Mexico's Indigenous: 26.8% Illiteracy Among Those Who Speak an Indigenous Language Laura Poy Solano - La Jornada
go to original November 30, 2013

Ixcatec: A Dying Mexican Language - Of the 364 language dialects spoken in the country, 64 are classified as “at high risk” of extinction, having fewer than 100 speakers. (Wii0Lover)

In Mexico, at least 26.8% of the population that speaks an indigenous language is illiterate, and the average level of schooling for those who are able to attend school is the fifth grade of elementary school.

According to the report Brief Educational Panorama of the Indigenous Population, prepared by the National Institute for the Evaluation of Education (INEE), 58% of those who are able to finish middle school are admitted to high school, and only 20% of adults aged 20 to 24 have graduated from high school.

An estimated 1.9 million children and adolescent speakers of an indigenous language are of the age to be studying in elementary, middle, or high school, of whom, 1.5 million are between 3 and 14 years of age.

Nevertheless, this sector of the population faces conditions of great educational scarcity in comparison with their peers who attend schools in other regions. Numbers from the 2012-2013 school year indicate that 94.1% of the indigenous preschool and elementary school centers are located in areas of high and very high marginalization.

This adds up to the fact that the national education system still cannot guarantee that all schools attending to children who speak an indigenous language have teachers who can communicate with their students in their native language.

Read the rest at Mexico Voices

Translated by Patricia Mitchell

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