Chapter 10
Language policy and education in Peru
The central role of language ideologies in recent
studies
This chapter presents a state of the art in
language policy and education in Peru, focusing on the importance of
language ideologies when designing and applying policy. Within the
Peruvian context, I have selected three works published in the last
decade to give an account of certain common beliefs behind the
decision-making of the government and other institutions regarding
language in education. Next, based on some of the ideologies
presented by these scholars, I reflect both on the progress and the
challenges that policy-makers still need to face to create deep and
long-lasting change. If we do not discuss underlying language
ideologies in the educational and academic spheres and analyze them
critically in order to contest their biased and discriminatory
nature, they might change but popular mentalities will not.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Works on language ideologies in language planning and
education
- 2.1The inevitability of a standard language ideology in Peruvian
education
- 2.2Language policy and planning in Quechua
- 2.3Education as an instrument of social differentiation
- 3.Language policy, education and ideology today: Progress and challenges
- 3.1Standard Spanish and dialect variation in Peruvian
schools
- 3.2The impact of ideology in the reevaluation of indigenous
languages in Peru
- 3.3Multilingualism and interculturalism in language planning and
policy
- 4.Concluding remarks
-
Notes
-
References