- Browse/Search the Program
Search
Browse By Day
Browse By Time
Browse By Person
Browse By Room
Browse By Committee or SIG
Browse By Session Type
Browse By Keywords
Browse By Geographic Descriptor
- Information Menu
Search Tips
- Navigation and Settings Menu
Personal Schedule
Change Preferences / Time Zone
Sign In
Towards a post-colonial understanding of protest: Studying the teachers' strikes in Bolivia against "ideologized" curriculum of 2023
Mon, March 11, 4:45 to 6:15pm, Hyatt Regency Miami, Floor: Terrace Level, Tuttle SouthProposal
As a continuation of research conducted under the UNESCO Regional Office of Education for Latin America and the Caribbean, the focus of this study is to apply a post-colonial framework to the teachers’ strikes in Bolivia. In January of 2023, Father Pedro Flores of the Church in Bolivia denounced what was deemed a “perverted curriculum” in Bolivia's 2023 currículo base (curriculum) (CNA Staff, 2023). Since that time, Bolivia’s teachers have actively protested the Ministry of Education. The gender approach in modules for primary-level sex education and references to the 2019 coup in the history curriculum has polarized Bolivia’s Ministry of Education from the Confederacion de Trabajadores en Educacion Urbana de Bolivia (Confederation of Urban Education Workers of Bolivia, CTEUB), as well as parents and even students. On the one hand, the Government pursues its 2009 Constitution mandate towards a decolonized, intracultural, intercultural, and multilinguistic approach to education (Country of Bolivia, 2009). On the other hand, those opposing the curriculum worry about “hypersexualization of children with the issue of gender ideology” (Iturralde, 2023). With dialogue between the CTEUB and Ministry of Education cut off, the demands for a salary increase, more realistic hours, and modifications to the curriculum (Gandarillas, 2023) have gone beyond the initial strikes and protest rallies to teachers expressing their criticisms of the curriculum through more drastic measures such as hunger strikes crucifixion (Trujillo, 2023).
Local and global news outlets imbue the narrative with extremist language that is not reflective of the complex history and educational reform that Bolivia has undergone in recent decades. Its integration of multiple languages into the curriculum beginning in 1990 was hailed as an inclusive triumph, which makes the current narrative a striking contrast. I propose to take a post-colonial approach to view this situation, examining the full landscape of historical, political, economic, social, and cultural nuances that have built these tensions.