Education

• Language and Education in Latin America: an Overview - Vol. 1, Human Capital Working Paper, Cummings, S.M. ; Tamayo,Stella, May 1994

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

• Honduras: Community-based Education Project - Social Assessment and Indigenous Peoples Development Plan, The World Bank, November 2000 - January 2001

The New Agenda of the Honduran Government proposes the provision of preschool and primary school education for all Honduran children, including those living in isolated areas of the country and in extreme poverty conditions. To this end, under a loan financed by the World Bank, the Community-based Education Program PROHECO was launched in February 1999. By December 2000, some 820 schools were running for 39,540 students with 1,109 teachers. The present assessment is a joint effort of the Government of Honduras and the World Bank team (November 2000), and it includes a Rapid Rural Appraisal of PROHECO, ADEL and the Intercultural Bilingual Program in 49 communities of 11 departments.