Unheard words – noiselessness words – translated words: voices and silences of the bolivian children in Buenos Aires schools

Abstract

In this work we present some reflections on the way that children coming from Bolivia transit schooling in formal educational institutions of Buenos Aires Argentina. Given certain situations recollected in a primary school, we advance towards the following issues: the ethnic and national identities tensions that these children live in learning contexts, the questioning that these students pose to educational humanistic discourses when they contrast it with there real life conditions, the meanings of their silences and their noiselessness. We pay attention to teachers representations of ways of speaking and knowledge in inter-cultural educational contexts, to concentrate in the multiple meanings of words, silences and knowledge that these children and adults unfold in both situations, everyday interactions and formal learning. We concentrate on certain institutional commands and suppositions of the hegemonic educational paradigm, related to certain communicative styles, imposed as ordinary, and the relation of these to other styles associated to diverse groups that attend to schools in Buenos Aires. The work is based on the analysis of documents and ethnographic records done in a school of the south zone of the city of Buenos Aires during the years of 2005, 2006 and 2007.