User:Boliviaeducation2000/Draft sand box

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Bolivia is a multilingual society and although Spanish is the most spoken language, there are 36 recognised ethnic groups, each with their own language. In a census from 2001, it was identified that 62% of the Bolivian population identified themselves as belonging to an indigenous group: 35% belonged to the Aymara population, 31% to Quechua and 1.5% to Guarani, with the remaining indigenous peoples, identifying with the other 33 smaller ethnic groups. The roots and belongings of these  ethnic groups to Bolivia trace back since before the Spanish conquest of Bolivia in the 16th century, which made Spanish the national language of the colony. Despite gaining its independence in 1825, Bolivia remained a monolingual society with Spanish as the national authoritative language until educational reforms set out in 1995. From 1952 the Bolivian Government, to bridge and remove ethnic and cultural divides and differences, implemented a series of educational assimilationist policies in which indigenous children would only be taught in Spanish. This was to create a monolingual society, relying on a submission and transitional based education model. As regional inequalities continued to persist, specifically those between urban and rural populations, in 1995 an educational reform sought to implement bilingual education in which children would be taught both in their regional language and Spanish, with an equal weighting given between the two.

In 2009, the Bolivian government set out a constitution in which Bolivia was identified itself as a pluranational state with 36 official languages. By 2002, close to 22% of schools had applied intercultural and bilingual education within the classroom environment. This reformed educational approach has increased educational attainment, literacy and numeracy rates across Bolivian society and in 2002 it was found that drop out decreased from 6.2% to 5.9%, and Bolivia’s net enrolment rates were 97%, higher than the 93.9% average of educational attainment in Latin America. However, the implementation of Bilingual educsiton is a subject of contestation as some parents are not in favour of intercultural education as they fear children will not acquire a sufficient level of Spanish fluency, for purposes related to social mobility. Furthermore, critics of the EIB have argued that students are taught in Spanish, more than their respective regional language and that formal education systems, even if they are taught using indigenous languages do now empower indigenous knowledge systems as skills such as reading and writing are not conducive to an agricultural way of life. It has further been argued that these schools reinforce cultural and social hegemony of European and mestizo culture. As such schools have become places of contestation since the bilingual educational reform in which conflicts and negotiations between ingenious community representatives, parents boards, teacher unions and NGOs (who are often a principle source of funding for the implementation of bilingual education) take place.