Undefended Children in the Classroom? Looking at Textbooks, Cultural Difference, and Other Aspects of Indigenous Education in Mexico

Abstract

Globalization has unleashed a plethora of contradicting forces currently. One of the most poignant has been the recognition and celebration of cultural difference alongside the homogenization of wants and desires through global media vehicles and a push toward universalization compulsory basic education. Since the 1980s, new primary schools have been “invading” the small Indigenous communities of Mexico. This chapter focuses cultural conflicts that arise due to this “invasion” within a Maya-Tojolabal context of Chiapas. Emphasis is placed on the intersection of educational policies within the Indigenous classroom and on the conceptual incompatibility of Western and Indigenous educational visions and practices. Main themes include the deep cultural otherness of the contemporary Mayan people and the role of schooling as a specific and powerful cultural avenue of influence which is distancing Indigenous children from their cultural context, leaving them effectively “culturally” vulnerable and undefended in the classroom and beyond.