New Citizens in the Making
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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,