Guatemala has the lowest literacy rates in all of Latin America. Currently, the literacy rate, on average, is 69%. However, the youth literacy rate is only 15-24%. In addition, the men’s literacy rate is 6% higher than the women’s. This problem is mainly due to the education system, which is divided into three levels: primary (elementary) school, secondary (high) school, and university (or college). Although school is public and therefore free from the ages of 7-14 or through the sixth grade, this opportunity is often not taken advantage of. Many public schools are located in rural areas, which are often long distances from villages and homes of the children who would like to attend school. This has caused many private, religious schools to be established. However, this leaves the impoverished and typically indigenous children with a poor education system and a long distance to travel to school. We have separated this problem into three different subgroups in order to capture the enormity of it: deficient funding, discrimination and language barriers, and lack of qualified teachers.
Because schools do not have proper funding, they lack solid infrastructure, technology and curriculum. Many schools are in bad conditions, creating a difficult learning environment. With more funding, these buildings could be improved, allowing students to absorb and learn more during their time at school. Also, there is very little educational technology, especially in rural areas where most public schools are located. This means no access to computers. In fact, most universities in Guatemala do not even have websites. The biggest, most prestigious university, University of San Carlos, recently developed a website and provided Internet access to all of their students. This is considered a big step into the process of modernization and introducing technology into the educational system. Lastly, the Guatemalan education system has a goal of creating a globalized curriculum, educating students on social issues and encouraging them to be active in finding solution. However, in order to improve the curriculum, money is necessary. But because many citizens do not pay their taxes, the government is lacking money. Therefore, schools are lacking funding. And without funding, they cannot improve their infrastructure, develop technology, or advance curriculum.
Guatemala has a vast indigenous population and a plethora of languages spoken throughout the community. Although this creates a diverse, interesting population is also makes it very difficult to educate everyone. Although Spanish is considered the official language of the country, only 60% of the population is actually fluent. There are over twenty indigenous Mayan languages spoken that make up for the other 40%. One of the main goals of the education system is to have one unified language, which everyone speaks. However, it isn’t only language barriers that make it hard. Many indigenous people are discriminated against, especially in the public education system. The literacy rate for indigenous peoples is 18-19% lower than the literacy rate for foreigners. Because the Mayan population is about 3.5 million, this creates severe problems. Although it is a law that the government provides free, accessible education delivered in multiple languages, the country is lacking in bilingual schools, or ESL education programs. Therefore, the indigenous peoples who only speak Mayan languages are unable to get properly educated, meaning a large amount of the indigenous people do not know basic skills like reading and writing.
The third and final sub-problem that we chose to focus on is the lack of qualified teachers in Guatemala, and their unreliability. The majority of the teachers only have an equivalent to a high school diploma. There isn’t a sufficient training program for teachers, meaning that they do not have the skills to properly teach reading and writing. Without enough experience and a flaky commitment to their job, many teachers are lost and lacking in terms of being solid role models and educators of the children. Lastly, teachers are underpaid, resulting in many of the well-educated people not being attracted to teaching, and the teachers not showing up. Students will walk long distances to school just to find that their teacher has lied and chosen not to show up that day. This shortens the school year, and therefore shortens the time the students have to learn to read, write, and be educated.
In order to help solve this problem, we are requesting funding for a program that will help train Guatemalan teachers while also bringing young, interested women and men from the United States to help. Our goal is to create a rigorous, intense training program to inspire and encourage teachers to help each child be their best and reach their goals. We hope to start with a very small group of teachers (roughly ten) so we can focus on each individual with hopes of creating a trend of excited, willing to learn teachers. By bringing about ten young people from the United States and pairing them each with a native Guatemalan, we hope that the partners will be able to learn from each other and play off strengths and weaknesses. We understand that just working with twenty people won’t change the entire education system, but we believe that if these ten people all teach in different classes at different schools, the amount of children reached out to is larger than it seems. Hopefully, this will be the first step in getting a solid program of education, and filling each school with reliable teachers who are excited to learn, and provide a solid role model for the students.
We will interview teachers with hopes of finding, young, excited individuals with goals in making a difference and Spanish experience. We will go through the same process in Guatemala – looking for teachers who want to change the education system, who have a vision for how the system should improve, and are interested in creating a more thorough curriculum. Then, we will pair the teachers together, based on personality and goals, and begin the training process. The process will take place in Guatemala and last about a month. We will then bring the teachers into schools in need. This is where we hope they will use creative mind-sets to prepare the students for the rest of their lives.
Although the training process will be long and extensive, it will ensure that teachers can properly prepare students for an education beyond just sixth grade. By making learning fun and interesting, students will become more attentive and excited to learn. We plan on getting volunteers from the American Federation of Teachers to help train, and plan to get other young adults who want to move to Guatemala and teach from this organization as well. We plan to continue this process, with ten teachers from the US and ten from Guatemala for five years. Therefore, about a hundred in total will be affected.
We understand that having fifty teachers isn’t making the biggest impact. Yet we hope that each student these teacher’s help will be inspired to continue their education through college and come back to work for the cause. We also hope that after seeing the results of our project, native Guatemalan people will implement our program and create more options for teacher training. We believe that if we make this impact, others will follow in our footsteps.
Through this process, not only will kids benefit by getting a proper education, but families and communities will benefit as well. After the fully educated young adults return from college, they can then start their own businesses and use creative ideas to bring many Guatemalan communities out of poverty and help them become successful. It is hard for families to send their children to school when there is work to be done and money to be made, but we believe that if we educate parents on the effects of a good education and the success it can bring, families will be more understanding and encouraging.
In order to implement our plan, every June, we will bring ten American teachers to Guatemala city and meet up with ten Guatemalan teachers from rural areas. The training program, taught by American and Guatemalan members of teaching federations, will last around two to three months. When teachers seem prepared and have learned as much as possible, we will divide them into poor, rural schools in need of good teachers. We will allow them to design their own curriculum based on rules and regulations given by the government and guarantee that all students in the program are given the opportunity to go to school past sixth grade.
Trained officials will go visit the schools and observe classes taught by our teachers to ensure that everything is going as it should. If there is a problem, we will remove the teacher and replace them, for the time being, as they are trained in their weakness. They will then be brought back to the school and restart their process.
Our project will be successful if we change the life of just one kid. Although we want to educate every young kid in Guatemala, this is impossible. But if we are able to make a difference in one kids life, we know we can repeat this process. We also hope that our students will eventually attend high school and universities. We know this will require funding, so we will raise money in the United States to give them scholarships.
