This case study deals with the learning of English as a foreign language by indigenous students enrolled at a Mexican university. A critical Latin-American perspective is used to examine the lack of confidence exhibited by the students and the origins of the Eurocentric vision of Mexican dominant class and how it influences the relationship between cultures, languages, attitudes, knowledge, and therefore education.

This case study deals with an intercultural program called “Una apuesta al futuro”(A bet to the future) created at the Universidad Popular Autónoma del Estado de Puebla (UPAEP) in 2006, a private university in the city of Puebla, Mexico. I was in charge of the Language Department and taught an additional English as a foreign language (EFL) class to the indigenous students who were selected for that program. The Language Department’s aim was to help them to be more confident with the English language. The analysis in this article comes from personal observations and from the poor results from the EFL classes we were offering to students of the intercultural program at that time, as demonstrated by their low final grades. They said they were intimidated about learning the language because they felt inferior to it, and were afraid of making mistakes in front of students from the majority group. This article also refers to the results of a study in the same university where 300 undergraduate students showed a high extrinsic but a very low intrinsic motivation to learn the language (Despagne, 2008) because of negative perceptions toward English related to economic, political, and sociocultural problems between the United States and Mexico (Despagne, 2010). In Mexico, English is perceived as a symbolic power (Bourdieu, 1982) that allows its users the possibility to access higher social levels in society. Yet, if the extrinsic motivation is so high, why do students face so many problems learning EFL?

I look for answers to this question by taking as a starting point the critical Latin American perspective of interculturality (Bonfil Batalla, 1982, 1983, 1988; Escobar, 2005; Mignolo, 2005). After defining the concept of interculturality, I analyze the structure of knowledge in Mexico and its colonial power. I then discuss the negative attitudes this colonial power generates. The last point deals with the importance of the contextualization of knowledge in learning, and therefore in EFL, without which egalitarian education is not possible.

INTERCULTURALITY

As of 2003, Mexico is officially a multicultural state where Spanish and the 62 indigenous languages are recognized as national languages. Nevertheless, reality looks quite different. Linguistic assimilation policies since independence impose Spanish as the de facto official language all over the country, which gives the language a special status. Not much has changed since 2003. Only English has to be added to the Mexican linguistic map. It is the language of better social incomes, of modernity, and therefore of power. Modernity here is defined, according to Escobar (2005), as a phenomenon characterized by reflection and decontextualization of social life which leads to a totally rational theory. Therefore, in order to help UPAEP minority students to eliminate the psychological barriers they have toward the learning of English and allow them to walk in both worlds, their own and the “modern” one, we must design a real intercultural EFL course. Intercultural education from this perspective is not only about living side-by-side, indigenous with nonindigenous people. Intercultural education must also try to accept the diversity of human beings and to understand their needs, their opinions, their desires, and their knowledge of the world from a different geopolitical conception (Mignolo, 2005). Education and classrooms therefore represent the ideal place where the geopolitics of knowledge (the local historic knowledge reference of all citizens) can be changed. In order to change the linguistic and cultural perceptions of Mexican society, the UPAEP, and in general, the Mexican national education system will have to adjust the geopolitics of knowledge, and therefore its curriculum design, to a more local conception of the world. Attitudes can be changed if dominant discourse accepts it can learn from indigenous perceptions. Nevertheless, EFL classes are mainly based on Western world perception; textbooks used at the UPAEP Language Department are imported from the United States.

STRUCTURE AND COLONIAL POWER OF KNOWLEDGE

The Eurocentric vision of Mexican dominant classes and their identification with the global forms of power are the result of the social and historical evolution of the country (Walsh, 2010). This identification is by itself an expression of the relations between dominant and dominated languages, and of the power relationship between cultures (Bonfil Batalla, 1996). It is also clearly linked to political projects: colonization and creation of a new nation, all linked to the idea of national unification based on one single language and one single culture. This in turn leads to deculturation and processes of assimilation (Hamers & Blanc, 2000), originated by the notions of WE and THEY. The division between both mostly began during the time of the Mexican Independence movement when the government was composed of creoles, a cultural mix between indigenous peoples and Spaniards. They fought for independence by creating a unique Mexican identity that was based on a Eurocentric vision but that also integrated some elements from the glorious Aztec past in order to be definitively separated from Spain (Lopez Arellano, 1983).

All the indigenous communities had therefore to abandon their own cultures in order to adopt the new single Creole identity (Lopez Arellano, 1983, p. 50). As a result, Spanish became the language that unified the vast Mexican territory and it also became the language of nationalized education programs.

ATTITUDES TOWARD LANGUAGES AND CULTURES

Origins of Attitudes in Mexico

According to Crystal (1992), linguistic attitudes simply represent what people feel about their own languages or the languages of others. Nevertheless, in Mexico, linguistic and cultural attitudes seem to be much more complex. They are the direct result of Mexico’s social and historical context. All over Latin America, intellectual production is still associated with the concept of “civilization” and “modernity,” to the dominance of written language and to racial hierarchy (Walsh, 2010). Escobar (2005) pointed out that “modernity” believes in a never-ending improvement and development that revolve around the logic of order, centralization, and a hierarchical construction of power. “Modernity” is part of the colonial process that began in Europe in the 17th century. Nowadays, it does not operate through conquest anymore; rather, it imposes economic, social, cultural, and linguistic norms (Mignolo, 2005). In other words, as stated by Mignolo (2005), there is no modernity without coloniality, i.e. without modern colonialism through economic and social forces, generally referred to as globalization. Indigenous knowledge and languages are therefore generally not perceived as intellectual productions. They are most often related to “folklore” or to exotic objects of study. They are “archaic,” in opposition to “modern” (Mignolo, 2005).

Discriminative Attitudes

Since colonial times, Mexican assimilation policies have favored the superiority of Western world vision and, therefore, the superiority of one language over others. Giving first Spanish, and now English, a dominant position has contributed to the orientation that gives Western knowledge a hegemonic place. This in turn generates discriminative attitudes toward minority languages and cultures. Western White people will be generally perceived as “civilized,” whereas dark-skinned indigenous people will be perceived as “backwarded” (Oehmichen, 2007). Students from the UPAEP intercultural program feel this racism every day, on the streets, and at the university from peers, teachers, and administrators. It was common in our language department for English teachers to let some of UPAEP’s indigenous students pass to the next language level, out of paternalism or pity, even if they had not met the requirements. This example clearly shows how Mexican society reproduces, conscious or unconsciously, Bourdieu’s habitus (1982)―in other words, how it reproduces a socially acquired, embodied system of dispositions and/or predispositions (a set of acquired patterns of thought, behaviors, and tastes). Through these learned habits, Mexican society reproduces the inherited discourse of colonialism, that is, the discourse of the dominant culture (Pennycook, 1998).

Conditioning of Knowledge

As a result, Mexican neo-colonialism, in other words the perpetuation of colonial discourse (Calvet, 2002; Pennycook, 1998; Phillipson, 1992, 2008), promotes the learning of “useful” international languages and perceives the world exclusively through the lens of these same languages. It conditions knowledge, perceptions, and attitudes, often in an unconscious way. Most of the linguistic attitudes of Mexicans derive from the discourse of global dominant culture. As teachers, we must favor critical discussion in classrooms because, from the perspective of critical theory, knowledge must be constructed by taking into account the social contexts and constraints where it takes place, and where students can engage for social change (Benson, 1997). In my English class with minority students, for example, we discussed perceptions on bilingualism. All of the learners enrolled in this class spoke Spanish and Nahuatl fluently, but none of them perceived themselves as bilingual people. In Mexico, only international languages are recognized as being real languages. Nahuatl does not reach that level; it is perceived as being only a “dialect.” Once students accepted being real bilingual people, they were able to use their linguistic background in Spanish and in Nahuatl to build their new English knowledge. Metacognitive, metalinguistic, and even some pragmatic transfers were then possible. All the students in this class invested their own identity in their learning (Cummins, 2001) by creating a video resume in Nahuatl and in English through the online tool called Optimal Resume. Potential employers will be able to watch these videos in both languages once they start searching for a job.

In order to rethink education in Mexico, we have therefore to favor a more critical pedagogy that aims to emancipate students by helping them “to become voiced learners” (Pennycook, 1997, p. 50). It is my hope that this will enable our students to question the relationship between Spanish, English, and their native languages and cultures and the discourse they are used to express.

MEXICAN INTERCULTURALITY: A PARADIGM

Mexican linguistic policies represent an example of this paradigm. Spanish assimilation policies and the concept of global “modernity” (Escobar, 2005) are the clear expression of how colonial discourse has been perpetuated in Mexico. Or, as Walsh (2010, p.83) stated, “While colonialism ended with independence, coloniality is a model of power that continues.” Nevertheless, these policies began to experience important changes some years ago, such as the indigenous revolts led by the EZLN (Zapatista Army of National Liberation ) in 1994, the General Law of Linguistic Rights for Indigenous People, and some other amendments to the Mexican Constitution (Cuevas Suarez, 2004; Hamel, 1995, 2001; Schmelkes, 2009). Today, more than ever, we can aspire to intercultural education that provides a counterdiscourse to the former Mexican bilingual education. In fact, intercultural education looks forward to teach indigenous children in their native language, based on their own geopolitics of knowledge. It also aims to awaken nonindigenous children to the richness and value of Mexico’s indigenous knowledge. To summarize, intercultural education is meant for the whole population and expects to break discriminative practices down. But, most of all, the Western world has to accept that it can learn from indigenous perceptions. For this, intercultural education will have to harmonize the “global” Western knowledge with the local vision by favoring an active participation of both communities in curriculum design and decision making. Therefore, in order to allow indigenous “cultural control” over resources (Bonfil Batalla, 1996), it seems important not to forget that learning processes have to be contextualized in our students’ own world references before rational elements of the Western world can be introduced. This is one of UPAEP’s biggest challenges when it comes to EFL classes for indigenous students. Instruction needs to start from the students’ own realities and not aim solely to assimilate minority students to Western standards.

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Colette Despagne, University of Western Ontario, colette.despagne@gmail.com