New textbook for African/Maya studies curriculum
Book launchings are no longer a novelty in Belize, but one that took place this morning at the Image Factory will have repercussions extending well into the future. News Five’s Stewart Krohn reports on an addition to the high school curriculum that’s been a long time coming.
Dr. Joseph Iyo, Co-Author
“What we are saying is rather than being objects of history we want to become subjects of history.”
Froyla Tzalam, Co-Author
“This project is about social engineering, how can we rescue our lost youth and for me we can only do that by highlighting positive values.”
Frances Humphreys, Co-Author
“The attitudes that are too prevalent in our secondary school system are not going to go be erased over night. It’s a long uphill struggle and every step of the way we need instruments like this one.”
Stewart Krohn, Reporting
The instrument being refereed to is a new textbook and accompanying high school curriculum for the study of Belize’s African and Mayan heritage. As their opening remarks demonstrate, authors Joseph Iyo, Froyla Tzalam and Frances Humphreys see the book as part of a larger initiative to change the way we view our history and ourselves. Gone is the simple categorizing of Belize’s many ethnic groups, in its place comes s more complex model of multi-national pride. How important is the new slant for Belizean students?
Frances Humphreys
“Priceless, beyond measure, it’s extremely important Stewart. For me it’s not just a dream come true to be placing this kind of information into their hands but especially, given the nature of the new C.C.S.L.C. low secondary curriculum, this has to be in there in the context of Social Studies otherwise we would have lost a golden opportunity, once again, to provide for our students not just a good education but a superior one, one that will be truly liberating.”
Froyla Tzalam
“With this book I am hoping that people can develop a greater sense of pride in themselves as proud descendants of a equally valid civilizations as the western civilizations and those two being the African and Maya.”
But a textbook, no matter how well written, is only as good as the teacher presenting it because while impressionable students are ready and often eager to accept new concepts their teachers do not always share that flexibility. I asked Dr. Iyo if he thinks they are ready.
Dr. Joseph Iyo
“They are not in honesty and that has been major challenge right from primary school to secondary school. You see when you are use to a certain way of thinking, of behaving and you are told one day that that is not the way to go, that we have moved away from that for so many years we need to embrace a new interpretation of how we relate to one another. I’ll give you an example, we did a workshop on Monday, we taught the teachers how to integrate and make the mutli-cultural component come higher than the ethnicity and we said to submit a lesson plan and teach to it, they wouldn’t buckle the ethnicity. So that I why we think that to change that it has to be gradual process of providing series of orientation workshops and more importantly we are hoping that if the History/Anthropology programme is put at U.B. then they will go through a whole course that will help them at the end day to appreciate that new way of thinking.”
And the message for teachers.
Dr. Joseph Iyo
“Our linkages are too many to type-cast us, to pigeon-hole us into creole eat rice and beans, Garifuna dance punta, Mestizo eat this and that; that irrespective of which ethnic group you come from you cultural practices are all impressing. I want them to take that message and see how our lives have criss-crossed and that the new reality in Belize calls for a new way of interpreting our reality.”
Stewart Krohn reporting for News Five.
The book was published by the Image Factory Art Foundation and printed by Print Belize. In his opening remarks, publisher Yasser Musa gave thanks to Amandala’s Evan X Hyde for initiating and consistently pushing the concept of African and Mayan studies in the nation’s schools.
