メキシコ先住民小学生の進学希望とスペイン語学習理由

――国民統合政策の到達点への接近――

抄録

This study, using data from field surveys conducted by the author at primary schools in a highland indigenous people’s (Mixe) zone in Oaxaca, Mexico, in 1991 and 1998, analyzes the level of pupils’ inclination toward the national education system. By doing so, it aims to grasp how well the government’s national integration policy has been achieved. First, the educational aspirations of the children are analyzed. As a whole, they are found to be very high: the majority wished to complete at least high school. Moreover, this aspiration level is found to be increasing rapidly. Differences are found within and between localities, reflecting the socioeconomic statuses of localities and families. Second, pupils’ rationales for learning Spanish are analyzed. A hypothesis that the degree of “Spanish learning for school life” is an inversed-U-shape function of the socioeconomic level is proposed and tested. This hypothesis is supported: in the stage where children’s Spanish ability is low, the increasing expectations among parents for children’s school achievement is reflected in an increased desire to learn Spanish for school life. However, as children attain more advanced Spanish ability, the degree of “Spanish learning for school life” falls. Children in the second stage seem to have relative freedom from the confinement of the significance of Spanish for school life. The finding that the hypothesis is correct means that the subject pupils in this study were, as a whole, estimated to be entering the second stage.

The analyses show that the children had high aspirations counting the national educational system for their future. The objective of the government to integrate indigenous peoples into the nation, which the government has pursued since the 1910 Revolution, seems to be now being achieved. However, as education has spread among the indigenous peoples, there has been a strengthening of indigenous peoples’ movements that criticize the government’s integration policies and claim autonomy. Arguments regarding bilingual and bicultural education, intercultural education, and community-based education, which are oriented by the indigenous people’s world view, are also creating the need for a new direction for national integration. They focus on the cultural aspects. However, other aspects such as those dealt with by this paper, as well as the challenge of low academic ability in indigenous peoples’ areas, need to be given increased attention.