Education in Guatemala
According to the Constitution of Guatemala, education is compulsory and free in public schools for the initial, primary and secondary levels.
[10][11][12] Indigenous people make up about 42% of the population in Guatemala and mostly reside in poor rural areas with little access to post-primary education.
[18] The lack of curriculum guides or teaching materials in rural schools also hamper efforts to improve education standards in those areas.
[13] Gender inequality in education is common — male literacy and school enrollment exceeds female rates in all aspects.
Most families subscribe to patriarchal traditions that tie women to a domestic role and the majority would rather send a son than a daughter to school if they could afford it.
However compared to other countries in Latin America, Guatemalan schools score mid-pack on measures such as the supply of potable water, and near the bottom on others such as the number of bathrooms.
[27] Educators in Guatemalan public schools often use teaching methods that do not account for the nearly 40% of students hailing from indigenous backgrounds who are non-native Spanish speakers.
[29][16] Research shows that bilingual education for indigenous students reduced grade repetition and dropout rates.
[30] After a short democratic period, Guatemala suffered 36 years (1960-1996) of civil unrest, referred to as the Conflicto Armado or “armed conflict.”[14][13] Learning in native indigenous languages was no longer allowed after 1965 when the Education Law declared Spanish as the official language of Guatemala educational instruction.
[14] The Peace Accords of 1996, an agreement between the Guatemalan government and civilian groups under the United Nations, ended the 36 year armed conflict and “acknowledged the role of the educational sector in perpetuating racism via unequal access to schools, poor treatment of indigenous students, and discriminatory representations of indigenous culture in curricula” (Bellino, 65).
[32] Remittances are also used to provide regular meals, electricity, and sanitation in the home, which enhance children’s ability to access education.
[32] Families can also use remittances to hire labor, allowing children to stay in school rather than be pulled out to assist with farm work or domestic activities like caring for siblings.
[15][33] PRONADE is successful in improving parent and community participation in schools and has expanded access to educational opportunities in rural areas.
Insufficient finances force parents to invest in textbooks, teacher salaries, bills, etc from their own money which puts an additional financial burden on them.
Some critics believe that PRONADE, a top-down approach, fails to address the educational inequalities of poor indigenous people and rather perpetuates extreme poverty in rural Guatemala.
