""Could you research Simón Bolivar for me?""

I'm looking after my family's Internet Center in El Alto, and a high school student is brandishing the silver coin with which he hopes to purchase my highly valuable research skills.

""No. I already have my High School certificate,"" I say.

The boy looks perplexed. Why would I risk losing a client to one of the many other Internet places nearby that would be more than happy to oblige?

""There's a computer over there,"" I say. ""You're welcome to sit down and do some research, and if you need any help, I'm right here.""

I'm the annoying foreigner who refuses to do people's homework.

Disgruntled, the boy sits down at one of the computers and types ""Simón Bolivar"" into the Google search bar. The first hit is Wikipedia. The boy clicks on the link, highlights the text and copies it into a Word document.

""Can you print it for me?""

I sigh and print off his investigative research project, wondering if I shouldn't have just done it myself. He plays a violent war game for the remainder of the fifteen minutes his 50 centavos will buy.

According to the Bolivian Census of Population and Housing 2012, only 9.45% of Bolivian homes have Internet access. Schools are only just beginning to be connected to the Internet in fulfillment of a pre-election pledge by Evo Morales in 2010. As such, businesses that provide Internet access to the public for around 2Bs (USD .30c) an hour, serve the function of school library--a service most schools do not have--and a place for young people to connect with friends, both online and in person.

After school each day, students race each other to the Center to secure a computer next to their friends, and amid the hubbub of hollering sweaty teens, employing virtual machine guns to brutally murder one another, I feel my inner grandma shout, ""Don't you have anything better to do? Go outside and kick a football or something!""

As someone involved in one of these businesses, my concern is to what extent Internet Centers contribute to learning, and to what extent they hamper it.

In a bid to find out, I asked Rusvel, who completed his high school degree last year, what happens when my young clients present their research projects to the teacher.

""The oldest teachers think we do it all ourselves because they don't know, but the younger ones know.""

He explains how he used to simply print off articles found on Wikipedia or a site called ""El Rincón del Vago ""  ,where completed assignments can be downloaded on any topic. He would copy them by hand into his exercise book and present the transcription in class as his own work. Some teachers became suspicious.

""They know the student writes everything a bit wonky, forgets to use accents. If we copy it perfectly, the teacher knows it's too perfect and says, 'You've copied this from the Internet,' and he takes some marks off.""

But even when teachers are aware of the powers of the Internet, there are still low expectations of what students are capable of. In many cases there continues to be an emphasis on rote learning and not on creation or critical analysis.

""They just have to copy it into their book by hand,"" says Guichi Samo, who visits the Internet Center with his children to help them with their homework. ""By copying it out, they're reading it, and at the same time they're memorizing a bit. We download the information, print it, so the work is already done. They copy it into their exercise book, they hand it in, and they get their mark.""

But moves have been made to change things in this regard. In 2010, the Morales government enacted a new Bolivian Education Law that focuses on ""promoting scientific research for scientific and technological progress."" The new law also allows for flexibility in the school curriculum. It allows teachers to adapt the content of their lessons to focus on research that is relevant to the local environment, explains Roy Villca, who is a chemistry and physics teacher at a local high school. It also allows them to incorporate new technologies in an innovative way.

Roy, for example, is using a software package in his chemistry lessons in which students can create 3D molecular structures. But teachers need to have the training, resources and motivation to use technology effectively.

In recent years, the government has been working to make information and communication technologies available to all teachers and students. The Director of Colegio Nuevo Amanecer Fé y Alegria, Edgar Aru, told me how in 2012 each of the teachers at his school received a laptop as part of the ""One Laptop Per Teacher"" initiative. Last year, each final year student around the country was provided with a laptop to be used in the confines of the school.

The new law also aims to train teachers with ""a scientific outlook and the ability to use research methodologies and techniques,"" as well as ""the ability to incorporate the use of new information and communication technologies into education."" All teachers have been trained in the use of the new laptops, and the Ministry of Education created a website that provides online courses for them.

The government and some NGOs are also promoting initiatives to incorporate information and communication technologies (ICTs) into the classroom, but at the very grassroots level, some teachers are devising innovative ways of their own to use new technologies to motivate their students.

""Some of the younger teachers have Facebook and Twitter pages,"" says Rusvel. ""And sometimes they say, 'I'm going to give you homework and you absolutely have to do it that day, even if there's a roadblock or a festival. If you can't come to school, take a photo of your exercise book and post it on Facebook and I'll know you did it.'""

Victor, a final year student and frequent visitor to the Internet Center, tells how some teachers are trying to use social networks to make learning fun.

""Most students access social networking sites, and I've seen that teachers are trying to use them as teaching aides. For example, the teacher goes on there and posts, 'Who can tell me what happened in the Chaco War?' And the students respond. It's a way of studying, shall we say, but it's fun.""

So what of Internet Centers in all this? As more and more schools are connected to the Internet, and as more Bolivians gain access to it at home or through mobile devices, perhaps the Internet Center will cease to become such an important and highly frequented place for young people. And as teachers become more knowledgeable and adept at incorporating ICTs into learning in innovative ways, the hope is that students will find themselves wanting to do their own research, rather than asking others to do it for them.

But I find myself wondering, if the Internet Center were to die, what would the kids do after school?

Perhaps they would go outside and kick a football, like in the old days.

Photo: Nadia Butler

Long-suppressed indigenous languages are now fundamental in Bolivian classrooms

On an unusually cold and miserable Wednesday morning, I wander the streets of El Alto in search of Colegio Amauta, the starting point of my investigation. Splashing my way through streams in the roads and shivering from the bitter altiplano wind, I am guided by a kind, elderly alteño who leads me to the school, hidden on a quiet road in the Ciudad Satélite neighbourhood. He stops at a small terraced house with white gates and green hedges—this unassuming building is the school I am looking for. 

The head mistress leads me into a tiny classroom where ten eager faces smile at me. The children, no older than seven, greet me with an hola señorita and a wave. It is 11am and these children are being taught Aymara by their teacher, Clarissa Zapana. Colegio Amauta is a colegio particular, a private school with a friendly and bustling atmosphere, authentically shabby interior and small class sizes—10 students compared with the usual 45.

In this school, almost all of the teachers are of Aymaran ethnicity, according to the headmistress, Beatriz Alvarez Ordoñez, who openly talks to me about the importance of Aymara in a school like this. ‘In the context we have here in El Alto, the majority of people come from Aymara cultures’, she says. ‘So it’s important that children learn Aymara, to communicate with their grandparents, for example.’

Changing the Standard of Language Education

This private school has taught Aymara throughout its 30-year existence, but the teaching of indigenous languages in Bolivian schools has not always been accepted across the country. In fact, observing this class of eager students, it is easy to forget that not long ago official Bolivian policy dictated that everyone speak Spanish in school, and indigenous languages were heavily suppressed. The education reforms of 1994, however, introduced more funding for schools, which improved teacher training and curriculum whilst promoting bilingual education. But the bilingual requirements remained vague until the government, under President Evo Morales, enacted additional reforms in 2010, when clear requirements were set for multilingualism in schools.

The 2010 Avelino Siñani–Elizardo Pérez Law, named after two historical figures who also tried to better education for the indigenous population, covers many facets of education in Bolivia. It makes revaluing indigenous cultures, languages and knowledge a cornerstone of the Bolivian educational system. The law also names trilingualism as one of the Bolivian education system’s goals: students are encouraged to learn an indigenous Bolivian language and a foreign language in addition to acquiring proficiency in Spanish. As well as the promotion of language learning, Morales’ government invested more into teacher training than the previous reforms had, according to Dr. Mieke Lopes Cardozo of the University of Amsterdam.

But it’s not always easy to bring a language into official school curriculum—or develop standardized assessments. Ordoñez explains that ‘There are specific Aymara teachers, but there isn’t a marking scheme to grade Aymara like they can grade other subjects, [such as] social sciences, English and other languages. What needs to happen is for the Aymara teacher and another language teacher to sit down together and come up with a way of grading the students they have.’

At Colegio Amauta, I also spoke to Clarissa Zapana, an Aymara-language teacher, who told me about her teaching method. ‘What I mainly teach the pupils are greetings, through using flashcards with the Aymara words and phrases written on, and then I repeat the Spanish translation aloud’, she says. Zapana then explains that written Aymara is very difficult, and so is the grammar, so the children mainly learn on an oral, repetition-based method.

Language and Identity

The meaning of language goes far deeper than daily communication. Juan de Dios Yapita, an Aymara and Spanish professor at the Spanish Institute on 20 de Octubre in La Paz, says that learning Aymara couldn’t be more important. ‘Language is an identity’, he says. ‘It reflects the culture you are from. So if you don’t speak the language, how can you understand your culture?’

Speaking to Walter Gutierrez Mena, the head of interculturality and multilingualism at the Ministry of Education, I receive an insight into the governmental view on languages as part of education in Bolivia. Mena explains that Bolivia is one of the only countries in the world that has laws governing indigenous languages in schools. ‘Indigenous languages strengthen the identity of Bolivians’, Mena says. ‘Spanish allows Bolivians to physically communicate with each other. And foreign languages allow them contact with the world.’

At the same time, Mena acknowledges that not everyone is on board with these changes. For example, some parents don't want their children to learn indigenous languages at school, as they don’t think they are worthy. ‘As a consequence of colonisation, there are people that reject their heritage. There are people that say, “I don’t want to learn an indigenous language, I want to learn a foreign language, like English or French.”’

Leonardo Favio Mollo Conde, who works at the Vice Ministry of Decolonisation, talks about the not-so-distant history of the repression of indigenous languages in the country. ‘They made it obligatory to learn Spanish’, Mollo Conde says. ‘Obligatory to forget Aymara. It was a synonym for backwardness and barbarism.’

But now, speaking Aymara is fundamental to the survival of the culture itself, Mollo Conde says. ‘The youths in El Alto, they consider themselves Aymara, but so many of them neither speak nor understand the language. They identify as Aymara, but they can’t even understand their mother or their grandmother. It’s a question of identity.’ However, today Mollo Conde is hopeful. ‘These laws have forced the revaluation of indigenous languages’, he says. ‘Because of that, the future looks promising.’

Photomontage: Alexandra Meléan A.

Our intrepid reporter samples various educational opportunities around the city

TANGO

Following 40 minutes of fervent map-consulting and wrong turns, I finally arrived at Casa Argentina—just six blocks from my house in the Sopocachi neighbourhood—for a night of tango. Encouraged by the infectious enthusiasm of the teachers, the effortlessly chic and black-clad Ismael and Carolina, I took my place in the beginners’ group. We started with the very basics: practising walking forwards and backwards. While Carolina made this look effortless and seductive, I found myself questioning my most basic motor functions. Eventually, having regained my ability to walk, I felt my confidence growing. As if by celestial punctuality, just when I felt I had mastered the basic principles, I was partnered with scrupulous and outspoken fellow-student Manuela. My attempts to lead the dance were met with much eyebrow-raising and surly disdain, and with a mere no, no está bien, my delusions of tango proficiency were coldly crushed by my uncoordinated partner. Undeterred by Manuela's eye-rolling and chorus of tuts, I approached the next moves with gusto, and even received a ‘super!’ from my final partner of the night. Whether this was conveying genuine enthusiasm or sympathy for my ineptitude remains a mystery.
Casa Argentina, Avenida 6 de Agosto 2535

CRYSTAL HEALING

At a painfully early 9 am last Saturday morning, I arrived at the La Paz School of Reiki for my first crystal healing class. As the fresh-faced instructor, Daniel, took one look at my bleary-eyed and dishevelled appearance, he could tell that his crystals would have to work overtime to cure my self-inflicted suffering. Sheepishly, I took my place amongst the bright-eyed species of health-conscious youth. Nestling into an inviting mound of pillows and inhaling the musky incense, I felt I had entered a woodland retreat, oblivious to the early morning bustle of the streets below. Exquisitely arranged on the wood-panelled floor were a colourful array of crystals, the most eye-catching of which—the bolivianite—was to be the focus of the workshop. Found only in one mine in the Pantanal region of southwest Bolivia, this distinctive crystal is one half deep amethyst, the other a warm golden citrine. As Daniel explained to the enthralled class, the amethyst element represents femininity and creativity, while the gold tones represent masculinity and rationality. Taking four of these bolivianite gems each, we spent the next two hours reconciling our creative and rational aspects by holding the crystals on different body parts and meditating. Wishfully, I placed all four stones on my forehead, my monster headache pushing the crystals' healing properties to their very limit. Alas, this was too great a demand for the bolivianite. I left the class enlightened and educated, yet with my hangover regrettably intact.
Calle Jaimes Freire 2945, between Calle Riardo Mujia and Calle Muñoz

YOGA 

As someone who once pulled a muscle while reaching for the TV remote, it's safe to say I was apprehensive about my first yoga class. But five minutes into the session, I was pleasantly surprised. I felt supple, nimble, agile even. Flash-forward fifteen minutes and I had morphed into a contorted mass of limbs on the gym floor, in absolute purgatory. Like a bewitched painting in an episode of Scooby-Doo, my eyes flicked around the room and my head remained perfectly still as I subtly attempted to copy the moves from my neighbours. The next half-hour was a blur of Spanish anatomical vocabulary and physical discomfort. As our instructor transitioned with ease into our final position, I choked with indignation. A headstand. A headstand in my first yoga class. The horror, the horror. I promptly bought myself a post-yoga Burger King, and thus ended my brief foray into healthy living.
Megacentre, Avenida Rafael Pabon, Zona Sur

ILLUSTRATIONS: Mauricio Wilde