Parallel education

Communities in Oaxaca are establishing their educational institutions at all levels. One of the goals is to teach children and youth about community life to preserve the system as well as indigenous culture. At the same time, they offer solutions to lower education rates in the state of Oaxaca.

The community school in Lachatao does not have its building yet, but it has already attracted the majority of children in the village. When we visited it, the municipal president Regina Alavéz Hernández said that only eight children were still attending the public school run by the government.

The decision to establish their school was taken by the parents themselves. "If our kids leave the village to study somewhere else, who will be fighting here when it comes to it? Our future is our children and youth, so we decided it is better to start now, or it will be too late," Juan Santiago, one of the parents, comments on the reasons why the school started. Parents from the village felt that the public school was not teaching kids to value their culture and traditions. It was also not teaching them the skills necessary for life in the community.

"Young people were leaving, and they forgot about their village," Regina Alavéz Hernández states. "The elderly and people with knowledge are teaching children everything they know so that one day when they leave the community, they do not forget about life here."

The school has been working for five years, and it has students of primary and secondary education, including some high school students. The four teachers, two of them originally from Lachatao and the other two from other parts of Mexico work at the school for small pocket money; accommodation and food are provided by parents. Parents also participate in the learning process.

"We do not call it teaching but the transmission of knowledge. We go to the field with kids. There are things that you cannot learn inside; you have to go out, walk, run, feel," Santiago says.

While the school follows a national curriculum, it also offers extra-curricular activities, such as studying the use of different herbs, taking care of the fields or learning the Zapotec language. "If we forget our language, we lose our Zapotec identity. In Lachatao, only the elderly speak Zapotec these days," the municipal president says. Currently, she is also in charge of cooking in the community restaurant. Parents take turns in the ecotourism community company and use some of the profit for the school.

At the moment, the community school does not have national certification. Alavéz Hernández explains that if they entered the system, they would have to follow its rules. So, for now, they teach their children, but their education might not be officially recognized. Despite this, Lachatao is not the only community that is running its community school.

Communality at university

According to the World Bank, Oaxaca has one of the lowest offers of higher education institutions in Mexico. The report from 2013 states that only 20 out of 100 children who entered primary education made it to university. Families lacking resources is amongst the most common reasons why young people do not study further.

On the other hand, those who leave the village to search for higher education tend to stay in the cities. "Young people leave the village to study outside, but universities prepare them for the market, not for the community. If they get a degree, it is difficult for them to come back and start community service from the lowest position as a policeman. And thus, they often decide to live outside," Jaime Martínez Luna discloses.

The Zapotec intellectuals together with other intellectuals from other indigenous groups and researchers active in Oaxaca have been are working for years on establishing the Communal Autonomous University that could be a solution to both challenges.

With the university planning to havinge fifteeneight bases across the state, students willwould not have to travel outside, which willould make their studies cheaper. At the same time, the communal university is meant as a multilingual institution that would draws from communality in its organisation for its curriculum as well as investigation activities. It aimswould to help preserve the way of life of the native population. "Particularly in Oaxaca, a communal university is more than necessary. It means acknowledging the capacity of the people to create their future," Luna says.

The communal university wants toill be independent from the state in terms of establishing its programs and rules as well as administrative processes. The state should still support it financially. Martínez Luna explains, however, that the costs of such university will be significantly lower than other universities, because of the communal way of functioning. "We are asking 5 per cent of the resources of what public universities usually use. It will be based on collective work. We are not thinking within the logic of exploitation but within the logic of collaboration of all of us."

Collective work will not only be a way to sustain the university - just like communities sustain themselves. It will also be a way to learn. "We will not teach through books, but through actions, through work, service." The university also wants to transform the concept of a professor as the founders see the position of a professor as a reproduction of power.

"The university will be everywhere in Oaxaca. Knowledge is not enclosed, it is open, and everybody participates. But, like everything, it is also a process to achieve this," Martínez Luna adds.

The debates are already ongoing with representatives of the government. The project of the university was firstalready presented to the Local Congress, and the institution started operating this September. Jaime Martínez Luna was named the first rector of the university. should start offering education at all levels this year.

Learning by example

With particular education institutions or without them, in communality knowledge is transferred daily among community members. "By example is the best way to learn," Baltazar Hernández Baustista says about the system of cargos.

Collective work, a system of cargos and participation at the assemblies - all these pillars of communality are an opportunity for community members to learn. When talking to people who have been through a few cargos and who come to the assemblies regularly, they all sound like experts in particular issues that have been discussed within the community. They learn by doing.

At the same time, in Oaxaca, indigenous communities still value the knowledge of their elderly. Juan Santiago, for example, calls all the elderly of the village abuelos y abuelas - grandparents. The respect for the elderly allows Oaxacans to learn from them.