Topic: The U.S. governed school system in Puerto Rico and indigenous identity. A talk I gave about my doctoral research (and future book): a study of the legacy of biased histories and institutionalized cultural identity, and how it is taught in schools.

1. Puerto Rico: Isla del Encanto 2004-2005,
2013-2016 (living and doing doctoral work)
 Kristine M. Harrison
(from Madison, WI)
 LACIS Lunchtime
Lecture
February 23, 2016

3. The work discussed is now a book:

4. MAPPING LANGUAGE EDUCATION POLICY
(AND EDUCATIONAL IMPERIALISM): U.S.
SCHOOLING THE INDIGENOUS ELEMENT IN
BORIKÉN (PUERTO RICO)
Kristine M. Harrison
Curriculum and Instruction (UW Madison)
ojalaaaa@gmail.com; kmharrison@wisc.edu
787-405-6034 (mobile)

5. “U.S. schooling”…. (Ivan Illich)
 Ivan Illich was actually in Puerto Rico (and NY and Mexico)
 Deschooling Society (Illich 1971) & The Prophet of Cuernavaca (?, 2014)
 Education as institution, manufactures demands and perpetuates poverty…
 Study is about what schools teach kids about themselves
 The indigenous identity; taught to be extinct yet part of a mix
 The teaching of history, race and racial mix, national identity
 Changing databases of knowledge; home knowledge/language not respected

6. Research question:
The role of schooling in
transmitting/teaching about
the indigenous part of Puerto
Rican identity.
Schooling – more specifically
LEP
NOT “TAINO” and NOT about
blood quantum but identity…

7. Historical Reference
Juan Manuel Delgado Colon; oral history:
indigenous past is near; language; way of life
Spanish enclaves; two histories coast/interior
Censuses didn’t count; hid in categories (pardo)
Many PR historians questioned extinction theory
Documents too- ambiguities, concepts
Jíbaros: not all rural are jíbaro; indigenous
survived through them and base of identity;
agriculturalists; women absorbed the men;
isolation; way of life and language
Tony Castanha, Lynne Guitar, Jose Barreiro
Indigenous in Caribbean: Cuba and RD

8. The body of knowledge
I use:
Oral history—across time, many places
across Puerto Rico, Hawaii, urban San
Juan, MOVIJIBO
Another look at sources in the early U.S.
period (me) and scholars who re-
evaluated documents and literature
+
Application of “ethnosuicide”: people hid
in categories
Topography and isolation; not the same
history across the island

9. School version?
Simplified, two current versions:
extinction and survival/continuity.

10. Chain of interpretive POLICY analysis

11. Methodology and data
 Indigenous Methodology (cyclical) and Interpretive Policy Analysis:
 Chain of analysis; Each set of policies informs the next; ‘policy’ broadened
(method of analysis embedded in the research design)
 DATA: Each informs the next
 Policies: expressions of power & ideology
 4th and 7th grade, Spanish and Social Studies
 Content Standards; Textbooks
 Interviews with teachers: had to narrow down 1500 schools

12. Map of the actual places I did interviews
with their barrios to color in

13. Map of teacher interviews with some
locations listed (by who gave permission).
Entrevistas con maestras octubre-noviembre 2014
Interviews with 4th and 7th grade Spanish and Social Studies teachers about teaching the indigenous
element in Puerto Rico interior rural schools.
Directions from Hyde Park, San
Juan, Puerto Rico to Buena Vista,
Las Marías, Puerto Rico
Directions from Hyde Park, San
Juan, Puerto Rico to Marías,
Añasco, Puerto Rico
Hyde Park, San Juan, Puerto
Rico
Rubias, Yauco, Puerto Rico
Cerrote, Las Marías, Puerto
Rico
Damián Arriba, Orocovis,
Puerto Rico
Añasco Pueblo, Añasco,
Puerto Rico
Montoso, Maricao, Puerto Rico
Maricao, Puerto Rico
Frontón, Ciales, Puerto Rico
Bucarabones, Maricao, Puerto
Rico
Marías, Añasco, Puerto Rico

14. 901 (or 899) Barrios (“neighborhoods”)

15. Municipalities ( % are indigenous names)

16. Mapping …
Location
Size: 3515 mi (sq), 9,104 km (sq)
100 x 35 miles, highest elevation over 4000 feet
Flat coast and mountainous interior (driving on
coast vs. interior HUGE difference)
Population 3.6 million
78 municipalities;
901 barrios;
11 or more sectores in each barrio

17. Context: Puerto Rico not SMALL (Highway
map 1860)
 78 municipalities;
 901 barrios;
 11 or more sectores in each
barrio
 http://ceepur.org/es-pr/Paginas/Desglose-de-
Sectores.aspx?Paged=TRUE&p_SortBehavior=0&p_File
LeafRef=030%20CAMUY%2epdf&p_ID=358&PageFirstR
ow=31&&View={D3D544B2-2F88-42E0-811A-
1A41C968C52A}

18. Rivers- plus many inlets (1200?); bridges?
notice “San Juan”

19. Mountains (rural) and coast: 2 historical
processes

20. Paul G. Miller’s 1922 map

21. Language Education Policy as a fieldcurrent and historical interpretive frame for Indigeneity in Puerto Rico?
Language Issue-standardize
Education issue-build schools, standardize content
Governing of both-accountability and Intersection in schools

22. LANGUAGE
 U.S. imposed a monolingual ideology—claiming PR Spanish was so bad
 Attempts to impose English in many domains, and in schools
 Standardized the language: many variations existed; jíbaro/indig language
 Indigenous language existed: linguists & JMD & Martinez Torres
 Maya Yucateca or Arawak? (indigenous languages many disappear)
 Eventually people (urban? Administrators?) rallied Spanish as identity

23. LEP (continued)
 U.S. administered education analysis
 Language of instruction & Content of knowledge—U.S. curricular content
 “policy” broadened to include curriculum (standards, textbook) and
teaching practices
 Economic problems in PR, dropouts, schools in major distress

24. …(and educational imperialism):
U.S. Imperialism in the
Caribbean and Latin
American
Puerto Rico: democratic and
beneficial (progressive
education justified)
English, U.S. administrators,
patriotism & values; racial
hierarchies; 2nd class
citizens; white man’s burden

25. U.S.-Administered Schooling
 They incline to education. It is a great joy to them to send their children to
school…clean, bright-faced children come out of the dreary, filthy homes.
And then, there are no more alert learners in the world than the Porto Rican
children. They are quicker in perception and appreciation than the children
in the states, though possibly more superficial and showy, which will be the
case as long as the mangoes blossom and the trade winds blow. But the
promise is safe, that out of the childhood of the island, if intelligently
directed, will arise a citizenship imbued with the impulses and aspirations of
a new and fairer civilization. (Wilson, 1905, p. 135)

26. 4 starting points/assumptions
 Native American and Puerto Rican both problem populations, similar LEP
 I used survival/ continuity literature rather than assume not there/extinct
 Interior mountain (rural) vs. coastal big divide, most population was rural
 Intergenerational loss/attrition; perhapsparticularly 1st generation & trauma
 THEORY:
 Given the survival/ethnosuicide as resistance: “Progressive” education--
homogenizing, standardizing, goals to assimilate, and schooling Puerto
Ricans ‘erased’ the indigenous identity

27. Boarding Schools- Education for Extinction
U.S. soldiers in PR had experience
with Native Americans
Illiteracy a justification to
forcefully assimilate kids (in PR to
invade)
Cultures supposed to be
extinguished, including language
Taught inferiority

28. Native American link: culture deficit model
Progressive schooling “education for extinction”; War for land became war
against children; literacy a justification; they had many languages
 Puts burden on children in schools to negotiate identity and language:
taught inferiority and new identity
 Not about blood quantum but worldview and identity
 Natives (like PR) not passive; but intergenerational trauma; self-esteem
affected

29. U.S. Schooling the Indigenous
Element in Borikén (Puerto Rico)

30. Caciques- “Taino”, archaeology (not this study)

31. Indigeneity as a
conceptual frame:
Actually ‘paradigm’ includes perspective,
conceptual, epistemology, and
methodology
People colonized by Europeans during
‘discovery’, first peoples….(many names)
However, a certain set of principles that
survive adaptations: Relational ontology,
(connections between the parts), nature
living, spiritual realms, nature of language,
place-based knowledge
Knowing: language, practices, stories,
petroglyphs

32. Indigenous framework (methodology)
 Non Eurocentric, indigenous concepts and perspective of history/world
 Interdependence- human, non, earth, air, land; multiple realities; spiritual
realm; connected- knowledge and land and language (bio/ling. Diversity)
 History and epistemology: how to know- integenerational, memory; oral
history, song, music (“areyto”); African and indigenous similar (non West)
 World in flux (not rule-governed); Continuity, transculturation- processes
not essentializations; transformation with time
 Generations of people, specific place, source of relations land

33. Indigenous research design & matrix:
addresses power relations
 Reason for research: challenge deficit thinking; promote transformation/change
 Philosophical underpinnings: indigenous knowledge systems
 Ontological assumptions: multiple realities/connection
 Place of values in research process: relational accountability, respectful
representation, reciprocity
 Nature of knowledge: knowledge is relational
 What counts as truth: multiple relations one has with universe
 Methodology and data gathering techniques (language, ethno…)

34. More on jíbaros; complex identity process
 They had language; no money; no stores; indigenous diet; no meat; knew
agricultural very well; whole communities; spiritual practices; their names;
 Racial segregation most of PR history; Spain didn’t recognize; took “indio” off
the census; poor didn’t have papers; names changed by church then U.S. schools
 Oral history: a strong voice; many stories disparate places/years same
 Identity theft; made them Spanish then Puerto Rican, not “Taino”; their way of
being (not that they called themselves)
 Compare to Curet; “unknowably complex”

35. Rural Education- Segunda Unidad
 Rural areas isolated and not penetrated; censuses missed many people;
whole communities; majority of people rural
 Many types of jībaros; very marked from urban; considered archaic
 Schools had different curriculum, adapted to rural needs but still based on
u.s. ideals; supposed to solve the problem of rural schooling in Latin
America
 ‘civilizing agency’; and community center

36. Segunda Unidad (rural
schooling)
Adapted to rural needs
Community center and civilizing agency
for “neglected and forgotten jíbaros”
(Rodriguez Jr. 1943)
Teach people to not have many kids and
not move to the city

37. “Official” scholarship & DNA (blood quantum)
and identity question revisted
 Indigenous extinction (study Tainos….)
 Jíbaros are white peasants (but U.S. really denigrated them…); became the national icon
for Puerto Rican identity; perhaps complex but not Indian
 DNA study shows 60% indigenous and 80% in western areas
 What are Creoles? Distinct from original or transformed; CULTURAL IDENTITY OVER TIME
 Certain aspects didn’t change….people as a process and in their own land
 Not fixed in the past but adapted (indigenous frame): Did Africans and Spanish learn the
indigenous culture in first two decades and maintain for 500 years until jíbaro culture
collapsed early 20th century? (JMD)

38. The policies: L and E policy merge
 Lake Mohonk Conference on Indian and other Dependent Peoples; policies for governing all aspects of life
 1993 Spanish language policy
 Ley #149 (1999)- Ley Organica para el Departamento de Educacion Publica de Puerto Rico.
 Estudios Sociales: Carta Circular #3 2013-14 (Política Pública sobre las directrices para la implantación de los
ofrecimientos curriculares del programa de estudios sociales en los niveles elemental y secundario)
 Español: Carta Circular #10 2013-2014: (Public Policy about the Puerto Rican public schools’ Elementary and
Secondary level Spanish as a mother tongue program’s organization and curriculur offer.)
 No Child Left Behind (NCLB): 2000 Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of
1965. ; Plan de Flexibilidad 2014 (Flexibility Plan for the ESEA of 1965)
 Native American Languages Act 1990 (NALA)/Esther Martinez (2006). ; Native Class Act 2011

39. Interpretive Language Education Policy
Frame: Language and Content
Collective analysis of policies:
UNESCO, CEPAL
Federal-U.S. (NCLB, Flexibility)
Puerto Rico (Organic, Language,
Circular Letters: assert
“puertorriqueñidad)
Status conflict
Paradoxes
Ideology formation (schooled into)
People standardized and
homogenized (cultural and
linguistic) but
RESISTANCE

40. Ley Orgánica 1999 excerpts
 The programs will be adjusted to the necessities and experiences of the
students
 pertinent to the social, cultural and geographic reality of the students
 To develop a positive and healthy consciousness of his/her identity in
multiple aspects of his/her personality and to develop attitudes of respect
toward his peers (semejantes)”

41. Carta Circular #3 Social Studies 2013-4
Carta Circular #10 Spanish 2013-4
 encourage the student to know and appreciate the history and cultural
heritage which identify him as a Puerto Rican, recognizing the contributions
of other peoples and cultures to our historical development (p. 4)”.
 have a greater understanding of the historical process and social processes
that shape its society and other societies, in order to consciously and
actively participate in its development and improvement” (p. 4).
 #10: Establishes link history, people, society, identity; Spanish as mother
tongue

42. No Child Left Behind-2000 & Flexibility
Request (most recent 2015)
 Addresses the achievement gap Allocation of funding; PR sometimes a state
(= the lowest funded state)
 PR in category with Native Americans (who are not ELL’s) who lose language
revitalization efforts with it (mandates English testing)
 Language testing ambiguous ; PR tested in Spanish
 PR does not fit definition of Indian, Hawaii does sometimes (cultural,
historic, land-based, once-sovereign nation)
 Flexibility: PR and 42 states failed (testing, teachers, etc.)

43. Standards: took many years to make them
Puerto Rican (not “American”)
 Social Studies Standards 1 Change and Continuity 2 People, Places, and
Environment 3 Personal Development 4 Cultural Identity
 SPANISH
 1) auditory and oral expression 2 fundamental reading skills 3) reading
comprehension: literary and informative texts 4) mastery of the language (K-
6); 5) writing production.
 .

44. Curriculum: Textbooks
4th/7th grade Spanish and Social Studies
Material teachers have to comply with standards
Older textbooks: disappeared or hid; evolved
Taught an image of “Indian” and “indigenous”
then “Taino”
From no role in identity to a democratic but
extinct one-third
Current books: reduced to certain motifs and
pieces of information; DO NOT SUPPORT
Teaching methods: range from skipping it or
almost nothing to elaborate projects

45. Powerful textbook images
Reduced to certain motifs: love, childlike, sick,
working in mines, friendly, passive, peaceful
Completely in the past, archaeology to know
about them
No cultural continuity
Spanish: literature not expected to be used to
teach history/identity
(K-3 has already integrated)

46. Paul G. Miller’s textbook 1922-1949
 He was a soldier 1898; stayed as education agent
 Went back to WI for 5 years at UW to do BA- PhD; then returned as
Commisioner of Education; 3 kids born in PR
 Los indios are primitive; inferior; but they fled into the mountains
 They were not called Tainos

47. Cecil E. Stevens (1928) & Gaztambide Vega
y Aran (1941) and others
 Superintendent of Education in Rio Piedras
 Wrote a book; story form about a little boy
 References are Thatcher, Fewkes, Brinton, Long Roth, Stoddard, J. Alden
Mason (wild aboriginal tribes…)
 G.V.y A.: Exterminated
 Vivas Maldonado 1960: very few left but went to the Indieras

48. Ricardo Alegría
Gets credit for reviving the “Taino” (so-named
after his work?)

49. Teachers - a community of meaning
I gave teachers voices
I drove off into the mountains: Specific geographical area for teacher
recruitment
28 Interviews in 18 barrios; 9 municipios; 6 Segunda Unidad; 12 K-6/9; 2
escuelas intermedias
4th grade 13 Social Studies, 11 Spanish; 7th grade E.S.; 4 Spanish
Questions about the teaching of history and identity: standards, time spent on
it, methods, language, fenotype, traditions,

50. Summary of Findings Teachers on Language, Indigenity, Identity
3) How do teachers make meaning, mediate, and implement the curriculum
and language education policy in their classrooms?
 Many changes in Puerto Rican Spanish
still variationsWay of life change and language not needed
 Oral transmission diminished greatly, this
generation almost none; School has
caused profound changes in knowledge
and practices
 Traditions still exist; BUT Knowledge and
language both standardized
 Part of the identity is indigenous but this
varies by teacher, for some the origin and
for some not at all
 Many variations between teachers but
most agreed on “Taino” and remote past,
and most said “herencia” and not
survival or presence
 Much has been lost in terms of
indigenous knowledge.

51. Teachers main issues
 Aligning standards
 History not given importance; curriculum not enough to value heritage
 Depends on teachers and what they put into it; if they include and what
they emphasize
 Spanish think only Social Studies would teach (mostly)
 “hay que trabajar el tema”

52. Theory and ethnosuicide/ethnogenesis
 Linguistic and educational imperialism of school curriculum
 Language/knowledge attrition
 Rabasa (2011) survival practice to hide in different categories (indigenouos
or western); then an ethnogenesis (new form the colonizer couldn’t master)
 Construction of knowledge about indigeneity in PR
 ethnogenesis (without meaning to be postmodern) would be positive for
Puerto Ricans, indigenous, education at large

53. Theoretical Frame AND IMPORTANCE OF
STUDY: Educational Imperialism
What the study is really about:
Implications for Identity;
Schooling and history is part
(Related to national identity);
+ a consideration of U.S. LEP
policy late 19th century
Native American boarding
school experience used in PR=
attrition
(& standardization but
resistance)

54. Theoretical Frame Re-visited
TEXTBOOKS DO NOT SUPPORT
TEACHING OF CONTINUITY
STANDARDS DO NOT EVEN
REQUIRE TEACHING OF
INDIGENOUS
NO importance, teachers struggle
Paradoxes in claims; process of
cultural continuity eliminated

55. CONCLUSION
 Native American Languages Act (1990): (Symbolic). U.S. policy acknowledge
the link between language and education; mistakes of the past; languages
for educational achievement and importance for identity (these never
resolved for PR)
 KNOWLEDGE WAS TRANSMITTED; role of how school interrupted
 What version is taught to students? How does LEP affect PR identity?
 Lack of teacher and learner autonomy

56. Recommendations
Integrate subjects &
reconceptualize (K-3 already)
Change the knowledge base (ie
textbooks) at the level of teacher
education and schools
Workshops for teachers
Deschool society (Illich) & Re-
educate communities (Nozick)
Educational Sovereignty
Take indigenous thought seriously

57. Limitations in the study
I should have gone to the caseríos
in the city. Descendants of who
lived in El Fanguito)
People probably didn’t trust me.
Teachers may have thought they
would get in trouble.
I should have asked teachers how
they define the jíbaro.
(pic taken by Lynne Guitar in
Santiago, RD) January 2016

58. 11 y 17 noviembre en frente del capitolio
Plan Bhatia Educamos

60. Kristine M. Harrison
Curriculum and Instruction
(UW Madison)
ojalaaaa@gmail.com
kmharrison@wisc.edu
1-787-405-6034 (mobile)