretty strict base structure, the dance varies by departments in terms of clothing and how the pair communicates with each other with the use of handkerchief for rhythm of music. The cueca of Chuquisaca was followed by the faster rhythm cueca of Cochabamba and the cueca of Tarija; both dressed with lighter clothing compared to the dance of Chuquisaca, indicating the better climate of these regions. Also dancers were also wearing hats, as locals of these regions do so to protect themselves from the strong sunshine.
Picture 18: Cueca of Chuquisaca Picture 19: Cueca of Tarija Picture 20: Cueca of Cochabamba
In the second unit, the dances of the Andean regions were showcased, where the dance of Potosi, Oruro and La Paz were listed. The dances of Potosi and Oruru were danced with the accessory of the regional flag held by the female dancers, while the department of La Paz was presented by a cueca. These dances were danced with a slower rhythm compared to the first unit, where the cueca of La Paz was the most modestly danced one and also the costume of this dance was the most layered one, wearing the Aymara traditional clothing.
33 Picture 21: Dance of Oruro Picture 22: Dance of Potosi Picture 23: Cueca of La Paz
In the third unit, with the title of the “Representation of the flat area” the Eastern region of Bolivia was demonstrated by the students. This massive area and cultural diversity of three departments, namely Pando, Beni and Santa Cruz was represented just by one dance, the Taquariri. This bright colours dressed dance had a vivid, joyful and easy simple rhythm how its people are being understood and characterized in these regions.
Picture24: Dance of Taquariri Picture 25: Dance of Taquariri
In the closing of the Day of Independence Maria reminded all students for the importance of this day and being tankful of being Bolivians. She introduced the final closing program, which was called in the program brochure: Let enjoy the closing with the integration of the cueca for the song Dear Bolivia. In the dance floor all dancers joined together with the exception of the third unit dancers. Although the aim was to integration all departments in the dance floor, but this idea was not possible to be carried out technically due to the rhythm of Western and Eastern regions could not be incorporated at once. And now, these two different areas of cultural heritages, also often opposed one another in their political
34 standpoint, conflicted with each other in the dance floor in the Quezada. As Chuquisaca’s cultural belonging is more closely interconnected with Andean region, in the integration dance the six western and central Andean regions lined up for the final dance, excluding the dance of the Eastern region.
Picture26: Integration dance with the 6 Andean departments
3.2.2 The Day of Independence – as parade Parades are being crucial extension of horas cívicas. Students of the Quezada participated in civil parades on the most important national (Day of the See and Day of Independence), regional (Anniversary of Chuquisaca) and local (Anniversary for the College) civic days with the motives to bring paramount massage into the public sphere through practice of the body and symbols. The participation of these parades was taken seriously, as not participating in these parades without acceptable reason consequenced punishment. Teachers being absent in the parades on the Anniversary of Chuquisaca had to face the consequence of receiving 2-days-less unpaid monthly salary, while not being present in the parade in the Day of Independence results in 3-days-less unpaid monthly salary. The Day of Independence was especially important and relevant event for Sucre, as the Declaration of Independence was signed actually in Sucre in 1825 in the House of Independence, located in the main square. By bringing the parade to the actual cultural spaces, where students physically and symbolically embodied the history through the parade; students were reconnect with the narration of history, which empowered the construction of national belonging by the experience of the act. The parades of the Day of Independence were being organized through 2 days in Sucre, where in the first day schools and in the second day government bodies marches through the main square, in front of the House of Independence. The teachers and the graduation classes of the Quezada were told to gather together at a crossing of two avenues at 9.30. I arrived on time and by my surprise I hardly could see any school members of the Quezada. Finally I met a few of them, who took away my concerns by informing me that there is enough time left for the gathering as the Quezada will march up in the main square just about 14.00PM as the school is being the 52nd participant and right now just the 14th school is being marching up in front of the House of Independence. I was quite surprised by this early gathering, as the marching in front of the House of Independence takes something like 5 minutes, but students said it is
35 always like this. Lazar (2010) writing about Picture27: The graduating class of the Quezada lines these parades, says that pupils enjoy usually up for the parade parades, although some complain that the waiting time can be too long, while the idea of education through physical experience gets literally physical as students “become toast under the sun” (p. 17). Indeed students and teachers trying to hide in the shade from the strong sunshine were all dressed in their school red and blue uniform and some students carried the flag and the coat of arm of the school as important accessorized elements of these parades, where schools also showcased their local belonging as well. The line moved slowly and by 13.00 the Quezada lined up; first the students and followed by their teachers. In these parades cleanness and seriousness was important element, where schools wanted to demonstrate their bests’ as their school uniform and behaviour were immaculate and respectful. Schools with bands and majorette teams prepared their best music and choreograph not just to commemorate this day, but as well schools take this opportunity to compete with each other. Finally around two o’clock it was Quezada’s turn. The school did not pull the attention with a band or majorette team, but when the presenters introduced the school and the hymns of the college started students and teachers modestly, but proudly marched in front of the House of Independence embodying this important turning point of their Bolivian past.
3.3 Gap in cultural interest Citizenship education in the Quezada focuses to construct students’ sense of belonging to multileveled cultural groups through the narrations and the performances of values, culture and language and the past. During my 3-month stay at the school it emerged that indeed students knew the narrations and practices of cultural belongings, but in the same time students responded to this aspect of citizenship education in form of shame, boredom or humour. This allowed me to consequence that students did not necessary internally authorise this sense of cultural belonging, what education projected. Indeed these responses are being complex, but still the crucial question lays on what are the underlying roots of these responses? Here I argue that the underlying reason for these responses are rooted in that public schools in Bolivia are sites where generations clash, representing tradition and modernity. As students’ cultural interest was more assimilated with modernity, rather than with the traditional out looked Bolivian education, it caused a gap between students’ cultural interest and the culture that citizenship education promoted. One central aspect of citizenship education centrals the construction of cultural identity embedded in the narrations of the common grounded Bolivian history, where the indigenous past serves a source of proudness. Even though there is massive promotion of indigenousness both in and outside of the school
36 environment, students often felt ashamed of their indigenous background. Teachers reported that students rather invite their older sisters for school meetings as they felt ashamed of their parents wearing polleras (traditional skirts) or not speaking proper castellano. Also in the middle of my fieldwork, when students already felt comfortable about my presence, in the upcoming holiday I approached the best students of each class and asked them if I could borrow all their school materials to get more inside about the educational curriculum. I offered that when the holiday starts I will pick up the books by their house and two days before the holiday ends I will return the materials to their house as well. Students agreed to lend me the books, but they said that they will take the books to my place or they offered to meet me at the school or close to their house. It was clear to me that students did not want me to go to their homes. In the end only one student allowed me to pick up the books at her place, who also introduced her family to me. We also went for a small hike and she explained that other girls did not lend me their books because they felt ashamed of their poor living conditions and also about their family, often related with the indigenous background. This made me think that students were ashamed of their indigenous related background, while in the same time students proudly narrated about the indigenous ancestors and loved to dress up like them. This could be explained by Postero (2013) who writes that there are multiple ways of being indigenous and it seems students viewed the indigenous culture more like a folkloric element of culture rather than being an integral part of life. Further on students also responded with boredom and humour to these cultural narrations. Let’s just remember those disinterested students in the act of signing the declaration form of independence of Bolivian in the Day of Independence. After students paying attention for 5 minutes, they response for this important narrations over the national milestone in the Bolivian history was clear boredom as students rather chose to entertain themselves with their phones. What more during the singing the Oh Salve Patria patriotic hymn, I heard a student behind me, saying to her classmates “Que Feo” (What awful), referring to the hymn, what remark made her classmates to giggle. When I turned around to see who made this remark, the girls in sudden stopped to giggle and they shied away as these humorous comments were never meant for public ears as students knew that the made remark was inappropriate. Yet these responses still carry an important message about students’ view on cultural citizenship education. As students’ responses show, the youth did not fully feel interconnected with these traditional narrations and practices of citizenship as they rather felt more assimilated with modern cultures. Students in their free time and outside their school activities distanced themselves from Bolivian cultural education and they honoured their own interest embedded in modernity, which was far from these Bolivian cultural codes. Upon my arrival students’ most popular questions toward me was if I have spoken Korean. At this point I just wondered about this question, but soon I learned about the ‘Korean dream’ of the youth in Bolivia. Nowadays the youth in Bolivia are ultimate fans about Korean soap operas and pop groups broadcasted by the television, radio or researched in the internet. Korean images are being present in key chains, telephone covers and covering students’ books, while girls are in love with Korean singers, they study the choreographies of Korean video clips, they desire to have the Korean look and they dream of studying in Korean. Some students were even attending on Saturdays Korean languages courses in the Korean Institution of Sucre. Beside their interest about the Korean culture, students were all well-educated about popular culture. Student outside of the school dresses in
37 western clothes and they are defiantly propagated the fan clubs of Justine Bieber, Selena Gomez, Demi Lovato and Shakira. Students were singing the lyrics, without even knowing what they were saying and they also learned about the choreographies, what they often practiced in their classroom, when teachers were absent. Also a group of students were also planning to make a proposal to introduce an additional program of Students’ day. In their proposal students wished to organise in the end of the day a prom like event ,what most probably they saw in the television or in the internet as there is no tradition like this so far in Bolivia, where students would invite their family, friend and boyfriends and they would celebrate the day all together. Picture 28: The clash of generations
Teacher in the Quezada were aware of student’s cultural interest and even they believed that students will ‘grow it out’, still teachers tried to influence students interest by addressing modernity under a negative lens during classrooms lectures. For example teachers with this motive taught about anorexia, interlinking this sickness with the negative effect of modernization, promoting false image of beauty. Likewise one religious teacher told me that she also in-cooperated a homework exercise in her lecture, where students had to collect music lyrics from contemporary musicians, which lyrics degraded the personal dignity. By doing so teachers aimed to raise attention in students for the negative effects of modern cultures. All these result in what I call the clash of generations. Teachers, parents and as well the educational curriculum teach students for the traditional outlook about culture, what students know and practice in special events, but not necessary internalize these narration and practices in their every day. We should not forget the world is an ever changing reality, and Bolivia and the Bolivian youth is no exception of such. In this changing reality, next this traditional cultural identity, students through the media, learns about modern cultures, what they also internalize in their daily routine. In the end students develop a hybrid for of cultural identity, where traditional and modern aspects are both present.
38 4. Building our community Building unity in divided societies is important aspect of citizenship education. Banks (2009) points out that cultural membership does not guarantee on its own full-membership in a society, as members of cultural groups can still be marginalized either in local or national culture as they cannot live and function effectively in them. Therefore the thesis understands citizenship not just as a cultural belonging, but as social belonging as well, viewing citizenship also as a socialization project. Schuller et al. (2000) support this by writing that citizens are also embedded in social systems which has utility in organizing their members. Members are attached through a sense of social belongingness, which embodies common reference points guiding the social relationship among members promoting unity in the community. Applying the words of Lazar (2008) calling these “everyday practices and experiences of citizenship” indicating that these common references are surfacing during the everyday interactions between the members of the community (p.3). These reference points of the collective are often gauged in the term of social capital, where academic literatures most commonly defines its elements as networks, norms and values (Woolcock and Gamarnikow, 2011). Indeed the notion social capital is not absent of critiques as many scholars from diverse fields have questioned the conceptualization of this term, as for example Breuskin (2012) writes that Solt and Tarrow both question social capital in pattern of being a source of nation-building. Yet this research views social capital as a societal resource to build unity, justified by the Bolivian local milieu, where social capital has been viewed positively by gluing and benefiting the members of the society. Due to its positive benefit on the Bolivian society, the government supports the construction of social capital as the words of Evo Morale’s just demonstrate it: “We will never be like other places. Our strength in the world is that we recognize our virtues, our internal force which is communitarian, organizational, the union, the gremio (guild), the ayllu (Andean socio-political organization). We can’t compete in the world with technology or financial knowhow, but we can lead the world in social capacity” (La Razo´n cited in Postero, 2007a, p. 18). These motives of the government has been also encompassed in the educational curricula, as schooling as a community experience offers a great educational opportunity for both experiencing and learning the everyday forms of citizenship, also required in the non-school environment as well. Indeed this aspect of citizenship is not entirely new under the sun, but the Morales government put these meaning into a new scoop by reemphasizing social capitals through the education and also introducing new insides in them. In the new educational reform social capitals have been obviously formulated in the framework of the third and fourth pillar of the ASEP, titled to be the productive and communitarian education, which pillars purpose to enhance and to create a closer and dialectical relationship between the school and the surrounding community (Strauss, 2010). In these frameworks education reinforces students’ sense of social belonging to the community and also equips them with common references of attitudes and behaviours to live and function in the Bolivian community. In upcoming section I describe how social belonging has been constructed in the Quezada. In this framework I discuss the 3 elements of social capital, namely how the education narrates, practices and performs about networks, norms and values. In the end I reflect on how students responded in this aspect of citizenship education.
39 4.1 The sense of community and networks Community is a central reference point of citizenship education. Literatures echoes ‘community’ in different ways, but commonly it refers as a concept of belongingness, where education develops students’ sense of attachment with the commune (Solomon, Watson, Battistich, Schaps and Delucchi, 1996). The educational curriculum in the Quezada continuously narrated over the importance of the collective aspect of life in a general sense. The following poster hanged in several classrooms in the Quezada is just one notable example how the education narrates over the commune. Looking at the poster, the penultimate and the last question hold the most vital evidence of this narration - asking for most important word - “Us” - and the less important word is -“I”- , implying that the interest of the community is praise above the individual interest.
Picture 29: Poster in the 6C classroom Human relations
The sixth most important sentence Admit that the mistake was mine
The fifth most important sentence You have done a good job
The fourth most important sentence What is your opinion?
The third most important sentence Could you do me this favour?
The second most important sentence Thank you very much!
The most important word Us
The less important word I
Schooling also encouraged students’ sense of community by organizing communitarian activities in the curriculum. The third the fourth pillar of the ASEP, titled to be the productive and communitarian education purpose to make students continuously feel that they are part of commune. For that reason the educational program included a wide range of activities outside of the conventional classroom education. In the framework of productive education, education had to undergo the criteria of production, challenging teachers to re-think their materials in regards to this objective. Teachers mostly aimed to accomplish productive education by bringing the students outside of the classroom to the studied subject matter. Carmen, a sociology teacher contested: “In the first year we learn about different indigenous cultures. And what we do? We organize the classes and we go to the rural area to see the circumstances and speak with the indigenous people face to face. Students are also encouraged to speak Quechua with them”. This practice has been also realized in the aspect of communitarian education with
40 the aim to enhance and create a closer relationship between schooling and the community. Students were regularly taken out to visit museums, exhibitions and well-known sights in Sucre; also they participated in the contemporary cultural programs of the city, where students visited the International Human Right Film Festival, exhibitions, sport events and educational workshops. However it also worked in the other way around, when the ‘outside’ members of the community came to the school, like in the celebration of the New Roof. For this occasion the governor of Sucre, the representatives of the MoE, the Ministry of Development Planning and the president of the parents committee all visited the Quezada and addressed their words to the students. In the end of the celebration the students, teachers and representatives danced together the cueca of Chuquisaca demonstrating the unity of the community. Picture30: Members of the community dancing the cueca of Chuquisaca
Education by reinforcing this collective outlook aimed to bond the members of community together and construct and reconstructs networks in the society. Coleman and Coleman (1994) argue that the cohesion of the community is related to a functional efficiency, meaning their interconnected network make it possible to achieve shared objectives and gain social benefits. Therefore collectiveness is also understood as a strategy, where the collective networks make is possible to resolve collective problems more easily and “enhances individual lives through helping people to cope with the vicissitudes of life” (Print and Coleman, 2003, p. 125). Coleman (1988) in his research comparing private schools with public schools also draws the attention that social capital conveys benefits to poor and marginalized communities, which benefits could offset their more disadvantaged position. The research called Democratic Audit (Seligson, Morales and Blum, 2006) just supports this argument by pointing out, that in regards the Bolivian context, collectiveness is most likely understood as a strategy of the lower class members of the society as this social class is being more dependent on these collective networks to enhance their opportunities and live and function better in the society. As the Quezada being a public secondary school, it applies most students will follow the footsteps of their parents as working class members of the society, which social class relies more on these networks. The education curriculum by facilitating the existent of these networks just served the needs and
41 interest of the students. Besides connoting the importance of the commune, the education facilitated the existence of these networks by narrating over an unwritten social contract, where members are mutually responsible towards each other. Teachers explained this unwritten social contract as “You never know what life brings. When somebody needs help… you give and when something will happen with you then you will get back the help from others!“. The daily accounts in the Quezada served multiple occasions to narrate, but also to practice mutual responsibility, for example when the glass in the corridor was broken, a teacher went around collecting some money from the students, so that the school will be able to replace the glass with the help of the community for the community. The following example was written in my field journal, which demonstrates not just the practice of mutual responsibility, but also shows that these practices and experiences of everyday citizenship were counted more important than conventional education in the Quezada.
In this week the 2A class was given permission not to pass classes as they had a campaign week. One of their classmates got sick with a heart problem and she needed to be operated and for this operation the classmates were collecting money to support the family’s expenses. A group of students of 10 went out and visited other schools. They went around with their metal box and told the story of their classmate and asked for some donation. The other half of the class made different income generating activities; students baked cakes and made fruit salad at home what they resold at the school, which income also was added to metal box to cover one part of the operation. Teachers and fellow students happily bought their products and they refused the change as an extra support.
4.2 Common principals of the communal life Citizenship education has been tied to socialization, accommodating the process of persons becoming members of a given community. Education besides constructing the feeling of community enforces socialization by constraining behaviours and attitudes, which patterns coordinate relations among members (Chun, 2012). In these patterns, the educational curriculum enforced education on norms and values to secure students to live and function well in the society. The education in the Quezada as a public school reinforced the education of norms and values. Written in chapter 2, as Sucre has been left behind in the ladder of modernization, citizens of Sucre held on a more traditional outlook of living by embarrassing strictly morals and good behaviour. Beside this attribute, the socio-economic situation of the parents just reinforced this aspect of education. Parents working long days in Sucre or even away from Sucre, prioritizing to supply the family with the required household needs resulted in that they disadvantage their children’s education. In my interviews parents always realized education with importance, but because of the economic needs of the family they missed on to support this process. Both Walberg (1984) and Etzioni (1993) point out that home environment strongly influence child’s learning, as families are being great engines in the formulation of children socialising, which sequences that parent’s limited time could jeopardy student’s socialization process. These patterns were also present in the Quezada as the following fieldnote encompassing a biology teachers’ narration gives a remarkable example how parents limited time influenced their participation in their children socialization process.
42 It happened about a year ago… we had biology class, just in this room. And there was this girl, aged 16 and I recognized that she was crying and her desk-mate was softly stoking her back and comforting her. I went to ask what the problem was, asked about the family situation, how she was, but she silenced over her problem. I recognized that she was holding her belly, so I assumed that she must have had menstruation problems and I continued the class. But in a while she started to cry even more and other girls gathered around her. So I went again to speak with her and offered her that we could go and find a medicine or she could go home… but finally her desk-mate told me: “Teacher that is not the problem!” and finally she told me shyly that that her classmate pregnant was. And then I asked how month… and she told me 9! This is when I recognized that she must be in labour in my biology class! I rushed to the direction and got some teachers and we called the ambulance. Meanwhile it turned out, that she already had pain yesterday evening, but the mother still sent her to the school. We called her mother to come but she said she could not, as she could not leave her stand in the market. We called also the father of the baby, but he repeated just the same answer, saying who else would drive the bus, as he was a bus chuffer. So in the end, Mrs. Camila went with her to the hospital and stayed with her until the baby was born. In the end she was the one who got to hold the baby first… she is the godmother of the baby. Even we teachers put money together and went to buy the first cloths of the baby as she had just us to help her.
As this example indicates in such social setting students’ educational background was imperfect, therefore the Quezada aimed to invest more in students’ socialization process by emphasizing the common principals of the Bolivian society through education. This resulted in that the education of the Quezada highlighted education about norms and values. In the next I discuss how norms and values have been narrated, practiced and performed in the school setting.
Norms Citizenship education epitomizes the normative code of the society along regulations defining how citizens should behave. Bicchieri (2005) referring to norms in her book’s title as “the grammar of the society”, indicates that the normative codes of the society secure the societies’ social order to continue and progress in the set patterns. According to the Oxford Dictionary of Sociology (Scott and Marshall, 2009) norm is being defined as “the informal understandings that govern society’s behaviours”, pointing out that norms are not considered to be formal laws within society; however they still construct boundaries of belongings in the society. This normative system of a society controls the behaviour of the citizens by either approving or punishing their behaviour. Along this dual divine of regulation, belonging and not belonging have been established, which creates the existence of dichotomies of the good and the bad citizens (Parson, 2007). Good citizens are the ones who show conformity to the norms, which behaviours are approved by the society in term of material, verbal or physical appreciation. While bad citizens do not meet the requirements of normative code of the society, they hold a deviancy of behaviour, which can cause marginalization out of the dominant culture. Deviancy is backed up in form of punishment, which could be received in material, verbal or physical forms as well. Therefore norms are important references of social belonging, guiding citizens how to behave in the society. In the Quezada students were given a booklet, called ‘Regulation standards of disciplines and coexistence in the Julio Quezada Rendón’ (Rendón, 2013), which encompassed the description of the normative code of the behaviour, organized in a contracting dual understanding, where the behaviour of good and bad students were described. In this booklet, first the guidelines of the normative codes of
43 students behaviour were described, which was followed by the section, called the violation of the norms. These norms and violations were categories, based on their severity, namely a) verbal warning, b) mistake, c) serious mistake and d) very serious mistake. By taking a closer look at the level of severity of these violations, it shows that the smallest mistakes are convicted against the individual interest of the student, while the greater violations are convicted against the collective interest, where the other participants of the society are being the targets of the harms. According to this booklet, verbal warnings are received, when the student expresses this negative attitudes and behaviour that jeopardizes the prestige of the school and conflict with a normal coexistence of the educational unit. Verbal warning was required in examples of such: 1) not accomplish school obligations, 2) not taking part regularly in the classes, 3) not wearing the school uniform or 4) no able to justify the missing and the delay from the classes/school. Students were punished with the mistake in the case of a second verbal warning was expelled to the student about: negative attitudes, being irresponsible, being absent, dishonest and produce bad behaviour in classes. Here are some examples of misbehaviours in the mistake severity category: 1) express negative attitudes that disrupt normal school life, 2) cause disorder in classes, recreation and school activities, 3) usage of inappropriate language during the development of educational activities, 4) not meeting the personal requirements (uniform, hygiene, not being combed or having an extravagant hairdo) or 5) use, communicate or answer for mobile phones during the development of educational activities. Students receiving serious mistake, means that students express negative behaviours against their peers, physical assaults, theft or destruction of documents, destruction of property and being constantly opposed against the norms of the school institute. Examples of such are: 1) manifestation of disrespectful attitudes in internal and external civic events and ceremonies, 2) harm with words or with action the dignity and the prestige of the people or the institute, 3) remove or steal belongings from classmates or from staff to abuse or harm somebody 4) carry any weapons, which could harm the physical integrity of any member of the school community. In case of very serious mistake, the student will be permanently expelled from the educational unit; as well the Public Magisterium will be informed. Incidents are encounter such as robbery, theft, physical assault, sexual offer and the carrying of any weapons. In the Quezada even one personal received a paid job, who was especially appointed to guard the norms in the school. This person was Mrs. Camila, who was continuously circulating in the school to guard the appropriate behaviours of the students. She was often standing upon arrival in the door, controlling the uniforms and closing the main door after official arrival time and closing out the lately arrived students till the first break. Her scolding sentences were also well-known among the students, such as “Don’t run like this, what are your horses”, “Good morning! Upon arrival we great each other, right?!” or “The bell has been ranged, go to the classroom rights now!”. Further on the curriculum also accommodates many educational space teaching about norms. Norms of the society were educated through ‘the gaze of the Other’, centring education about the abnormalities of the society (Yuval-Davis, 2010). Students in the Quezada thought different subjects learnt about the ‘sicknesses’ of the society such as alcoholism, drugs, anorexia and abortion. Posters addressing these topics were commonly hanged in classrooms’ wall, always reminding students for the
44 normative code of the society. The narrations of these behaviours were often interconnected with the negative influence of Western societies, as a copy of a religious notebook addressing the topic ‘My body in the new world’ (see picture 32) shows this. The new world order is interrelated with capitalism, illustrated by two images of an economically developed city and with an imagine of modern beauty, which influences are viewed to affect societies in negative patterns, where abnormalities like anorexia surfaces. In this framing a student explained anorexia to me as the following: „Anorexia is a sickness, when girls want to be others than they are. Many girls watch the television and they see the models and they want to look like them. Teachers are telling us, that we should be ourselves and not to copy other.”
Picture 31: Poster educating against alcoholism Picture 32: My body in the new world
In the Quezada I often heard teachers referring for students as ‘malcriada’ (badly brought up). I remember I raised my eyebrows for this harsh statement, but they explained that students received these titles who were inappropriately behaving as they engaged with activities such as drinking, have sexual relationship or gathering in gangs and influencing others to be part of the gang. In other worlds these ‘malcriada’ students disturbed the normative system of the society and teachers punished them by marking them as outsiders of the society as their behaviour jeopardized the social order.
Values Directly interrelated with norms, values also became a focal point in citizenship education. While norms are indicating certain behaviour, values are representing a certain idea of morality that guides and unities members in the community. It applies a common belief system, which connotes ideologies. As Durkheim referred to values, it constitutes a “moral community” (cited in Parsons, 2007, p.432), serving conceptions what is considered to be good, desired and proper or on the controversially- bad, undesirable and improper in the community. In my fieldwork experience, the recognition of the importance of the values in citizenship educational was the most obvious and constant element. Just on my first day in the Quezada when I went around in the school, the realization stroke me that 3 values such as love, respect and solidarity where visually represented in the whole school environment; in the classrooms, in the corridors and in the administration room as well.
Picture 33: The 3 values (respect, solidarity, love) hanging in the 6A classroom
Based on the oral accounts, these visual representations of these values are being present since the new government. Suggested by the MoE that education needs to emphasize values more explicitly, the Quezada picked the values of love, respect and solidarity to stress thought education. Although these values’ understanding and usage is pretty broad and overlapping, still in common these values are being interlinked with the community. Love is mentioned in relation to love the country, culture and all the inhabitants in it; respect is applied to respect ourselves, the parents, the professors, the Mother Earth and each other; while solidarity applies to tolerate and help each other. In addition these mentioned 3 principles, the curriculum in the Quezada narrates over many other values. The following poster hanged in several classrooms, shows the desirable human characteristics compared with the undesirable ones expressed in values.
Picture 34: Poster hanging in the 6B classroom Beneficial characters, Harmful characters, which which connects people separates people
patient intolerant optimism pessimism who always sees gossiping the good peacemaker critical positive dominant understanding superior who delegates who always being tasks right democratic authorities who says sorry never fails kind uncompromising motivator who knows everything 46 These values are strongly interconnected with Picture 35: The Aymara moral code the Catholic Church, but due to last year’s developments also new values re-entered the curriculum interconnected with the indigenous focus. As the picture 35 shows students were being also educated about the Aymara moral code: ’ama llulla, ama suwa, ama qhilla’ meaning do ’not lie, do not steal and do not be lazy’. These indigenous values re-entered as central element in the educational plan with the aim to recover human relationship in the Bolivian society based on these principals. Even in a broader perspective these indigenous principals have been predominately comprised in the ‘vivir bien’ (live well) notion, encompassing values like respect, equality, solidarity, harmony and fairness, which values serve the new foundation for an egalitarian and just Bolivian social order (Thomson, 2011). The living well concept dislocates itself from the ‘vivir major’ (live better) ideology, associated with a capitalist world system aligned with imperialist behaviours. The following poster hanged in a classroom clearly demonstrates the different standpoints of these two ideologies, where the live well notion offers a counter logic against the capitalist world order and remerges and supports indigenous principles.
Picture 36: poster describing the live better and live well notions (Self-translated)
The difference between live well and live better: There are two Different situations:
Live better: Live well: -it means to earn more -live according to the money, have more central human values power, more fame etc.
- live better means a - harmonious coexistence bounder less with all existences development
Also teachers in their own material accommodated space and time for these matters, where they combined their material with a strong moral imperative. For example in the framework of literature class students had to write letters to Bolivian heroic figures, where in these letters the needed to value their behaviour, what they did for Bolivia. Here comes one letter of such: Picture 37: Letter to the Patriot (Self-translated)
Dear Patriot Augusto Cesped,
I think about you with great respects, as you are a great example for me. You taught me how to value water and also how to value life. I admire you for your narration over the war Chaco. Thank you very much for everything to teach me how to value the precious life and water.
What more I found teachers in and outside classroom environments consciously raising attention to these narrations, as teachers claimed “values are in crises” as today’s youth do not know what is appropriate. This statement can be interlinked with the fact, that in contemporary Bolivia values (just like norms) are being subjects to change. Due to the fast changing reality that we live in, Bolivia is no exception of escaping these influences. The elements of modernization like global culture, mass media and western influences also impact Bolivia by influencing the outlook of the youth in the sense of norms and values. Teachers feel the change but this change is interpreted with instability and disruption of the well-known protected social order, so teachers aim to stop the deconstruction of the Bolivian social order by stressing values and norms through education. This consequenced that schooling becomes a side of clashes of generations, where the ‘old way of doing’ teachers are clashing with the ‘new way of doing’ youth.
The performances of common principles Students’ school experience is understood as their first experience in the community, where schooling offers a powerful practice ground for learning and practicing attitudes and behaviours. Indeed the daily routines of school life fuelled the everyday practices and experiences of social belonging, yet the curriculum aimed to further strengthen these in form of formal events, which aimed to practice the appropriate attitudes and behaviours through performances. Once again echoing Taylor (2003) performances are being viewed as embodied knowledge through the utilization of the body and symbols. Sequenced by this, all these events purposed in mind to enhance the learning experiences how members in the society should interact with each other by embodying the appropriate behaviours and attitudes in performances. In these performances these attitudes and behaviours were realized by praising the other party, doing something for the other or actually giving something to the other. The curricula of the Quezada encompassed these performances in the form of three horas cívicas dedicated to the mothers, teachers and students, bringing important attitudes and behaviours to the
48 forefront. In these I was not personally present, but by acquiring the program booklets of these days and listening teachers’ and students’ narrations, these information facilitated my understanding over the context of these events. The Day of Mothers or how this day is being referred at the Quezada, the Day of the Family10 is dedicated to the students’ family, where students embody their love, respect and appreciation toward them in form of performances. During the few-hours-long programs students tell poems, sing and dance. Also in one point of the day students also give small present to their family member what they have made in classes of technique or art. With this gesture they embody their thankfulness for their care. The Day of Teachers is built on these same patterns, where students embody their appreciation towards their teachers in form of poems, songs, dances and acts. As the Day of the Teachers was just organized a few days before my arrival the program brochure was still hanging in the patio of the school (See appendix 2). According to this brochure, the day started with the National Anthem, followed by the words of the day- honouring the work of the professors, the poem called The Professor and afterwards students by serenading the Hymn of the Professor they praised their teachers through the lines of this hymn.
Passage from the Hymn of the Professor
Tiene el alma tan pura y serena, Her soul is so pure and calm, cual las aguas de un gran manantial, as water from the spring, estrechemos sus manos tan tiernas, let’s hold her tender hands, que están llenas de felicidad filled with happiness.
The program continued with the individual act of each class, where the classes prepared an act to perform in front of their teachers. The program repertoire included songs, poems and of course dance performances were on the palette. Most of the classes with their choice mirrored the school-based education, but some classes chose to perform their own cultural interest as they danced hip-hop, rapped and told comedic monologues for the entertainment of their teachers. In the end of the day the classes gave presents to their headmaster and to their headmaster assistant to express their gratitude for their work in this way. Finally the Day of Students is also being hold in form of a horas cívicas. This event can be understood as a reverse of the Day of Teachers, as this day is being dedicated to the students, where teachers embody their love and respect towards their pupil. This event carries the massage that even though there is a hierarchical relation, citizens needs to treat each other with mutual respect and love. During my stay the commission of mathematic, who was in charge to organize this day was already busy with the planning of this day. One of them described the preparations as:“We are busy to organize this day as we want to make our students happy. This day focuses on the students. In this hallway we will set tables where by each table students can entertain themselves with different games. I can say by now, that we are organizing a big
10 The Quezada renamed this day as the Day of Family based on the following explanation narrated by a teacher: “Many children here in the Quezada are orphans or the mothers are not in Bolivia, so they won’t come. We need to respect their situation; therefore we renamed this day to the Day of Family, so these children can invite their sister, uncle or grandmother.”
49 surprise for them. Next week we, the teachers will start with the rehearsals as in respect of the students we are going to perform a dance”.
4.3 Escaping from the control Schooling is understood as a platform ground to educate the everyday form of citizenship. In this framework, citizenship education builds the community by developing students’ sense of attachment to the commune and also educating practices of interactions among members in form of behaviours and attitudes, which patterns served the unity and the social order in the Bolivian society. Although it seems, that students internalize this common ethos of the Bolivian society, in the same time they do not always keep up the appearance of these compliances. During my 3-month stay I evidenced students aiming to escape or even openly critic the strict control of the Bolivian society. Indeed the underlying understandings of these responses are being complex, but here I argue that students response on citizenship education are being affiliated that schooling is a sites where tradition and modernity clashes. In the upcoming, I unfold this argument by the following examples. Students of the Quezada were strictly controlled by parents and by the school as well. Some students still at the age of 18, was dropped at and picked up from school by their parent on a daily base. Parents also perfectly knew what time school supposed to finish and what time their children should be at home. Sometime due to events, school hours lasted longer, what for students (mostly the youngsters) always got jittery to leave as they said they had to be home in time or they would get in a problem. Despite students were exposed to these dominant bodies of control, they kept on finding ways to escape it and indulge to their own interest. For example students of the Quezada’s were not allowed to wear make-up at school. What students did after the last classroom activity they disappeared in the toilet and they put on some make-up to their lips and eyes. The difference was quite visible so I asked them if they would not get in a trouble at home. They just answered like that: “we clean our face before we get home”, meaning students put on their make-up with the only motivation to display their beauty and flatter boys with their look for that 30 minutes of journey until they reached their homes. By being said, one crucial point of control was about boys. Girls among themselves at the age 12 were already speaking about boys continuously. Once I was sent to guard the 3rd grade class who should have been passing P.E classes, but as the teacher was sick and the sport area was under construction, we had to stay in the classroom. Students proposed to pass the remaining time with the ‘spin the bottle’ game. During the 40minutes long playing time, I had to realise that all questions without an exception were centring the boyfriend topic asking about: where did you meet with him?, what is his name? or did he tell you: I love you?…etc. Clearly having a boyfriend was an important prestige question among students, but in the same time parents and the school strictly guarded the girls in order to protect them from early pregnancy and dropping out of school. Though students were strictly guarded, they still find time and space to sneak the control. As students had limited time to meet with boys, they used the internet as a mediator to meet boys. Students made sure that they allocate 5-10minutes before or after school to jump into one of the many internet cafes in Sucre and check their massages or befriend a nice boy in Face - how nowadays the youth in Bolivia refers to Facebook. Further on students also made lies to escape from their dominated parents and accommodate some time to meet with boys. For example,
50 it happened on a Saturday, when I visited the school to attend an extra class, when a dad asked my help to guide him to her daughter’s classroom as his daughter informed him that she had to go to school that morning to pass extra classes. As the father was suspicious about it, he came to control her. In the end his divination proved right, as she was nowhere and also no other classmates were about to find, concluding that in the meantime his daughter must have been passing some time with a boy. What more, students also critically step up against controlling behaviour in the school, where students critiqued teachers and the director whom dispelled unacceptable controlling behaviour through their position. For example when the director continuously refused students’ participate in educational sport and cultural events, without involving students in decisions, students went and reported the director at the MoE, with the motive to stop his controlling behaviour. In addition students incorporated their disagreement and judgement about teachers’ controlling attitude and behaviour by giving nicknames for them. These nicknames were kept as secrets within classes, but as I often visited classes where no teachers were attending and informally interviewed them about how they evaluated the quality of the teaching some nicknames came forward. One of the harshest nicknames was given to a very strict female teacher, whose teaching method was equipped with many routines and students had to follow her orders without a word. Students in confidential atmosphere referred to her as Chucky, which is an animation figure from a television series, being a scary looking doll playing a notorious serial killer. Concluding from the responses, students warded teachers positively if they explained their material with clarity, they interacted with the class through dialogs or personal stories and whom had a kind and open attitude. While on the other hand teachers with a dominated behaviour, who were strict and rather just told students what to do without consulting the students’ opinion was badly judged. One student of grade 4 told me the following: “Teachers talk a lot about boys to us. X teacher just tell us that we cannot meet with boys and rather we need to study, while Y teacher speaks with us: she tells stories about her life and experiences and she just gives advices to us, which we might do… We like Y a lot and if we a problem we always turn to her”. All these point forward, that students do not full internalize the normative codes what the Bolivian education expelled. Finding explanation for students’ response and critiques I introduce Bauman’s (1989) term the ‘gardening state’. He argues that societies should be viewed as a garden, where each garden image is being described with a certain design, where the gardeners are responsible for the maintenance of that design. He further explains that harmful factors, like unwanted weeds damage the splendid image of the garden, therefore they are being predetermined to extermination. Indeed Bauman introduced the garden metaphor to analyse the Holocaust, but in broader understanding this metaphor applies that societies form a design, where they separate wanted from unwanted elements within the society. Translating this garden metaphor to the Bolivian set of arrangement of society, it relates like this; due to the last decades of political developments Bolivia has developed into one of the so called new left countries. The wanted national-led design of the Bolivian society promotes traditional homogenous social order, building on cultural and social patterns. Indeed Bolivia is being named as a traditional society; modernity also established new possibilities for the country. Bolivian incorporated wanted elements of modernity for its traditional design in notions like right to be different, equality, environmentalism, female empowerment and activism; while on the other hands the Bolivian design of society is being contrasted by the unwanted Western discourse of modernity interrelated with industrial
51 and capitalist progress. As it is viewed that the economic drive, embedded in modernity undermines tradition bonds and the new design of society has been built on individuals, it has been seen as a treat for Bolivia as it might damage its design of collective social order and therefore it is aimed to be exterminated. This Bolivian state-led design of society has been also mirrored to the education system, where Bolivian citizenship education has a quite traditional outlook. Schooling experience aims to construct these leftish views by constructing strong pillars of cultural and social belonging in students and in the meantime closing out the unwanted elements of modernity from the education. Indeed the institutionalized education concept rules out these Western discourses of modernity, yet students are still being interconnected with these western discourses of modernity, through non-institutionalized public sphere of education, namely the media. The fast expansion of westernization through the different channels of mass media, such as radio, television and internet, supporting the propagation of western designs of lifestyles and attitudes, are directly or indirectly are effecting the youth in Bolivia and influencing their outlook to the world. Due to these influences students internalize new ideologies, which ideologies are confronted with the view of the older generations. To sum up, it can be said that what we are experiencing in Bolivia is the confrontation of the generations, where parents and teachers representing the ‘old way of doing’ are clashing with the ‘new way of doing’ youth. Teachers called for this attention with their statement ‘values in crises’ as they feel that the traditional design of Bolivia society is being subject of change. Teachers rather try to hold on the old way of doing and re-emphasize the norms and values in education to keep the social bond together and refuse the causes of instability and disruption. While formal citizenship education does not negotiate with the interest of the westernization influenced youth, the youth is finding new ways to extend the limits of the boarders and accomplish their own interest.
52 5. Active citizenship Social movements brought forward a new understanding of citizenship practice, stepping over that traditional understanding, that states guarantee equality for everybody and argued that “citizens take increase responsibility for their own well-being, rather than relying on the state” (Brooks and Holford, 2009, p.88). This new practice highlights the term active participation, shifting from liberal right-duty based participatory patterns and rather conveys citizenship as a form of action (Dagnino, 2005). The term active citizenship surfaced within citizenship understanding, advancing that the relation between the state and the people are not static, rather it assumes a vivid correlation, where the parties are continuously affecting and forming each other. Active citizenry means engagement to the society, implicating a different political attitude and behaviour, where citizens are political agents, who continuously play an active role to influence decision. As Pattie (2004) puts it into words, active citizenship has been seen also as a civic behaviour, an engagement to participate and a willingness to support public affairs. Gonçalves e Sliva (cited in Banks, 2009) adds that engaged citizen not just work for their own interest but they work for the betterment of the whole society as she writes: “A citizen is a person who works against injustice not for individual recognition or personal advantage, but for benefit of all people. In realizing this task-shattering privileges, ensuring information and competence, acting in favour of all-each person becomes a citizen” (p.11). Therefore active citizenship has been commonly viewed as a positive aspect of democratic society, where citizens participate in public sphere by intervening and forming the structure of the society for the betterment of all. Jansen, Chioncel and Dekkers (2006) write that due to the rise of capitalisms, individualization and the vanishing values and norms in societies, civic participation declined in societies. However this phenomenon does not seem to characterise Bolivia, as Bolivia’s political climate in the last decades has been heated up by the practice of active citizenship. The research results of Democratic Audit (2006) just support this by comparing Bolivia to other 10 Latin American countries, where Bolivia ranks at the highest, as the most active country in terms of participating in the civil society, and adds the most common form of participation in the Bolivian society is represented in form of protest. This form of participation has been also acknowledged even by the tourist guidebook of Bolivia, writing about the National Revolution Museum of Bolivia by popping up the question: “Which revolution exactly?” as according to the book there have been more than a 100 uprisings in the Bolivian history (Planet, Mutic, Armstrong and Smith, 2010, p.71). All these points towards, that seemingly Bolivians are being active citizens of the society. But being an active citizen is not just given, rather it is argued that active citizenry is an achievement through a learning process, where citizens learn attitudes and skills to critically think about the social and political issues, develop an engaged attitude towards these issues and also act upon them for the betterment. Keser, Akar and Yildirim (2011) write “becoming an active citizen is a complex and unending process which begins at a very early age an goes on throughout one’s life” (p.811), pointing out that “active citizens are not born, but created in a socialization process” (Veldhuis cited in Keser, Akar and Yildirim, 2011, p. 811), where schools are being important agents of constructing active citizens. The new educational law of Bolivia grants that education should facilitates the construction of active citizenry by instructing “liberatory pedagogy” to encourage education about critical awareness of reality “in order to change it“(ASEP, cited in Cardozo, 2011, p.6). In this framework active citizenship education needs to
53 encourage students to be become engage members of the society, who works for the betterment and capable to critical approach social and political issues. In the following I unfold how engaged attitude, participation for betterment and critical thinking have been educated in the Quezada. Yet before proceeding on, need to mention that the data on active citizenship has a thinner description compared to the previous chapters as active citizenry education emerged more in an indirect way. Indeed education about active citizenry was continuously present, but mostly in a hidden way as it roots are interconnected with certain internalized attitude. Therefore to observe active citizenship was more an abstract task, where I had to develop myself a sense for it.
5.1 Engagement and betterment
Through the curriculum Citizenship education should prepare and stimulate students to become engaged participants of the society. In order to do so, education needs to fuel the attitude for engagement by accommodating knowledge about political and social issues to the students, which not just gives meaning for the action, but also fuels the participation with an emotional input. Two scholars of Bolivian history, Hylton and Thomson (2003, cited in Postero, 2007a) studying the Bolivian uprisings in the last 250 years, argue that the Andean political culture of insurrection is rooted in deep cultural and social context. The cultural context is mentioned as these Bolivian uprisings have been inspired by the cultural memories of the Bolivian history, where these cultural memories of the past not just serve meaning for the action, but also serve as emotional reservoirs, which meanings and feelings fuel and legitimize the action itself. Next to this cultural context, the social context has been mentioned, where the organization structure of the society supports participation. The collective outlook of the Bolivian society, where the social order is based on the ethos of common principals, supports the existence of active citizenship, as the strong collective cohesion not just obligate people to participate, but as well the existence of these intensely connected networks facilitate the organization of participation. As chapter 3 and 4 brought to the attention, citizenship educational composes a high value for these cultural and social elements in the educational curriculum. The narration of the Bolivian history emphasizing concepts of culture, cultural memories and awareness of rights, being composed together to motivate Bolivians for betterment, constructing an engaged attitude in students, which attitude is just further strengthened through the strong collective outlook of the Bolivian society, where mutual responsibilities towards each other vitally emerge. However education not just fostered to fuel students attitude with narrations rooted in the past, but education also aimed to teach students to be up-to-date in recent political and social issues. In relation to the subject social studies, students had to compose a diary, noting down recent news that they had read in the newspaper with the objective to fuel students engaged attitude further. As so, engagement as an attitude is viewed as a root of active citizenship, which engagement stimulates participation for betterment. Active citizenship focuses on change, as a central concept to work towards by fuelling participation for betterment for the common interest of the society. Schooling in the Quezada encompassed practices in the curricula to facilitate betterment. For example during my
54 stay, teachers were already busy to organize a quinoa workshop day. The organization of this day was suggested by the MoE and the Quezada decided to facilitate this day on its own coasts as the school attached importance to promote this long time-used grain in the Andean region. In the Quezada each subject groups was planning to encompass quinoa with their subject matter. One teacher reported that every material will have its own table in the patio and students will move around these table, where by the mathematics desk, students will need to make calculations in relation to the quinoa, by the social table students will study the history and the cultural context of the quinoa, by the biology desk the nutrition of this grain will be displayed and in relation to the technique class students will cook and bake with this grain. As teachers said this quinoa day was not just important to fulfil education through practice, but also that in this way the school participated to boast the domestic economy of Bolivia. What more, students in the Quezada also engaged with the practice of active citizenship by being involved with the problems of the society and initiate betterment. For the initiative of one student of class 5a, students planned to visit an orphanage and spend some time with the toddlers. Students were supported in this activity by both teachers and parents. Teachers accommodated time for students to organize this action, while parents helped with the contribution. First students wished to collect some money, but since for some parents it was difficult to contribute, they rather collectively agreed that each student will take something along like a kilo sugar or a diaper what the family can miss.
The school structure Encompassed in the school structure, students also learned about this participatory attitude and the practice of active citizenship, as the Bolivian school structure extensively relied on the active participation of the school community. In Bolivia the attention towards community involvement explicitly started in the 1990s, where the educational reform in legal frameworks introduced community involvement in the education (Cardozo, 2011). This tendency was just empowered with the election of Evo Morales, whose further decentralization politics also meant to influence the infrastructure of the educational. In this sense, the government aimed to enhance schooling through the active participation of communities and practise localized democracy. Implemented in the school system, the school infrastructure is built on the school community including the government, teachers, parents and students, whom by sharing the interest of schooling mutually enhance each other and the education. My field experience just confirmed this as the school community of the Quezada was continuously working on to develop the education for the betterment. The Quezada, being a free public school, had limited facilities. Indeed the school’s facilities were imperfect, teachers, parents and also students continuously worked on to improve schooling. For example due to financial matters the government could not facilitate computer lessons at the school. Yet parents and teachers viewed computer lessons with importance, so they decided to supply such lessons in the school from their own resources. Teachers and parents took initiatives to organize school-based festivities, where they sold food, drinks and make some games to generate income to buy used computers. Within one and a half year, they managed to buy 13 second-hand computers and parents by paying 50BS/year/child, the school hired two teachers, who taught students how to operate the computer once a week.
55 In the Quezada, these actions to improve schooling were common practices; also the just built sport equipment storage was constructed by the donation of teachers and parents or when the governor of Sucre visited the school for the celebration of the New Roof and the accommodated school budget did not cover the expenses, teachers in the next weeks organized small income-generating activities in the form of reselling hot-dogs, cakes and drink in the school to balance out the school budget. However the road to these improvements were not always conflict free as often changes came through by engaging in radical actions by pushing the boundaries. For example the Bolivian teachers were members of teachers union, called sindicato. This relatively new form of organization system became a quiet “visible social group” since the 1950s not only through their jobs, but also because they make themselves heard through demonstrations and strikes to bring forward their claims for betterment (Cardozo, 2011, p.226). For example in the end of May, teachers union organized a two-week long strike, where they formed roadblocks to claimed higher retirement salary, but this action also resulted in that students missed education during this time. Also parents were active participants in the education. Already from the 1994’s reform parents gained powerful position in the education system, what the new ASEP law just further reinforced (Cardozo, 2011). The school system counted on parents’ participation in many organizational aspects of the school programs, such as donating ingredients, cooking, cleaning and selling in different school festivities. Also parents were brought together in form of parents’ committees, representing their children and facilitate improvements. In my interview with parents committees, they reported that they were generally satisfied with their children’s’ education, but the only aspect that parents wanted to improve was mostly connected with the facilities of the school. However parents not just talked about it, they were also not reluctant to engage with radical actions to improve them, as the head of the parents committee told me that parents were ready to change the conditions of the bathrooms: “Have you seen them? They are dirty, not hygienic and there amount are not serving the number of students. I have already spoken several times with the director about their condition and so far no changes have happened. But what I am planning to do is to buy locks and lock them all… and then I will discuss this issue again with the director.” In the end students centred the object of attention. However students were not just objects of the education, rather they were also participants of their own education. Each classroom had its committee to deal with the school related issues, keep the communication with the teachers and the different administrative bodies. These committees served the platforms for students to gather together and bring changes through. Indeed I have just explained that students through the educational curricula learn about active citizenship, but need to mention that their life expediencies, as growing up by experiencing active citizenship by “accompanying their mothers on demonstrations, watching marches either on television or in the street, and hearing others talk about them”, made students to master the attitudes and skills of active citizenship (Lazar, 2010, p.198). It was not different in the Quezada, as students got critically engaged with the school itself with the aim to improve their own education. Narrated by students and teachers as well, once a teacher in her anger of students not completing the homework, throw the notebook back to a student’s desk which hit a student. In the next day some students went and reported the teacher at the local representative of the MoE, saying that the teacher mistreated their rights when she physically hurt this student. Even students engaged in bigger volume actions. In 2012
56 one class mobilized all students (except one class who refused to participate) of the Quezada to rebel against the director. During official educational hours, students left the school building, leaving all teachers behind and marched to the local MoE body, requesting the replacement of the director. The organizer class told me that the reason behind this revolution was that the director often shouted with the students and he also abused the rights of the students by not informing them about the recent school related programs and he rather decided on their behalf of not attending these programs without the concern of the students. Therefore students engaged with action to change these unwanted behaviour of the director for the sake of all.
5.2 Pedagogy and critical thinking Critical thinking is mentioned to be crucial ingredient of constructing active citizens. Freire (1996) laying down the milestone of critical pedagogy, argues against the ‘banking method’ of education, where teachers are seen technicians who transmit the hierarchical construction of knowledge serving the interest of the dominant culture and making children to be passive subject of receivers. Freire refers to these school experiences as the ‘culture of silence’, where education becomes just a training, subjected by the dominant culture. Rather he argues that school education needs to develop students with skills to critique the social and political context which they are embedded in. Critical pedagogy fuels societal transformation, social justice and concerned with emancipation through dialogs and participation. It advocates that good citizens are informed and who can participate effectively in civic life and in the affairs of the state. Indeed education in the Quezada addresses attitudes and practices of active citizenship; still it was implemented in the baking style method. Teachers in their educational practices focused on following textbook content knowledge, rather than enhancing critical thinking skills. During my stay at the Quezada I visited some classroom lectures and even my presence served as a motivation for teachers, as they felt to perform their best, still teachers strictly followed to transmit the textbooks knowledge towards the students, without including any counter narratives or dialogs to motivate students to understand the given social settings in a more holistic way. The communication was one sided and if teachers questioned students, these questions served as control questions about the said information. This has been also confirmed with that teaching practice where as a strict requirement of education students had to carefully copy the blackboards. Teachers in every two weeks collected the students’ notebook, where they marked them, if the information was precisely and nicely copied. Also my experience as an English teacher assistant confirmed this teaching practice. When I earned this position, I collected some notebooks of the students to see what students had studied about. For my surprise, students’ English notebooks in all grades looked quite similar, containing the basic English questions, like What is your name?, What do you do? and Where do you live? in the arrangement, where the same question continuously have been rewritten through pages. After studying these notebooks for my first lecture I brought a ball with me, where I aimed to practice these questions by throwing a ball to students and addressing these learnt questions. This playful method was a success till I started to mix the orders of the questions and students failed to answer them. One student also stood up, offering her help for me
57 by letting me know that the English teacher first asks the What is your name? question one by one in a sitting order, than she moves on the next question with the same method. These experiences made me think that most of the teachers itself were not critically approaching education. Although teachers made some critical responses, like complaining about the long waiting hours during parades, commenting on the directors behaviour or other teachers’ educational methods, still teachers shied away to address their view collectively in front of the public ears. One of the psychology professors, Sonia told me: “Some of the teachers were unhappy how the director has been treating us, so we called into a meeting with the MoE to discuss our problems. But when representatives of the MoE came, nobody wanted to speak out as they were afraid that the other teachers will not stand by them. So we just looked at each other and finally the representative of the MoE went away and nothing has been changed”. Sonia also further addressed, that she thinks the Bolivian education needs to strive to develop more critical thinking and she added that in her material she educates student thought dialogs, but she acknowledged that many teachers are just pouring the information into the student. For my question, if she discusses these teaching methods with her colleagues she replayed: “No, of course not. I am respecting these teachers and I don’t want to judge their teaching method. I do my job, they do theirs”. This leaded me to consequence, that the collective outlook of Bolivian society limits the development of critical pedagogy, as it might jeopardizes the order of the dominant culture. This is also supported by the findings in chapter 3, when I wrote that indeed students responded to the strict social order by escaping from parents, calling the patriot hymn ugly or giving not desirable nicknames for teachers however they never expressed these openly. This also supports that the Bolivian social order limits critical thinking, as the principals of the Bolivian society could overpower this practice of thinking. Concluding from the above said, I view that education in Quezada was both sides of constructing active and passive forms of citizenship. The education in the Quezada fosters active form of citizenship by educating students to be engaged citizens for social and political issues and also to act upon them and strive for betterment. This was also supported by the school structure, build on active participation. While in the same time, education in the Quezada is named to be passive, as the pedagogy methods applied through education misses on to motivate students to think critically in a broader perspective about these social and political issues. It has been connected that critical thinking is applied in a certain limit, until it does not jeopardy the privileged Bolivian social order.
58 6. Conclusion Let me start my conclusion by returning to my point of departure, where I have analysed the new citizenship understanding by two means, defining citizenship as belonging and active participation. Within these two dimensions I have studied the new meaning and practice of citizenship in a public secondary school in Sucre, Bolivia, viewing schooling as a practice ground of implementing nation-led citizenship projects. I have conceptualized the meaning of citizenship by making students feel to belong to cultural and social entities. Following the democratic cultural discourses, the new citizenship understanding recognizes culture as a necessary component of citizenship, where citizens are members of not just the national cultural, but it recognises that individuals can belong to differentiated cultural groups as well. The analysis proved that the educational curriculum constructs differentiated cultural identities through narrations and performances. I have shown that cultural narrations construct differentiated membership based on shared values, cultural and language and ancestry, and by describing the Day of Independence I revealed that these performances are embodied cultural narrations through the use of the body and symbols, which further construct, re-construct, deepen and strengthen students’ cultural sense of belongingness. In the efforts to build the new Bolivian state, unity is a central point of reference, where citizens are further reconnected through the sense of social belongingness, defining these as the daily practices and experiences of citizenship, reproducing social relations and coordinate interaction among members. It was shown that the new educational law re-emphasizes and re-formulates the construction of social capital, where within the collective aspect of life; student’s sense of community was developed, patterned with the required attitudes and behaviours to guide students to live and function in the Bolivian society. This social meaning of citizenship has been intensely characterized the education in the Quezada, rooted back for the local milieu of Sucre and also that children of lower-class parents were attending, where parents limited time jeopardized students socialization. It consequenced that education in Quezada over-elaborated on these matters to secure students socialization process, also taking into account that this collective aspect is related to a functional efficiency, meaning their interconnected network will profit students to achieve shared objectives and gain social benefits. In the question of the new practice, citizenship shifted form the dual duty-obligation participation patterns and introduced the term active citizenship, implicating a different attitude and behaviour, where citizens are engaged members of the society to play an active role to initiate improvements. This new practice was research in the educational setting, where I analysed how the schooling developed students engaged attitude, participation for betterment and critical thinking. The fieldwork brought it forward that the educational setting was both side for constructing active and passive citizenship. Active in a sense that education encourages engagements and practices to participate, which were also supported by the participatory school structure. However in the same time schooling also were site of passive citizenry as the pedagogy failed to apply critical thinking through education. Indeed critical thinking have been defined as a key element of active citizenship and even the Quezada applying the banking forms of education, students still acquired attitudes and practices to critically engage with development, when for example students reported controlling educational staff at the MoE. In the end the thesis focused on how critical thinking have been implemented in the classroom setting, still it is vital
59 to acknowledge that students learn active citizenship in a full range of ways also outside of the school environment, which must impact them in the formation of active citizenry. These other ways could be an interesting recommended topic for further research, how Bolivian students learn active citizenship through different channels outside the school environment. This phenomenon that schooling is being a sites of active and passive citizenship, shows that interesting and challenging position of the Bolivian education, which aims in keep a delicately balance, between seemingly contrary ideas. Actually not just in these matter, but in other multiple ways the education aimed to combine designs about these dualistic ideals, whereas liberal and multicultural citizenship views, diversity and unity and critical thinking and social order surfaced simultaneously within citizenship education. Taking the argument further on, the Bolivian reality shows that these dualities exist together, suggesting a new formation of thinking about social contexts. Following Postero (2010), here I view that we need to break down these dualities and consider that these dualities are both present in societies and their co-existence together is revitalizing the real democracy society. In the end students were the ‘social subjects’ of these constructions, to make them into the citizens what the nation-state have imagined. In this thesis I have showed, that indeed students know and practice the nation-led citizenship project, but still in reality student are not just subjects of these politics. The responses showed that students did not necessary authorize citizenship education as they showed affiliation towards other cultural interests and they did not always keep up the appearance of the compliances of the Bolivian society. I continuously analysed these underlying responses of student of being interconnected with modernity. I have argued that education expels to have a tradition outlook, while in the meantime through means of mass media students developed attachment in their cultural interest, attitude and behaviour associated with modernity. Students by conveying these, they bring a new value and experience of changes, which may again shape citizenship further on. I cannot offer any remedies for this, just to say that we need to acknowledge these changes between the generations, how the youth and the adult’s experience citizenship differently, as these generations will continue to form each other and citizenship as well. Looking to the future, through the eyes of the past, I say pachakuti to Bolivia. I have started the thesis by the introduction of this Andean world and I intend to close my thesis with it. In the last decades Bolivia went through massive changes. I don’t doubt that not all of us see these changes through a positive lens, but from my point of view, I do. In the last decades Bolivia showed great affiliation for betterment, where Bolivians strived for change and the new understanding of citizenship is a positive outcome of these changes. What citizenship might mean today might be completely different in a few decades, but what I am sure, that this concept will change through catastrophes, but in the end it will reach renovation and that renovation will be an improved version of the latest one.
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64 Appendix
1. Program brochure of the Day of Independence
Program 1. National Anthem 2. Words of the day 3. Hymn Salve oh Patria 4. Tribute and historical importance of the independence of Bolivia 5. Poem of Bolivia
6. Cultural integration of the cueca a) cueca of Chuquisaca b) cueca of Cochambamba c) cueca of Tarija
7. Representation of the Andean zona a) representing Potosi b) representing Oruro c) cueca La Paz
8. Representation of the flat land Pendo, Beni and Santa Cruz 9. Let enjoy the closing, with the integration of the cueca for the song Dear Bolivia
2. Program of the Day of Teachers 1. National Anthem 2. The words of the day, honouring the work of the professors 3. Hymn of the Professor 4. Poem, The professor 5. Song, ‘Leave’ 6. Dance, Mojocoyano 7. ‘Pepito’ comedic monologue 8. Poem, The Professor 9. The cecum, comedic speech 10. Rueda Chapaca dance 11. Rap poem 12. Huyanos dances 13. Hip-Hop dance 14. Comedic speech 15. Dance, Bandit 16. Estapara Chapaca dance 17. Mix dances 18. Fonomímica 19. The mischievous dance 20. Dance Arabic 21. Cueca Chapaca 22. 65