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Ecuador's bilingual education policy

Ecuador's bilingual education policy encourages intercultural exchange, and should be used as a model for teaching Spanish-speaking immigrants in the United States. In America, the focus of bilingual education is acculturization into mainstream society by forcing the student to become a monolingual English speaker. In contrast, Ecuador's educational system aims at social integration by "extending higher status to the culturally second language" (Minaya-Rowe, 1980, p. 18). The American system is inherently exclusionary, and results in a significant portion of the population believing themselves linguistically disadvantaged. Ecuador's system is inclusionary, and maintains two national languages.

Ecuador is a country of racial and ethnic diversity. Its 1982 census recorded a population of roughly 8 million residents. Approximately four million people inhabited the coastal region, another four million live in the highlands, over 300,000 inhabit the oriental region, and approximately 6,000 reside in the Galapagos Islands. The largest ethnic category is the mestizo groups consisting of those of Spanish and Indian descent. Indians are 25 percent of the population, whites 20 percent, and blacks 4 percent (Swett and Toral, 1988, p. 239).

The Ecuadorian mestizo groups comprise 51 percent of the population (Swett and Toral, 1988, p. 239). The socio-ethnic category "mestizo" implies that a person is a social product of "espanoles" and "nativos." Therefore, a mestizo does not belong to one, specific racial category. In contrast, the United States does not have a similar term to describe persons who are social products of two or more categories. A person takes the racial identity of one or the other parent. For example, a person with mixed black and white parentage is always considered black.

The Ecuadorian mestizo groups speak either Spanish or Quechua. Although Spanish is dominant, both are considered the national langu...

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Ecuador's bilingual education policy. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 09:12, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1700891.html