New Afro-Maya curriculum inaugurated
It was promised two election campaigns ago, and today it became official: the teaching of African and Mayan history is now part of the Social Studies curriculum. The programme was launched during ceremonies this afternoon at St. Mary’s Anglican School in Belize City, one of the institutions that took part in the pilot project last September. Co-director of the African and Mayan studies project, Dr. Angel Cal, says upper primary school students will be the first to be taught the programme starting in September when it is rolled out countrywide. Cal says the idea is not to promote ethnicity, but to teach children to be proud of their ancestry.
Dr. Angel Cal, Co-Dir., African and Mayan History Project
“We worked with over two hundred and seventy-five teachers in sixteen schools all over Belize. The results of that pilot have informed the drafting of the teacher’s manual and the student workbook that we are preparing. So come September now, we aim to start implementing beginning with Standards Five and Six. And then we will go down to middle and the lower division.”
Patrick Jones
“Dr. Cal, the African and Mayan history programme, can it be seen as the teaching of ethnicity in our schools?”
Dr. Angel Cal
“What we’ve been saying to all the teachers and the children that we have been working with so far is that African Mayan history project is definitely not focussing on ethnicity. If that were the case we would be doing a disservice to our nation. We think that that is not the approach. The approach is that we are teaching civilisations, African civilisation. Because we know that there isn’t one African ethnic group, there are literally thousands of African ethnic groups. But there are only a few African civilisations that were developed over time. Similarly with the Maya, there are literally dozens of Mayan cultures. In Belize there are three.”
Patrick Jones
“What is the overall objective of the programme?”
Dr. Angel Cal
“The overall objective is really to strengthen Belize’s appreciation and sense of pride in who we are as a people. To contribute to the definition of Belizean-ness, not so much as an ethnic group but as a group of people, a nation of people that are derived from various ethnic heritages as well as foundations in Western, African, and Mayan civilisations.”
The other co-director of the programme, Dr. Joseph Iyo, says that the African and Mayan history programme will not be burdensome to teachers since the Social Studies curriculum was adjusted slightly to include the roughly two percent of additional material needed to support the studies. Cal says the 2005 Social Studies portion of the Primary School Examination will include questions on African and Mayan history.
