La gestión del currículo intercultural en Bolivia : propuesta crítica, intracultural y descolonizadora

The research carried out in Bolivia on Intercultural curriculum management has shown that the theme of cultural diversity has been managed in different ways, according to the dominant political ideology at each stage of history. In Bolivia, the process of colonization and the aspirations to consolidate a civilized, homogeneous and progressive Nation State influenced in a significant way the deterioration of the culture of indigenous peoples. However, in recent times, a proposal of interculturality has been built from within the indigenous peoples. That proposal became later an educational policy, aimed at reversing situations of exclusion, injustice and social discrimination. First through Bilingual intercultural education, and then based on a more radical educational model that promotes Intracultural, intercultural and plurilingual education in the context of decolonization, it states the recognition of the knowledge and wisdom of indigenous peoples with the same scientific value as western scientific knowledge. In that second and more radical model the epistemological question has become the centre of attention and the most fundamental subject of the curriculum discussion, because questioning the universal and absolute nature of scientific knowledge. Hence a core curriculum and a regionalized curriculum are in force, recognizing both types of knowledge as scientific. The theoretical foundations that support the approach are related to epistemological pluralism, critical interculturality and decolonization of education. On the other hand, it has also been possible to notice, from critical theories of education coming mainly from the Sociology of education and the Sociology of curriculum, curricular approaches that unveil the ideological issues embedded in the curricular contents of education in general. Unfortunately, advances in curriculum concretization at the classroom level still present problems and progress very slowly, because among the main actors practicing the model, some teachers are not convinced of the necessity and benefits of this type of education, so they choose to reject it, causing thus a half-breakthrough of the new educational model. Among them we found especially the leaders of the urban magisterium, who accuse the new law of beeing anti-scientific and retrograde.