|
|
|
|
CIAO DATE: 04/05/07
The Seeds of Social Inclusion: Reforming Education in Costa Rica
by Alejandro J. Ganimian
Incipient social exclusion threatens to undermine a 106-yearold tradition of peace and democracy in Costa Rica. Failure of the government to address growing xenophobia and prejudice in the country has left Nicaraguan, Dominican, and—on a lesser scale—Colombian economic migrants with no other option but to endure discrimination and seclusion from Tico ingroups. 1 Over the past summer, which I spent teaching English at a public high school in the mountain village of San Isidro de Heredia, I realized how the “jokingly” racist comments that my students made in class actually reflected tangible divisions in society and questionable public policy decisions. To truly uphold its democratic traditions, Costa Rica’s best bet is to turn to “democratic education”: nurturing a shared national identity by virtue of being entangled with others and teaching people to trust in the idea of a shared project, not because of a fixed allegiance to a nation-state, but because of the dynamic realities imposed by globalization. The first section of this article will reconsider citizenship as identity through democratic education; the second will make the case for thorough education reform as Costa Rica faces serious new challenges to its democratic tradition; and the third section will focus on the exponential costs to Latin America’s longest-standing democracy should the reform opportunity be squandered.
Being “Civil” vs. Being “Civic.” The concept of citizenship as identity traditionally is tied to the relatively recent birth of the nation-state. Ever since its development, the idea of “one nation, one state” was to many an illusory— if not naïve—claim. The new states demarcated by the limits of the map of the modern world engulfed different peoples with disparate values, mores, languages, and religions. Therefore, it is understandable, but perhaps not logical, that states felt the need to resort to a new common denominator to meet the threat that pluralism posed to the idea of unity under one government. Citizenship became a means to define a group’s identity in terms of its relationships toward the state and toward other groups within the same territory, which today we understand as rights and duties. The state developed into the “bearer of the moral project,” the promoter of the overarching ethos enshrined in those rights and duties. Many have argued that education first was conceived to teach people to become citizens, to be part of (and to defend) that moral project.2 Education became, as bluntly put by Althusser, the “ideological apparatus of the state.” Such an approach to education bred an army of critics in the 1970s and 1980s, led by Pierre Bourdieu and Henry Giroux, who argued against the reproduction (i.e. the invention and perpetuation) of state power through culture. They demanded that citizens be empowered to think for themselves.
Democratic education, in its various names and semblances (peace education, conflict-resolution education, critical thinking education) invites citizens to develop their own notions of what is right and wrong; these are independent from the state’s and other people’s notions, yet not insensitive to them. After all, a consolidated democracy should not gamble on homogeneity, but rather, should thrive on plurality. Citizens in a democracy need not share an identity on the basis of a particular ideology. (Indeed the world’s best consolidated democracies display a wide array of ideological nuances.) Our interaction with others and ability to make independent decisions based on multiple experiences make us true partners in a democratic project that is larger than everyone’s individual views. In the words of Melissa Williams, a leading writer on multiculturalism, “Preparing children to participate as citizens of a shared fate would emphasize teaching them to understand themselves as connected to others through a history that was not of their making, but as having the agency to remake those connections according to their own best judgments.”
Costa Rica, Latin America’s poster child for democracy, has not yet taken any serious steps to reform its education system in this direction. On my first day at school, I was given the textbooks required for each class I was assigned. These and other textbooks were part of what Minister of Education Manuel Antonio Bolaños Salas dubbed the Relanzamiento de la Educación Costarricense (the “Project to Re-launch Costa Rican Education”), an ambitious plan to revamp the public education system through some two dozen strategies that was outlined through Article 2 of presidential decree 31647 on 19 February 2004. The Relanzamiento included changes such as expansion of school enrollment, tighter and more periodic national assessment exams, and major curricular reforms that encouraged peaceful conflict resolution and solidarity with the community. This project seemed groundbreaking and unique within the region—yet I soon discovered the leaders remained too optimistic about the plan’s implementation.
After my first week in San Isidro, Ticos—both students and teachers alike— felt comfortable enough to privately approach me, the visiting Argentinean, and break into impromptu stand-up comedy shows mocking Nicaraguans (commonly referred to as “Nicas”), women, homosexuals, and blacks (mainly Dominicans or Jamaicans, who were brought as slaves to build the country’s railroads in the nineteenth century). When I visited my students’ homes, the joke turned serious: many times parents would mention how migrants from neighboring countries (particularly Nicaragua) were ruining Costa Rica, taking jobs away from nationals and turning to crime by either smuggling drugs or mugging random passersby in San José. In fact, the only employment Nicaraguans and other fellow migrants can find is harvesting coffee, a job that pays less than minimum wage even to the few Ticos who still want to do it. Additionally, no police records can bolster the assumption that migrants turn to crime any more than Costa Ricans.
In the meantime, while working inside the classrooms, students recited—almost word for word from their textbooks—the claim that equality, tolerance, and democracy were traditional Tico values. This public-private duplicity shows that the “re-launching” is not working, since students who are accustomed to learning by rote will not become more democratic simply because they are now memorizing readings about democracy. More important, the contradiction between the “official” Costa Rican discourse of tolerance and peace and the bigotry and discrimination hiding behind it also show how one can be publicly civil and yet privately un-civic.
Alejandro J. Ganimian is a senior at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, where he is majoring in International Politics and obtaining a certificate in Justice and Peace Studies. He volunteered at San Isidro de Heredia, Costa Rica, through the Global Crossroads Volunteer Network.