March 30, 2007 | Volume 4, Issue 1

The Effects of Government Involvement on NGO-Run Teacher-Training Programs in Peru

by Leya Speasmaker

Introduction

Non-governmental organizations define education as a necessity for all children, and many identify the rural poor as the population most lacking this basic provision. Yet each year, millions of children living in rural areas of underdeveloped countries go without adequate education, thereby limited to a life of continued poverty with few possibilities for escape. Countless conferences, seminars, meetings, and discussions have taken place in an effort to dramatically change how countries deliver basic education to their youth; still, disparities prevail. Strategies and plans that have arisen from this discourse include partnerships between governments and NGOs, improved curricula, and increased resources. However, the strategy of improved teacher training opportunities is often missing in these discussions.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) report of the 2000 Senegal Conference for Education for All noted the importance of the teachers’ role in improving education. The report stated that every education system needs teachers who are sufficiently qualified and motivated to enact change within their communities.¹ Evidence shows that a well-trained, motivated teacher can have an enormous impact on the success of students, despite environmental interferences. Therefore, improved teacher-training opportunities shine as one of the most important reforms the world can make with respect to education.

This paper is an effort to explore influencing factors involved in the successes and failures of teacher-training programs in developing countries. I compare two teacher-training projects in rural communities in Peru, one in Ananea and the other outside of Cuzco. Ananea is a mining community high in the mountains of Peru that has one elementary school and one secondary school, both of which are state sponsored. These schools are open until 1 pm when the majority of children begin their daily work in the mines.²

The rural communities outside of Cuzco, one of Peru’s most developed cities, are home to indigenous communities that trace their roots back to the Incas. These communities struggle each day with the juxtaposition between their traditional way of life using the Quechua language, and the increasing need to learn Spanish in order to survive economically.³ I will examine the motives and implementation methods behind teacher-training programs in each of these communities in order to determine the effect that governmental involvement can have on a teacher-training program. I will also give attention to program design and mission statement to determine the effectiveness of these teacher-raining programs in positively altering educational outcomes in their target communities.

Importance of Teacher-Training Programs

Strong and effective education systems can increase the economic power of a country, decrease levels of poverty within the country’s borders, and even serve as a prerequisite for democracy.⁴ Many NGO and some nationally sponsored programs all over the world provide resources, innovative curricula, and advanced study opportunities to students. Countless studies have suggested other basic components of an effective educational system, such as good textbooks and access to technology; such demands transcend national borders. However, in spite of successful examples in neighboring countries, developing countries often struggle with the basic framework of good education due to poor administration, lack of resources, and often, a challenging mix of native languages present within the country’s target population.⁵

Gary Theisen, President of the Comparative and International Education Society, proposes the development of three necessary steps in order to achieve more success in educational development: alliances, bridges and confessions. Alliances between different NGOs, between NGOs and governments, and between NGOs and community groups are critical to the success of education initiatives. Through these alliances, organizations can share their knowledge base with one another. Bridges between academics and non-scholastic ventures, corporations and grassroots organizations, and younger and older organizations can lead to great advances in educational reform. Organizations have different resources that they can share through bridges between organizations. Finally, confessions about past mistakes, differences in opinions, and misinformed decisions must be addressed so that the same missteps are not taken again. By incorporating this framework into the mission of an NGO, changes in the way educational programs are developed and implemented may begin to take shape.⁶ Nowhere is this more important than in teacher-training programs.

Teacher-training initiatives should occupy a central role in education reform, especially in rural areas. An examination of a rural teacher-training program at work in Chile offers suggestions for how these trainings can greatly influence the strategies that teachers use in their classrooms. First, trainers can emphasize the depth of teachers’ potential impact. Through trainings, teachers can reflect upon their own teaching styles and the messages that they may be sending to the students through their actions in the classrooms. Teachers can be exposed to the issues involved in cross-cultural teaching as well as be trained to the effects and dangers of “cultural domination.” Past research has shown that teaching strategies that do not correspond with rural communities’ attitudes and perspectives are most likely met with frustration. This reinforces the importance that governments and NGOs should place on properly training a rural community’s teachers as well as on involving the community into development activities and ideas.⁷

Teaching in a Rural Community

Teaching in a rural setting presents different complications and challenges to a classroom than teaching in a city setting. In interviews with rural teachers from Oaxaca, Mexico, such problems included the challenge of traveling to isolated communities and difficulties in communication with communities outside areas while working inside the isolate community. These same women commented about the importance of a rural education system, stating that it is a strategy to improve daily life in the rural communities and to lessen the effects of poverty. The teachers also stated distinct benefits of teaching in a rural setting, which included the ability to reside in a non-violent community, the ability to save money, and the opportunity to witness directly the effects of their efforts on rural schoolchildren.⁸ While these are opinions of teachers in rural Mexico, one can assume that their perspectives are similar to those of teachers in Peru since the challenges of isolation, lack of communication, and extreme poverty presented by rural communities are similar.

Rural communities also present unique challenges to teacher-trainers and program developers. In Peru, the main source of income for many rural communities is mining, and many of the workers in the mines are school-age children. Ananea is one area where this is the case. The social, emotional, nutritional, and educational needs of these children are distinct from their urban counterparts, and even from other rural, non-mining towns. Yet teachers often do not understand or consider these needs. Further, the curriculum supplied by the state generally does not meet the specific needs of these working, rural children. In addition, the quality and organization of formal educational systems, which often follow the national norm, discourage working children from attending school. For instance, students’ work hours prevent homework completion and eliminate the possibility for after-school help or supplemental educational programs.⁹ Additionally, school is officially closed for vacation for the months of January and February; however, school is often closed for March and much of April, as mining families take advantage of the rainy season to mine more gold. Finally, the physically taxing work in the mines leaves the working children exhausted and unable to concentrate on their schoolwork.¹⁰

Furthermore, teachers in rural areas generally receive low salaries and little initial training. Consequently, they may have little motivation to create ways to reach their students who have unique needs. The community may not have an environment that stresses the importance of learning, and teaching materials may be out-dated or non-existent. There is no infrastructure that can support these necessary changes. Finally and perhaps most importantly, teachers in rural areas may not understand the need for these improvements, and the majority may not accept the necessity for such a change.¹¹

Funding Sources

While education is generally underinvested, there are general trends as to what types of programs receive funding. Primary education initiatives receive funding most often and in greatest magnitude because the outcomes are generally the greatest and most easily seen. Programs with secondary education as their target are the second most highly funded. Programs targeting education for women are seen as more cost-effective than those for men as results are more visible, and consequently these programs funded more often.¹²

Among large-scale educational development initiatives, various agencies fill specific roles in the funding process. Foundations such as Ford and Rockefeller generally initiate ideas, and the World Bank, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and United States Agency for International Development (USAID) offer the bulk of the necessary funding. Organizations such as the International Council for Educational Development (ICED) focus on long-term planning and research.¹³

Unsurprisingly, funding from institutions like USAID and the World Bank is as much political as it is altruistic. The mission statement of USAID indicates that strengthening democracy and fostering respect for human rights is a primary focus, while the mission statement of the World Bank outlines a desire to improve the standards of living – judged mainly by economic factors – in developing countries. A study by Glibert A. Valverde of State University of New York at Albany found that USAID awarded the most funding to countries which presented stronger democratic institutions, while the World Bank funded initiatives in countries that tended to be at least “partially democratic,” according to a rating scale designed by the researcher. While both institutions grant money to deserving applicants pursuing educational reform, that funding also follows the foreign policy agenda of the United States.¹⁴ Even further, a “donor self-interest” theory exists, whereby self-interest in the economic, political, or military development of a particular country is the driving force behind any state-supported development assistance instead of altruistic motivation.¹⁵

NGOs in Peru have long struggled for funding and for autonomy from the government. During Alberto Fujimori’s regime from 1990–2000, any international funding designated for NGOs needed to first pass through government inspection. Under this governmental control, NGOs focusing on teacher-training techniques had to enter a lottery-system in order to gain permission to continue with their mission. In this procedure, each NGO wanting to train teachers had to send a representative to Lima who then had to speak about the NGO‘s mission and accomplishments. After hearing the representatives, the government funded, to varying degrees, those NGOs it felt were best suited to carry out their plans. The chosen NGOs were also qualified to become members of the National Teacher Training Plan (PLANCAD), which required them to act within the mission statement of the Ministry’s efforts for intercultural education.¹⁶

Information about funding for the Cuzco-based teacher-training program was not included in their program report. One can assume that the NGOs involved in the study received funding from both the government and various international sources that support the NGOs. The funding for the project in Ananea stood at $1,500,000, as published on their website. The funding sources came from a variety of organizations, including USAID. This budget was for the four-year duration of the program.¹⁷

Past NGO Involvement in Education in Peru

Only in recent years have NGOs begun to proliferate in Peru. From 1980 until 1990, Peru suffered from high activity from the terrorist group Sendero Luminoso, the name given to the Communitist Party of Peru. Due to government suspicion of collaboration with the terrorist group, NGOs that focused on indigenous concerns were routinely discouraged from operating. When the civil war between Sendero Luminoso and the ruling democratic power came to an end in 2000 and this suspicion evaporated, NGOs began to flourish. In addition, international funds flooded into Peru for a variety of programs, especially those that worked to end socioeconomic disparities. Under the presidency of Alberto Fujimori, the government exerted strong control over these programs and forced NGOs to create programs in collaboration with those that the government supported. When Fujimori’s term ended and the country elected Alejandro Toledo in 2000, the pressure to conform to the government’s wishes disappeared and was replaced by a much-needed governmental emphasis on human rights, increased education for all, and ending the nation’s high level of poverty.¹⁸

As a result of past internal conflicts, government corruption, and mismanagement of resources, Peru suffers from a great disparity of wealth between its urban and rural areas. Forty percent of Peru’s population lives on less than $2.00 a day.¹⁹ In urban areas, 86% of six- to fourteen-year-olds attend school in Peru, along with 52% of fifteen- to nineteen-year-olds. However, in rural areas, only 79% of six- to fourteen-year-olds and 36% of fifteen- to nineteen-year-olds attend school.²⁰ A study conducted by Save the Children UK found that rural schoolchildren attend school an average of 250 hours per year whereas urban children attend school for about 500 to 600 hours per year. (The country’s requirement is 1,050 hours per year.) Consequently, these rural children finish, on average, 4.4 years of education whereas urban children complete an average of 8.7 years of schooling.²¹

Forty-eight percent of the Peruvian population lives in indigenous communities. Reports from the U.S. Library of Congress state that in1990, 28% of the population spoke an indigenous language.²² Students in these communities need to learn Spanish in order to achieve economic success but they also want to preserve their native tongue. Two departments within Peru’s Ministry of Education are in charge of what is referred to as ‘rural’ education, the National Department of Bilingual Intercultural Education (DINEBI) and the Division for the Development of Rural Education. DINEBI is primarily responsible for teacher-training initiatives as well as for curriculum development for the most common indigenous language of Aymara, five variations of Quechua, and at least nine Amazonian languages. According to DINEBI, the enforcement of the bilingual-focused curriculum cannot displace the national curriculum. Rather, the government puts bilingual-focused methodologies into place so that indigenous children can access the same national curriculum as non-indigenous children while at the same time learning Spanish. In recent history, Peruvian activists and intellectuals have begun to emphasize education reform and cultural revival programs in rural areas. With support from local NGOs and European-based international organizations, activists have begun promoting bilingual educational programs as an avenue to incorporate indigenous languages and cultural practices into national language and education policy.²³

However, these programs face formidable challenges. The 2000 State of Education in Latin America report prepared by UNICEF stated that the levels of professional teaching staff were low and that teachers were not highly valued within Latin American countries.²⁴ Without support from within, governments hoping to create a better-educated rural population will struggle against dissention and disinterest.

As I stated earlier, many rural communities in Peru are dependent upon the mining industry. Ananea is home to over 30,000 families with members who work in the gold mining industry. In these types of settings, bilingual education is no longer the focus of educational reform. Instead, advancement in education is considered a mandatory component of the escape from intense poverty and a lifetime of mind-numbing work. In Ananea, children begin working in the gold mines as early as age ten in order to supplement their parents’ incomes.²⁵ Ideally the children should not work in the mines at all, but a more realistic goal should be to simply keep the children in school. Of course removing children from the most dangerous aspects of gold mining is also critical, and so is providing them with a more culturally sensitive education. Improving the quality of education is vital to the success of these goals, and this is accomplished primarily through teacher training, with a secondary emphasis on assisting parents to get involved in their children’s education.²⁶

Main Challenges

Because of local and international challenges to the discrimination against indigenous peoples, international development programs designed to improve the livelihoods of indigenous populations at local levels have blossomed. Recently, NGOS have begun to occupy an increasingly important role as intermediaries between the state and marginalized groups in Latin America, partially due to a reduction of social welfare programs administered by the state. Increasing concern over indigenous rights by international funding sources has increased emphasis of NGOs on indigenous education.²⁷

Despite their good intentions, government employees often view NGOs with suspicion since the NGOs are often filling in the gaps between community needs and what the government is able to provide. Sometimes, NGOs lack experience in training teachers, which causes suspicion levels to grow. There is also the challenge of national pride. The Ministry of Education of Peru, for instance, might feel insulted that an NGO, especially an international NGO, believes itself better qualified to provide educational training than the national governing body of the country.²⁸ However, as illustrated in the Cuzco-based program, when the community complains about government actions and programs, the government often blames the community, the teachers, and the teacher–trainers instead of refocusing its efforts on involving the community into planning events.²⁹

Rural indigenous areas face still more challenges. Communities often believe that educational reform is important and that the unique concerns of the indigenous should be taken into consideration. However, these communities simultaneously believe that an NGO or a governmental initiative that is not specifically an indigenous organization should not be in charge of the change.³⁰ The teaching staff in rural communities also exerts pressure on the community and its willingness to accept proposed change. Teachers are often reluctant to change teaching habits and instead prefer to use commonly accepted teaching strategies that have been used consistently for years.

Differences between the Ananea and Cuzco Teacher-Training Programs

An unidentified Peruvian NGO that is largely governed by the Peruvian Ministry of Education sponsors the bilingual education initiative outside of Cuzco. In the interest of privacy, the researcher changed both the names of the NGOs and its employees. The second program is orchestrated by the United States-based NGO World Learning, which works closely with the Peruvian NGO Instituto de Fomento de una Educación de Calidad (EDUCA). This program focuses on improving the education available to rural children by providing training opportunities to the teachers in the highlands community of Ananea.

Bilingual Education Project

The rural communities outside of Cuzco were established before the arrival of the Spanish in the 1500s. Quechua, a language descended from the Incas, is the native language used for daily communication, while Spanish and English are becoming increasingly necessary due to the high number of tourists descending upon the region each year. Agriculture and textiles are main sources of income for these poor, small communities.

The mission of the rural Cuzco teacher-training initiative studied in this paper is to train teachers to present a bilingual version of the national curriculum to the indigenous communities in which they work. The government believes that teaching the indigenous children Spanish will provide increased opportunities within the main, Spanish-speaking sector of the Peruvian economy. However, the main subjects are taught in Quechua. Implementation of the bilingual education curriculum is achieved by teaching the required curriculum in the indigenous language while incorporating Spanish into the lessons occasionally. In this way, according to the government, the culture of the indigenous community is preserved, and at the same time, the absence of a strong command of the language of the nation’s economy does not place the children of rural, indigenous communities at a future disadvantage.³¹

In Cuzco and its surrounding communities, NGOs implement the new curriculum in government-selected schools across the area. NGO employees arrive at the schools, often with little or no notice, and interrupt classes in order to announce that a new curriculum is going to replace the old curriculum. NGOs conduct meetings with community members only when the organization perceives that community discontent with the initiative is reaching critical levels. The NGO presents the curriculum changes and offers corresponding teacher training sessions, yet the NGO uses its connection with the government to enforce the change and to reign in any dissenting members of the community. According to one report, a government employee was heard instructing teachers that curriculum change and teacher-training efforts were to be treated as a mandate from the government and not from the NGO. According the employee, the NGO should simply be treated as an “executive agency” for the federal government. In fact, NGO employees said to the researcher, “it helps[members of the community] listen if they think it is mandatory.” While government agencies are separate organizations from the NGOs, which are often funded by international donors, the separation between the two is not always clearly defined, especially within this Cuzco-based particular program.³²

Although the NGO assisted in implementing the program, the government was solely responsible for its design. Teachers were present for the trainings, but neither the NGO nor the government solicited their opinions, input, or perspectives. This program also did not appear to include the help or involvement from the parents and community members.

In addition to the innate challenges that education in rural areas presents, the researchers of the Cuzco-based program also noted unique challenges to the bilingual curriculum initiative. Literacy rates were at such low levels that many of the children could not access the new curriculum. A lack of resources made a new curriculum difficult to put into place. An inability by parents to understand the push behind the new curriculum also created difficulties for the NGOs. Teacher frustration and unwillingness to enforce the changes also affected the implementation of the new curriculum. Finally, the largest barrier to success of the bilingual project was the disconnect between what the indigenous parents thought of the push and what those in charge believed to be important.³³

World Learning Project

Ananea, the target area for the World Learning project, is home to one of the largest populations of child miners in Peru, a population of interest for the NGO. It is estimated that there are 26,264 children working in gold mining in the Ananea area of Puno where several mining communities are located. More than 5,000 children live in this area, while reportedly only around 1,000 attend school. Some of the communities serviced by this program are located at an altitude of 5,400 meters (17,550 feet), which presents challenges of limited services and a difficult work environment.³⁴

The mission of the World Learning educational reform initiative was to create a detailed, results-based teacher-training program where the teachers gained valuable experience while gaining opportunities for advancement. The training program focused on school-based development projects and pedagogical development. According to reports, participation in the teacher-training project had been increasing due to demand from areas outside of Ananea. The highlight of the project was a week-long training institute that allowed teachers from all over the province to work together in planning new strategies to reach their children. In order to encourage professional development, World Learning and EDUCA hold contests for the teachers where the most creative, effective teaching strategies were rewarded. The joint effort also helped the teachers to form work groups where ideas and methods could be exchanged in a supportive environment. Finally, two teachers were sent to Lima each year in order to receive training from the Ministry of Education. Upon their return, they served as “educational innovative promoters.”

World Learning partnered with EDUCA in order to create a program that was meaningful to the target community. Stated in the goals on EDUCA‘s website are what the organization considers its most important projects. They frequently mention the goal of improving the strategies used by teachers in poverty-stricken areas across Peru. EDUCA makes it a point to list that the educational basics are to receive the most focus and that all members of the educational community are to be involved. Teachers are the second in the list of the principal actors of this educational reform, listed only after the students themselves. EDUCA lists the Ministry of Education a partner in these initiatives rather than a main player.³⁵

Although many aspects of the teacher training program have been successful, World Learning also identified areas in which work still needs to be done. The goal of creating a network of schools within nearby communities has not been successful. The organization has struggled to create a sense of cohesion between different communities, possibly due to rivalry between communities. Instead, any improvements made by schools are achieved in isolation.

Program Outcomes and Community Reactions

Without community participation and acceptance, any initiative, whether government or NGO sponsored, will fail. The community must feel included in the decision-making and planning stages as well as in the implementation of the initiative. The future effects of any program must also be relevant to the community’s way of life. Without these important components, a program, regardless of promise or sponsoring-institution enthusiasm, will be met with little or no success.

Bilingual Education Program

Not surprisingly, community members in Cuzco vehemently objected to the mandates presented to them by NGO employees. While they may have appreciated efforts to better qualify teachers, they disliked the focus of the improvements. At one community meeting, a parent commented, “You want us to say it is good that you teach our children in Quechua, but if that is so good for our children, why don’t you teach your own children in Quechua too?”³⁶ Another parent noted that with learning Quechua, their children would remain poor, yet if the children were taught Spanish, English, or French, the children would have a chance to get ahead. The beliefs of the community are not linked to the focus of the initiative, thus creating animosity towards the program’s purpose and those individuals enforcing its regulations.

Neither the government nor the NGOs involved the community in the planning stages of the bilingual education initiative. While the parents would most likely agree that maintaining the indigenous language is important, they held very clear ideas as to what they would have liked the education of their children to contain. Because of this disconnect between the program-sponsored goals and the communities’ desires, the teacher-training programs will never be completely successful. The teachers and lower-level NGO employees admitted that without community support and buy-in, the NGO‘s initiatives and efforts would be in vain. The NGO was happy with the front it displayed, but it is unlikely that success that will come out of the program since the focus is so far removed from what the community is seeking. Further, once the NGO ceases to be involved in the maintenance of the new bilingual curriculum and the teacher-training opportunities offered to the community, the community will cease to adopt any of its changes.

This program’s success was severely limited by the unclear delineation between the government’s initiatives and goals and the NGOs’ missions for involvement in the indigenous communities. Communities were unable to trust the NGO employees because of their obvious alliance with the government. Their trust disintegrated further when government officials were contacted or brought in whenever community members voiced discontent.

One of the most visible outcomes of the bilingual education initiative, outside of teacher frustration, was the organization of the indigenous parents against the bilingual push. The community, after being forced to swallow the new curriculum changes, began to question the idea that the government and the Ministry of Education knew how to best educate their children. Another result of the discontent with the government initiative was the creation of separate schools, some run by NGOs not involved in the bilingual education movement, that operate independently of government-influenced institutions. In these schools, parents felt that they were a stronger and more influential player in the development of the curriculum and the school’s focus rather than a bystander simply pushed along by government-developed and mandated programs.³⁷

World Learning Project

In the town of Ananea, World Learning’s partner EDUCA created a teacher resource center where teachers were encouraged to visit and experiment with the available resources. The center also served as a training center and an available space for teachers to gather and brainstorm ways to better reach their students. Materials such as games, textbooks, and computers were available to the teachers through grant monies. The center, while accomplishing its goal to serve as a teacher-centered gathering place, has now begun to attract children and their parents, who seek out the space for family activities. A parent has even begun literacy activities for families at night. In addition, due to the reported success of the education center, other neighboring communities have requested their own center, wanting access to the available resources.³⁸

Parents have also been encouraged to meet on their own and create ideas for projects they would like to see exist at the center. Instead of a top-down mandate for change, the initiatives are community-based, allowing the members to decide what is important to them.³⁹

The above reports came from the program itself and present a biased picture of the program and its initiatives. However, from a mission-based standpoint, the World Learning program offers a much more community-based approach to educational reform than the government-sponsored bilingual education training program. The needs of the community were solicited and taken into account during the creation of the teacher training programs. The resource center was designed using teacher-generated suggestions about necessary services and resources, and parents were even allowed opportunities to participate and be in charge of activities. The NGO appears to be truly training the teachers and community in better strategies to reach their community’s children, a skill that has the potential to continue once the NGO is no longer active.

Conclusion

While some NGO-lead initiatives in Peru are constructed in a community-minded manner, other programs seem to suffer from government over-involvement. Government funding may be necessary for such programs, but it is vital that a clear delineation between the responsibilities and mission statements between NGOs and the government exist. The NGOs are, theoretically, filling a gap that the government has yet been unable to fill and representing a community that typically is swept under the rug. If the two entities share budgets, mission statements, and even employees, most initiatives will not be successful success as the community will fail to see where one entity stops and the other begins.

Teacher-training initiatives may be successful from the government’s point of view if a new curriculum is put into place, regardless of increased teacher competency and ability to effectively work with the new changes. However, the main goal behind a teacher-training program begs to be examined, and I believe that the focus of the teacher-training efforts is a main determinant of success. Are the teachers receiving training that addresses community-specific needs? Is the community involved in the efforts? Does the community support the cause? When compared to the World Learning model, the bilingual educational initiative appears to fail miserably at its objective. Clearly, community involvement and buy-in is a mandatory aspect of any initiative, and even more so in the case of teacher-training programs. Imposing a new curriculum and new strategies upon a traditional rural community will fail unless citizens are consulted and the new ideas coincide with already established ways of thinking.

¹ UNESCO, Reason for Hope: The Support of NGOS to Education for All. Dakar, Senegal (2000).

² Juana R. Kuramoto, Artisanal and Informal Mining in Peru. International Institute for Environment and Development (September 2001). Accessed at http://www.iied.org/mmsd/mmsd_pdfs/asm_peru_eng.pdf

³ Maria Elena Garcia, “The Challenges of Representation: NGOs, Education, and the State in Highland Peru,“45–70. In Margaret Sutton and Robert F. Arnove, Civil Society or Shadow State? State/NGO Relations in Education (Information Age Publishing, 2004).

⁴ Gilbert A. Valverde, “Democracy, Human Rights, and Development Assistance for Education: The USAID and World Bank in Latin America and the Caribbean,” Economic Development and Cultural Change 47, no. 2 (January 1999): 401–19.

⁵ Gary Theisen, “The New ABCs of Comparative and International Education,” Comparative Education Review 41, no. 4 (1997): 397–412.

⁶ Ibid.

⁷ Maria-Ines Arratia, “Daring to Change: The Potential of Intercultural Education in Aymara Communities in Chile,” Anthropology & Education Quarterly 28, no. 2 (1997): 229–50.

⁸ Jayne Howell,“This Job is Harder than It Looks: Rural Oaxacan Women Explain Why They Became Teachers,” Anthopology & Education Quarterly 28, no. 2 (1997): 251–79

⁹ World Learning for International Development, “Peru- EduFuturo: Educating Artisanal Mining Children for a Dignified Future.” Accessed at http://www.worldlearning.org/wlid/news/2005/peru_mining_story.html

¹⁰ Ernesto Garcia, Naoko Kamioka and Mason Ingram, Including Children as Key Stakeholders in Child Labor Prevention: The EduFuturo Experience (September 2006). Accessed at http://www.worldlearning.org/wlid/docs/edufuturo_monograph_final.pdf

¹¹ U.S. Department of Labor, “Combating Child Labor Through Education in Bolivia and Peru,” Federal Register 67, no. 100 (May 23, 2002). Accessed at http://www.dol.gov/ilab/grants/sga0204/FRNSGA0204.htm

¹² George Psacharopoulos, “Returns to Education: A Further International Update and Implications,” The Journal of Human Resources 20, no. 4 (1985): 583–604.

¹³ Robert F Arnove, “Comparative Education and World-Systems Analysis,” Comparative Education Review 24, no. 1 (1980): 48–62.

¹⁴ Gilbert A. Valverde, “Democracy, Human Rights, and Development Assistance for Education,” 402.

¹⁵ Ibid.

¹⁶ Garcia, “The Challenges of Representation.”

¹⁷ World Learning for International Development, “Education Project – EduFuturo: Educating Artisanal Mining Children for a Dignified Future.” Accessed at http://www.worldlearning.org/wlid/education/projects_edufuturo.html

¹⁸ Garcia, “The Challenges of Representation.”

¹⁹ Corinne Barnes, “Population – LATAM: Plight of Poor Children Under Scrutiny,” Inter Press Service (October 13, 2000).

²⁰ Abraham Lama, “Education-Peru: School Drop-out Rate High Among Rural Girls,” Inter Press Service (February 19, 2001).

²¹ Javier Escobal et al., Young Lives Preliminary Country Report: Peru (September 2003). Accessed at www.younglives.org.uk/pdf/perupreliminaryreport.pdf

²² Rex A. Hudson, ed, Peru: A Country Study (Washington, D.C.: GPO for the Library of Congress, 1992). Accessed at http://countrystudies.us/peru/

²³ Thiesen, “The New ABCs of Comparative and International Education.”

²⁴ Corinne Barnes, “Plight of Poor Children Under Scrutiny.”

²⁵ World Learning for International Development, “Peru- EduFuturo.”

²⁶ World Learning for International Development, “Education Project.”

²⁷ Garcia, “The Challenges of Representation.”

²⁸ Theisen, “The New ABCs of Comparative and International Education,” 398–409.

²⁹ Garcia, “The Challenges of Representation.”

³⁰ Ibid.

³¹ Ibid

³² Ibid.

³³ Ibid.

³⁴ U.S. Department of Labor, “Combating Child Labor Through Education in Bolivia and Peru.”

³⁵ EDUCA website. Accessed at http://www.educa.org.pe/

³⁶ Garcia, “The Challenges of Representation.”

³⁷ Ibid.

³⁸ World Learning for International Development, “Education Project.”

³⁹ Ibid.

About the Author

Leya Speasmaker is a 2008 Master’s Candidate at both the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs and the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.

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