Abstract
This article presents an ethnographic description of parents’ and other community members’ participation in the everyday life of two rural schools in indigenous Mexican communities. Adults and children, together with school authorities, transform their schools by introducing a collective orientation that contrasts with the emphasis on individual development that commonly defines the social and learning experiences associated with formal education settings. Through their regular presence and by participating in activities that maintain and celebrate school life, community members become active agents who create culturally relevant schooling experiences for their children. At the same time, they integrate their schools into the social life of their communities. Interactions among students as they carry out classroom activities designed to promote individual learning similarly reflect an underlying collaborative solidarity. The interactions and activities described imply the collective expression of community members’ shared sociocultural knowledge.
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Notes
Use of the term “everyday life” throughout this article is derived from two theoretical perspectives: (1) social phenomenologist Alfred Schutz’s conception of the world of daily life as an “intersubjective world” (1967:218–222) and (2) sociologist Agnes Heller’s conception of everyday life as the medium in which we create and express the world and ourselves (1977:19–26). For the purposes of this article, everyday life refers simply to the ongoing social interaction among people that takes place in ordinary usual day-to-day circumstances.
Geertz defines a people’s ethos as “the tone, character, and quality of their life, its moral and aesthetic style and mood… the underlying attitude toward themselves and their world that life reflects” (1973:127).
It seems, strangely enough, that even when we do directly reflect upon and explicitly formulate a particular set of social principles, the “givens” that define our sociality, we become even more solidly convinced of their universality. Todorov (2001: 145) notes the stubborn ubiquitous quality of the ideas regarding the nature of human sociality current in European philosophy, literature, and science. These ideas both reflect and feed our common sense experience and understanding as participants who share a collective tacit knowledge that we tend to assume as universal: “a definition of man as solitary and nonsocial,” “the all-encompassing individualist conception that underlies our representations of human life” (2001:2).
The authors translated all Spanish texts cited.
Throughout the article, the term “mestizo” refers to that part of the Mexican population that although often sharing a cultural reality based on prehispanic roots tends to identify with a national cultural frame of reference (Bonfil Batalla 1987). The term “indigenous” refers to those people who share cultural practices and whose identity is more closely related to an original peoples’ cultural heritage, such as Mazahua.
This initial stage of fieldwork consisted of 6-h periods three or more times per week for 3 months in 1989 and another 3 months in 1990. We carried out another period of similarly relatively intensive fieldwork in the same two towns in 1994 and 1995. During these two periods and until the present time, we have made regular 2- or 3-day visits to the schools and communities for special ceremonial events and open-ended interviews with teachers, former students, parents, and other community members, usually at least once a year and often as frequently as three or four times a year. We have provided copies of the results of our research (reports, articles and presentations at conferences) that are included in the archives of the Municipal library where they can be consulted by teachers and other school authorities as well as by interested community members.
As an exception, in the last several years at the initiative of the secondary school principal, a Mazahua language teacher gives class at the secondary school once a week.
Intercultural bilingual education was introduced in Mexico as part of the National Educational Program, 2001–2006. The goal has been to promote awareness of the cultural plurality that characterizes the Mexican nation as well as schooling practices that can guarantee equality and respect among indigenous and mestizo populations. Although nominally it is meant for all sectors of the Mexican population, it in fact has been designed specifically to attend to the educational needs of indigenous students.
Ostensibly, they celebrated the consecration and the official inauguration separately because of a conflict in the priest’s schedule. However, given the legal prohibition against religious celebrations in public schools, there was almost certainly concern to arrange the timing so that the priest would not be present on the same day as the municipal educational authorities.
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Ruth Paradise. Depto. de Investigaciones Educativas, Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados, Calzada Tenorios 235, Col. Granjas Coapa, 14330, México, D.F., Mexico. E-mail: paradise@cinvestav.mx; Web site: http://www.die.cinvestav.mx
Current themes of research:
Educational practice in sociocultural context. Mesoamerican culture.
Most relevant publications in the field of Psychology of Education:
Paradise, R., & Rogoff B. (2009). Side by side: learning by observing and pitching in. Ethos, 37(1), 102–138.
Paradise, R. (2002). Finding ways to study culture in context. Human Development, 45 (4), 229–236.
Paradise R. (1998). What’s different about teaching and learning in schools as compared to family and community settings? Human Development, 41, 270–278.
Paradise, R. (1996). Passivity or tacit collaboration: Mazahua interaction in cultural context. Learning and Instruction, 6(4), 379–389.
Adriana Robles. Depto. de Investigaciones Educativas, Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados, Calzada Tenorios 235, Col. Granjas Coapa, 14330, México, D.F., Mexico. E-mail: roblesa@cinvestav.mx; Web site: http://www.die.cinvestav.mx
Current themes of research:
Mexican indigenous education. Mazahua children’s work and schooling.
Most relevant publications in the field of Psychology of Education:
Robles, A. (2010). Cultural and ethical positioning: cultural and ethical positioning: a teacher and his Mazahua students reinvent the national curriculum in a Mexican rural school. WCES-2010 © 2010 Elsevier Ltd.R.
Robles, A. (2012). Participación de niños indígenas mazahuas en la organización familiar del trabajo. Papeles de Trabajo sobre Cultura, Educación y Desarrollo Humano, 8 (1), 1-11 http://www.uam.es/otros/ptcedh/2012v8_pdf/v8n1esp.pdf
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Paradise, R., Robles, A. Two Mazahua (Mexican) communities: introducing a collective orientation into everyday school life. Eur J Psychol Educ 31, 61–77 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10212-015-0262-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10212-015-0262-9