Formal education in southern Belize

Southern Belize is characterized by ethnic heterogeneity and diverse cultural cleavages. The Kekchi-speaking and Mopan-speaking Mayan Indians have begun to emerge from their geographic and cultural isolation in the last few decades. The national educational system which is dominated by persons of different cultural backgrounds than the Indians, is seen by its administrators as a means of aiding the integration of the Indian population into the wider Belizean society. This study combines the ethnographic methods of anthropology with some of the more macrolevel approaches found in the sociology of education to present a clearer picture of the educational processes as they occur in concrete form in southern Belize.