The word chispas is Spanish for sparks and that’s just what flew on Friday when we reported that many of the new free Spanish textbooks by the same name have Belize drawn as a part of Mexico. It’s caused outrage among some teachers who saw the Spanish textbooks in workshops for the first time last week. But today Education Minister Francis Fonseca said it’s just a hiccup.
Hon. Francis Fonseca, Minister of Education
“As we’ve said from the very beginning Jules, the implementation of the free textbook program will not be without its hiccups and I think this is one of them. Obviously the Spanish book is a Spanish book. It is not a geography book and there are errors in that book and people have pointed to that one; the glaring error of the map with Mexico. But that is exactly what we are trying to correct.
We will be able to sit down with the publishers who now have a commercial interest but they have a vested interest in Belize because we have a long term relationship that we have with them. So every year now we will sit down with them and correct those errors and make the books more relevant to the needs of our Belizean children.
Many of the books are being used already in Belize. I think four out of five of them are being used by many schools in our country. So even with the problems that have been demonstrated, those problems exist already. They are using the books as they are now, so our objective is to make sure we correct those problems.”
Jules Vasquez,
How would you explain it as a teacher, imagine you are a teacher and when you reach that page in the book where your country, where the child’s country is not in there?
Hon. Francis Fonseca,
“I think teachers will explain it as they do now. As I said, they use the book now with the error in it. We are going to make sure through our program that the error is corrected but they are other books of course, geography books, the atlas of Belize, that all our kids use in primary school and those books show very clearly where Belize is on the map.”
Jules Vasquez,
Isn’t it a sting for our national pride?
Hon. Francis Fonseca,
“I mean, I don’t think it is a sting for our national pride. We know where Belize is. We live here in Belize, we know where Belize is, we know who we are.”
In an official release late this evening, the Ministry of Education says that, “the country of Belize is not included in some of the illustrations that appear in the series chispas as these illustrations relate to a specific cluster of “Spanish-speaking” countries.” We are told that there are other errors and omissions in other textbooks but, as Fonseca said, they are confident that they can have it revised for next year.
