Important Factors that May Impact Guatemalan Students’ Education in America
Although Spanish is the official language of Guatemala, more than twenty indigenous languages have been recognized by linguistic experts. Most of these languages are dialects of the Mayan linguistic family. In terms of modern education, bilingual education programs were introduced in the late 1980s to integrate Spanish into the curriculum, and these programs are slowly being introduced to all Maya communities. Many of the Maya people, especially women, speak no Spanish at all, yet they recognize that their children must become fluent in Spanish in order to succeed in the modern world. They are willing to sacrifice their native language for the benefit of helping their children to modernize.
…show more content…
In the news of late, record numbers of Guatemalan children are continuing to cross the Mexico-U.S. border unaccompanied by a parent. According to reporter P.J. Tobia, writing for the PBS Newshour, more than 52,000 unaccompanied children were caught trying to cross the southern U.S. border in the first five months of 2014. We can expect nearly 100,000 by the end of this year (Tobia, 1). The children who cross the border are typically brought there by guides called coyotes. These guides negotiate the border crossings for high fees which don’t protect the children from robbery, rape, or other exploitations to their vulnerable states. Those Guatemalan children, who make it successfully to the United States and are united with family members, are faced with a multitude of new challenges, one of these being the challenge of going to school in a foreign country with no language or cultural understanding of a new and very daunting