OCR Text |
Show 140 Indian cultures, and acculturation which insists in developing the personality of the Indian as well as the community, considered as a whole, giving impulse to the ethnic and cultural cross-breeding. The democratic orientation or of acculturation must have as a fundamental purpose to condition its contents to the ultimate finality of conducting as a whole the values which sustain the national society and the Indian community, with the purpose to make compatible the membership of the Indian to his group, and in more ample terms, to the national society. The methods and techniques to follow in inter-cultural education must be then, the ones which will allow the establishment of the prerequisites necessary, so that the common channels of public administration may carry the benefit of formal education to the Indian communities, and so, contribute to fulfill the pre-conditions in which is based the development planned in the cultural level. Elson, Benjamin F. "Indian Education and Indian Languages," America Indigena, XXV (April, 1965), pp. 239-244. Summary in Spanish, article in English. Most of the American countries have a growing number of population that does not participate in the country's economic life with the required acceleration. It does not permit contact with the rest of the population; no cultural participation or understanding of the political institutions under the ones that have to unroll, or develop. The fundamental purpose of education is to achieve communication or contact among other national groups, as much cultural as economical. The means more suitable to conduce the Indigena to the national life, would be alphabetization and the education, is the use of the native language, the only one that can truly incite natives interests and feelings. The author presents three types of programs that cover the Indigena language: pre-school instruction that teaches the children to read and write in their own language and prepares them to receive scholastic education with the basic understanding of the national language; the bilingual education in the majority or in all primary grades, and general education, with preparation of an alphabet in Indigena language and reading primer, alphabet class in both languages for adults, and provision of a small bilingual literature for alphabetized adults. |