ABSTRACT
In Colombia, a new network has been established to advance reading and writing in higher education. Previously, as in other Central and South American countries, teaching reading and writing has for years been associated with linguistic and philological erudition in the mother tongue. This has left the responsibility to work on these skills to a single subject in the curriculum: Spanish or Castilian, as the subject has been defined since the days of conquest and colonization. In this subject, reading and writing exist alongside phonetics, semantics, morphology, syntax, orthography, etc. Nor has the rise of literary studies alongside language studies helped reading and writing gain in significance in primary or secondary schooling. Later, we shall see how this same way of conceiving reading and writing within the realm of language is brought into the university, largely as a remedial subject. However, reading and writing did not always appear to be matters associated with the process of acquisition and development of the language. In many cases, we find them linked with different daily and cultural activities of the peoples (let us remember the role of scribes and the role of reading and writing for the commercial activities) (Viñao, 2002). Educational practices with origins in medieval Europe and imported into Spanish colonies in the Americas such as cartillas (a type of grammar drill) continue to be fundamental classroom tools. Spelling was also imposed, in search of good diction. Reading aimed to bring excellence in reciting (at the end of the nineteenth century, reciting was still very common in schools). Viñao says that in 1893, there were eight types of textbooks for reading: the spelling books or cartillas, short stories, libros
de cosas (the “books of things,” which are books with information or lessons on diverse topics), biographies, miscellaneous books, books in verse, manuscripts, and treatises related to one or more school subjectstoday’s textbooks. Moralizing and religious topics were interspersed in the lessons that were developed in such reading. Writing, for its part, was intended to perfect handwriting and improve the orthography. Literacy education in general, was subjected to a process of normalization, concentrating on good speech, vocalization, intonation, and orthography. At the beginning of the twentieth century, with increased class sizes (to this day, 50 or 60 children per class is typical), silent reading became preferred to facilitate classroom order and study practices. Tests which valued comprehension and speed took a central role in defining educational goals. Reading practices were influenced by physiological and social hygiene, emphasizing such concerns as posture and good manners in using notebooks. As reading took priority over writing, writing activities were limited. In primary and secondary schools, the most common acts of writing were dictations and compositions, along with taking notes of the lecture and written exams, which replaced oral examination, again due to the increase in class sizes. This inheritance has influenced social attitudes toward literacy instruction, has limited the educational opportunities for literacy instruction to a single subject, and has defined a primarily grammatical approach to writing education. Various linguistic approaches have been used to achieve grammatical goals, including structural grammars, generativetransformational grammars, and functional grammars. In the 1990s, a communicative semantic focus expanded linguistic approaches beyond grammar, and gradually other disciplines such as philosophy and logic were seen as relevant to reading and writing. Psychopedagogy also turned our attention to the practices of teaching and learning reading and writing, the evolutionary processes of the acquisition of the code and the cognitive modifications involved (Ferreiro, 1999). Currently, discourse analysis of several varieties has given us new tools to examine pedagogical and learning processes. While these developments have changed the thinking of many educators, they have also generated some resistance among those who seem reluctant to change. Whatever position teachers may hold, these controversies have brought attention and discussion to reading and writing and their pedagogic implications. Political guidelines and regulations, even while being implemented have also generated energetic inquiry suggesting that they have been adopted without much reflection (Bustamante, 2002), and in some cases are simply translations of foreign laws, such as the LOGSE from Spain, accommodated to the national context. In particular Law 115 (1994) redefined many of the paths through which the country’s education was being directed, including improving reading and writing at each educational level. The law introduced into the professional educational discussion terms such as PEI (Proyecto Educativo Institucional-Institutional Educational Project),
academic calendar, interdisciplinarity, remedial courses, promotion, process, achievement, achievement indicator, performance, skills, guidelines, competency, and standard. Initially the Law generated all sorts of reactions among primary and secondary educators. Those in higher education at first ignored it because they believed that the Law did not invade their professional space. However, symposiums, conferences, discussions, and orientation workshops for teachers gradually permeated higher education, and the consequences became evident of the strong work that was promoted at other levels of education. When our secondary school students entered university, they were faced with a system of evaluation and promotion considerably different from what they had known in high school. In universities, terms like remedial courses and evaluation of achievement were not used. This forced higher education to participate more in the conversation and accommodate so that, 14 years later, the differences are not so drastic. The Colombian Institute for Promotion of Higher Education (Instituto Colombiano para el Fomento de la Educación Superior, ICFES), in charge of designing and administering the state exam for university admission, emphasized reading and writing in the examination and analysis of results in the national exams and also in the international exams such as the TIMS and the PISA. Different researchers, the majority from public universities, contributed to this turnaround with the publication of materials (Jurado & Bustamante, 1995) and the preparation of the educators for the new challenges that faced them in the development of these abilities. The Evaluation of Basic Competences in Language, Mathematics, and Sciences (Evaluación de Competencias Básica en Lenguaje, Matemática y Ciencias) was introduced (from 1988 to 1999), and a document (Bogoya, 2000) that analyzed the published data on the pilot exams was circulated in each Colombian high school in order for each institution to organize their plans of restructuring. Formerly, the Pruebas Saber (Knowledge Exam) was used at different levels, with the official slogan of “Evaluate to Improve.” During these years, the Colombian Network for Transformation of Educators’ Formation in Language (Red Colombiana para la Transformación de la Páctica Docente en Lenguaje) was also created. All of these processes of change, with their strengths and shortcomings, also mobilized reflections in universities and pedagogic institutions where the teachers are trained. These approaches had to be redefined and, although a decade is short for generating definitive changes, a different focus for thinking about these processes does exist in Colombia due to this.
