From integration to bi-cultural education: a Mexican experience
- Author:
- Del Río, García, Romero, Díaz Rangel, Lares
- Organisation:
- “Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana - Programa Infancia”
- Country:
- Mexico
- Date published:
- 01 February 2004
- Paper synopsis
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The project described here belongs to a new line of research on intercultural education in Mexico. We use the same principles when working with deaf children as we do with indigenous children. Minority ethnic groups, endangered languages, bilingual education, and diversity must all be taken into account as part of our multi-cultural country.
Our work is based on listening and observing before making any intervention, and forming social networks and open learning communities. We are committed to the promotion of policy, legal and judicial changes consistent with the Convention of the Rights of the Child (CRC).
In this article we report on the progress made by eight profoundly deaf students who were integrated into a public secondary school in Mexico City. There were twelve hearing students in their class, and they had the support of an interpreter.
The deaf students had previously attended a primary school for deaf children and their academic standards were low, so they were given extra tutoring by the researchers. The hearing students, however, demanded equal access to the additional tutor time allocated to the deaf students!
The researchers observed that the class gradually became bi-cultural, using the two languages of signed and spoken Spanish. This had not been possible in other settings, where only one or two deaf children had been integrated into a large class.
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From integration to bi-cultural education: a Mexican experience [73 kb]
From integration to bi-cultural education: a Mexican experience
