[2] As language planning became more intentional due to indigenous rights movements, theorists adopted standard terminology to classify different types multilingual educational programs.
[3][12] Studies from the early twentieth century that purported to find an academic disadvantage for bilingual children often lacked controls for socioeconomic class and fluency during testing.
Intercultural education presents different “systems of knowledge, civilizational patterns, cultures and languages … in complementary distribution.” Immersion, maintenance, and enrichment models promote this method of learning.
[15][16] While many Latin American universities have designed and support certification programs, training of IBE teachers in immersion or maintenance models is an ongoing challenge, as discussed below.
In areas such as the Mosquito Coast, children often are acquiring multiple languages before school begins as discussed in Intercultural Bilingual Education in Latin America: Political Debates and Criticisms by Countries.
The immense linguistic diversity in Latin America is what in part gave rise to demand for programs that would integrate indigenous languages into educational policy.
[18] After the nation states gained independence in Latin America at the beginning of the 19th century, the elites imposed a model of unification based on the Criollo culture and Spanish or Portuguese language as used by the colonial rulers.
In countries such as Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Mexico, constitutional reforms were realized that recognized indigenous languages and cultures.
Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Mexico have passed laws directing such education of all indigenous speakers, and Paraguay intends for the entire student population to receive bilingual training.
[18] Many Non-government organizations aided in the development of intercultural bilingual programs throughout Latin America with varying levels of involvement and different motives.
[20] More specifically, GTZ helped in the development of these programs at the level of training for primary school teachers, which supported a bilingual project with Spanish and Quechua or Aymara.
This meant that IBE schools and programs received much less funding overall because they tended to be situated in less economically powerful provinces given that the indigenous populations of Argentina are among the poorest in the nation.
The government of Víctor Paz Estenssoro assigned education and hispanization in the eastern lowlands to the SIL, granting them at the same time the right to evangelize.
[7] This followed an agreement between the government and the indigenous movement, leading to the establishment of the national IBE directorate DINEIB (Dirección Nacional de Educacion Intercultural Bilingue).
As of the early 1990s various national NGOs, although with international financial support, assumed intercultural bilingual education as one of their main activities particularly in the Andean Southern region between Ayacucho and Puno.
[31] Colonization that gives rise to systems of language inequality is not exclusive to Latin America and various other areas around the world have attempted to implement similar programs to the Intercultural Bilingual Education model.
The creation of a phonetic-based writing system proved to be a challenge but resulted in a successful biliteracy program and helped the children to acquire English reading proficiency as well.
[14] Freeland (2003) explains that the IBE program in Nicaragua constitutes a remarkable improvement in contrast to the cruel assimilationist Spanish-monolingual schooling model applied to indigenous populations.
The first flaw is that the program applies a “one-size-fits-all” policy, which ignores social dynamics based on the co-existence of different ethnic groups in a single community and their use of two or more languages as mother tongues.
[14] In addition, the IBE program in Nicaragua is largely based on an early-transitional model designed for a facilitated transition into a monolingual Spanish environment and less focused in the long-term maintenance of individuals’ mother tongues.
[14] Freeland concludes in her ethnography that the IBE programs implemented in the various communities of the Nicaraguan Caribbean coast are effective as long as the people whom they serve have agency over these and can achieve whatever linguistic and cultural goals they desire (2003, 254).
[14] Lucy Trapnell (2003), a linguistic anthropologist and co-designer of the IBE program in the Peruvian Amazonian Low Basin in conjunction with AIDESEP (Inter-ethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Rainforest or Asociación Interétnica de Desarrollo de la Selva Peruana in Spanish), explains that this program promotes the inclusion of indigenous knowledge in schools, languages and cosmovisions, and at the same time it incorporates indigenous realities of perceiving the world.
[31] Furthermore, one of the most relevant aspects of the AIDESEP project is that it serves not only as an IBE program but also as a political platform through which indigenous peoples of Peru voice their claims of rights to their lands, culture, and sovereignty.
[40] CONAIE created an “administrative structure” that served as an extension whose responsibility involved the production of teaching material in Indigenous languages of Ecuador (as well as their standardization), bilingual-teacher training, and implementation of IBE programs throughout the country.
[41] He argues that the incorporation of Kimches in Intercultural Bilingual schools like Piedra Alta constitute a decolonizing methodology and “an act of epistemological resistance” (Ortiz 2009, 95).
[41] Ortiz reports that in rural communities like Piedra Alta, IBE schools have incorporated traditional Mapuche teachers known as Kimches, who impart indigenous knowledge in the classrooms to their students through oral teachings and written texts.
[41] Kimches also act as intermediaries between Mapuche parents and non-indigenous or non-Mapuche faculty and staff at the schools and are usually respected and active members in their communities.
[41] In the rural areas, the implementation of IBE programs is not consistent and heavily depends on the intervention of the Chilean State and the Catholic Church, which manage the resource allocation for these schools.
[41] The latter dependence of IBE schools on the Chilean State and Church is further exemplified on the limited intercultural bilingual education these entities provide to the indigenous populations it serves at the grade level.
Contrary to the “indigenist” agenda, Latin American states, such as Chile, aim to use IBE as a tool of assimilation for indigenous people into a single national identity.