Mexico: 90 per cent of textbooks to appear in Mexico’s indigenous tongues

At its the seventy-ninth national congress, held in Zacatecas, Mexico, the Mexican national farmers’ union (Confederación National Campensina, CNC) announced its joint intent, with the Mexican government’s secretariat of public education (Secretaría de Educación Pública, SEP), to tackle the problems affecting schools in farming regions.

The plan involves the launch of a new model for education aimed at promoting equality and inclusion. In an effort to  ensure that schools in rural and indigenous communities benefit from conditions comparable to those in urban schools, educational services are to be made independent of school fees.
The Mexican undersecretary of state for public education, Aurelio Nuño Mayer, set a target for 90 per cent of textbooks to be published in the country’s various indigenous languages in future. The current proportion stands at 70 per cent.

A further announcement made by Nuño Mayer at the congress concerned the future provision of English classes in every school across the country, with the aim of making Mexico bilingual or, in indigenous communities, trilingual.

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Image Credit: Aurelio Nuño Mayer by Angélica Martínez / CC BY-SA 3.0
Information sources: mexican online newspaper NTR | Noticias en Tiempo Real, mexican online newspaper La Crónica de Hoy