MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

College-like education program launched for teachers of Guarani

The college-degree-like studies are validated by the National Institute of Teacher Training of Argentina

Education authorities in the Argentine province of Corrientes Wednesday launched a variety of Guarani programs whereby students can get various college-type degrees for the teaching of the ancestral language.

The program is aimed exclusively at people already teaching Guarani at a kindergarten, primary, and secondary school level. The course is to take four years to complete, it was also announced.

Professor Claudia Alejandra Cabrera also explained that the new course will address general education matters, specific training, and practice. Cabrera added that candidates willing to teach Guarani in the province will be required to sign up at a registry to be opened in August.

“We are always working towards revaluing our language, our history, and our heritage, which sociologically speaking serves to heal our past, because many times even those who spoke Guarani were considered ignorant, and yet it is part of our cultural brew. The region of America marks a legacy of the Guarani language, there are still many speakers,” Cabrera explained.

Cabrera also explained that the studies are also to be validated by the National Institute of Teacher Training of Argentina.

Guarani is spoken by around 8 million people in Latin America and is one of the two official languages of the province of Corrientes since 2004, where Provincial Law 5598 also provided for the creation of agencies to recover and preserve it. Signs in Corrientes are written both in Spanish and in Guaraní. There are not very many bilingual places in Argentina.