To most Belizeans, seeing their country drawn on any map as a part of another country is a grave affront and injurious to their national pride. Belizeans have been assaulted at home and abroad with maps of Guatemala that include Belize as a part of its territory, and that country’s claim that “Belice es nuestro.”
So it was no surprise that some teachers who saw Belize included within Mexico in the Chispas Spanish book series for primary school—which they are being mandated to use in schools as a part of the Government of Belize’s new free textbook program—raised their voices in protest.
On Wednesday, the Belize National Teachers Union (BNTU) went a step further, and called on the Government to return the textbooks to the English publisher – Heinemann Educational Publishers. In fact, the BNTU says, the Government should return all the books that it has ordered from that publisher, including the Caribbean Social Studies series, because if they can make such a mistake identifying Belize, then there are bound to be other serious mistakes in their books.
When Amandala spoke with Nelson Longsworth – director of the Quality Assurance and Development Service (QUADS) in the Ministry of Education – he conceded that there are errors in some of the books, but nothing that cannot be addressed.
Teachers have had books before where they have had to point out inaccuracies, and it is their responsibility to teach students correctly where inaccuracies occur, Longsworth remarked.
BNTU national president, Jaime Panti, said that since training workshops began for the textbook program this summer, the union has received 50 complaints via e-mail and phone calls coming from teachers spanning the infant to the upper division level.
He said that the Ministry of Education has been stonewalling the union, refusing to send them a set of the textbooks they plan to issue to schools, and also refusing to meet with them.
“When we call, they are in a meeting. We get lots of excuses why we can’t get to them,” Panti said.
The BNTU release says, “The recent revelation of major errors and omissions related to the sovereignty of Belize as found in the Spanish and Social Studies textbooks is in direct contravention of our existence as a nation and people and against Chapter 1, Section 1 and 2 of the Constitution of Belize.”
It goes on to say that this is “a major insult and affront to the intelligence and dignity of our Belizean people, teachers and students.”
As to the error with the Chispas maps showing Belize as a part of Mexico, Longsworth said that one teacher offered a simple solution: She has indicated that when she distributes the books to her students in September, she will have them demarcate the Belize border with a felt tip pen.
He admitted that in Book One, there is a map that identifies seven countries, and the student is asked to identify the countries where Spanish is spoken.
“The map shows as though Belize is a part of Mexico…a line wasn’t drawn to demarcate,” he explained.
That same map is used two other times in the series, one where the student has to match a capital to a country and one where the child has to depict where a person of a particular nationality lives, Longsworth said, adding that Book Four clearly defines and labels Belize.
In Longsworth’s view, the disputed diagrams are not a problem in the context for which the maps are being used. He said that they evaluated books for content and the methodology used to train second language learners, and the Chispas books ranked the highest among those they looked at.
Some teachers have also expressed concerns over naked sketches of males and females (adult and children), showing their genitalia, which appear in the Standard Five edition of the Social Studies book.
Panti says that teachers have complained that the Social Studies books have inaccuracies of facts as well as omissions. Others at the Infants One and Two levels say they prefer the BRC books, which they say have proved to be effective, to the new reading books. On top of that, some teachers have said that the content of some of the textbooks will put their students back an entire year.
Longsworth concedes that there are some gaps fitting the books into Belize’s eight-year primary level program because Caribbean books cover only seven years.
The books that will be given for the Standard 6 classes are limited, and the math book is inferior and doesn’t cover the range that some teachers believe they should cover, Panti also commented.
Some teachers have told QUADS that the math books are not challenging enough, but Longsworth said that he begs to differ because students are “dismal” in math both nationally and regionally.
The union says that while the textbook program is, generally, a good idea, there was clearly not enough planning and consultation in the process. It says that what has been revealed about the contents of some of the books proves their point.
The BNTU has reiterated its call for a meeting with the Ministry of Education, and if government resists their call, they will go to their membership of roughly 3,000 elementary teachers, who will decide what their next move should be.
Following concerns raised recently over the Chispas books, the Ministry of Education issued a press release this week stating: “The Chispas textbooks are first and foremost a Spanish course designed, developed and produced for the purpose of teaching the Spanish Language,” and “the country of Belize is not included in some of the illustrations that appear in the series Chispas as these illustrations relate to a specific cluster of ‘Spanish-speaking’ countries.”
The release concluded with an assurance to school managements, principals, teachers and parents that it has told publishers of its wish for the contents of the books to be “contextualized” for Belize wherever possible.
Notably, the release did not concede that there were any factual errors in the textbooks.
Longsworth said that the Ministry has already contacted the publisher, Heinemann, with the concerns that teachers have expressed over the map issue and they are trying to decide as a company how they will respond. Still, Longsworth said that the Ministry would stick by its standardized booklist, because the books they have chosen were the best ones available in the relevant subject areas: Spanish, Social Studies, Science, English and Math.
Teachers should never teach from a textbook or use them to plan; books are merely a resource to support the teaching/learning process and multiple sources should be used, Longsworth said.
“If a teacher teaches from a textbook, that’s another problem we need to correct,” he added.
Longsworth believes that the program will be a big plus to improve the performance of students and he said that they will continue to work to get it right, but all stakeholders must work together.
The union, for its part, is saying that key stakeholders are being ignored in a hasty move by the Ministry to fully implement the free textbook program next month.
The BNTU is requesting an urgent meeting with Education Minister Francis Fonseca and the other education stakeholders to discuss their concerns.
Rafael Sosa, Public Relations Officer for the Ministry, told us Thursday afternoon that the Ministry will be meeting with the BNTU next week, and the Ministry plans to issue a statement after that meeting. That meeting has been slated for Monday, August 20, at 3:00 p.m.