News
29 years defending our ethno-educational essence
University - Tuesday, March 14, 2023
29 years defending our ethno-educational essence
The teacher José Antonio Caicedo Ortiz makes an important reflection on the 29 years of the Degree in Ethnoeducation and his contribution to the construction of an education relevant to cultural, linguistic diversity and intercultural practice in the country and the region.
The teaching team of the Department of Intercultural Studies and the Coordination of the Degree in Ethnoeducation of the Faculty of Human and Social Sciences of the University of Cauca celebrated on March 10, 2023 the 29 years of life and processes of professional training of teachers in contexts of university ethnoeducation.
The academic program has been dedicated to promoting a university ethno-education aimed at basic education, particularly in educational institutions and communities in the rural sector and currently also with educational communities in the urban sector. Graduates and students have been a fundamental part in the significant construction of a relevant education with cultural, linguistic and intercultural diversity in the country and the region.
“Training ethnoeducators and ethnoeducators at the University of Cauca is one of the most noble tasks, but also the most challenging in the course of my academic career. Above all, because I learned that university ethno-education inherited part of the struggles of ethnic groups, their battles in the streets, in marches, assemblies, and other public settings. A legitimate claim for an education as a political act of identity, paraphrasing Paulo Freire”, stated José Antonio Caicedo Ortiz, professor of the Degree in Ethnoeducation.
In this regard, the Teacher raises the need to bring the lessons of these ethnic struggles to the curricular field. “It is not only a claim against all epistemic racism, but also an act of curricular justice in an educational system that has denied our dignity for two centuries, making us visible in stories of inferiorization and self-contempt as destiny, as Eduardo Galeano says when he refers to “the nobodies” of history”.
During these long years as a professor of this Degree in Ethnoeducation, they taught me to face this intellectual battle and fight for the recognition of our thinking and our history in the curriculum. With university ethnoeducation, I have walked the pedagogies of differences with the dignity that it deserves, without renouncing the academic commitment that implies putting knowledge and unlearned knowledge at the service of this cause.
In a little more than a decade and a half, the Bachelor's degree has taught me that curricular justice is a political and intellectual commitment, whose pedagogical praxis is not measured only in quality indicators, in sufficiency tests, or in official standards, but in the own replicas that the graduates take to the classroom, to the territories, to the organizations, in their own frustrations and our own shortcomings.
As the poet Jorge Artel would say, we are a conscience without hate or fear. “For all that has been said, we have a lot of collective pride to celebrate these 29 years without denying our essence. Gratitude to my colleagues from the Ethnoeducation team”, concludes the teacher José Antonio Caicedo Ortiz.