This article explores the possibility of anthropology as Bildung, or self-cultivation. As an educational mode, Bildung is focused on the moral education of students, encouraging them to broaden themselves in their encounters with others. I will discuss this process in terms of a lesson I learned from the highland Maya about being a good neighbor…

This study examines how traditional ecological knowledge--TEK--can be identified and utilized to create culturally responsive science learning opportunities for Maya girls from a community in the Guatemalan highlands. Maya girls are situated in a complex socio-historical and political context rooted in racism and sexism. This study contextualizes…

Certain dates stand out in history--October 12, 1492; July 4, 1776; and May 8, 1945, to name a few. Will December 21, 2012, become such a date? The popular media have seized on 12/21/12 to make apocalyptical prognostications, some venturing so far as to predict the end of the world. Scholars reject such predictions. But major archeological finds…

This dissertation is a grammatical description of several features of the morphology and phonology of the Mocho' language. Mocho' (Motozintleco) is a moribund Mayan language spoken in the Chiapas region of Mexico near the border of Guatemala. This dissertation, based on data collected during several field trips and supplemented with unpublished…

The purpose of this analysis was to study the linguistic features of Kaqchikel, a Mayan language currently spoken in Guatemala and increasingly in the United States, in an effort to better prepare teachers of English as a second language (ESL) or English as a foreign language (EFL) to address the distinct needs of a frequently neglected and…

This study used oral survey methods to examine first the diversity of Meso-American languages and second the potential language maintenance or loss of these languages among Meso-American language speakers in Wiregrass country (North Florida-South Georgia). Language shift, the process of gradually changing from one first language to another first…

Indigenous education in Guatemala is currently undergoing a massive overhaul in the depth and breadth of its reach in Maya areas. Although much can be said about the re-evaluation and incorporation of indigenous culture, language and worldview into the schools' curricula, it is still failing to reach the country's adult population. As a result of…

Theories of language acquisition have highlighted the importance of adult speakers as active participants in children's language learning. However, in many communities children are reported to be rarely directly engaged by their caregivers. This raises the possibility that children in these communities learn language from observing 3 rd party…

Linguistic research on the Mayan languages up to the mid 1980s was almost exclusively descriptive in nature. At best, analyses were speculative and pre-theoretical. Since then, research based on contemporary theories of syntax have begun to emerge. In adopting the formal architecture of OT-LFG, I argue that my dissertation can be included amongst…

Many Mayan languages make use of a special dependent verb form (the Agent Focus, or AF verb form), which alternates with the normal transitive verb form (the synthetic verb form) of main clauses when the subject of a transitive verb is focused, questioned or relativized. It has been a centerpiece of research in Mayan morphosyntax over the last…

Over more than three decades spent researching cultural aspects of how children learn, the author has had the opportunity to learn about how individuals and cultural communities change and continue. During her research on children's learning by observing and "pitching in" in a Mayan community in Guatemala, the author learned a great deal from…

Theories of language acquisition have highlighted the importance of adult speakers as active participants in children's language learning. However, in many communities children are reported to be directly engaged by their caregivers only rarely (Lieven, 1994). This observation raises the possibility that these children learn language from…

When it comes to educational challenges, the nation's 12.1 million Hispanic schoolchildren face plenty: language, poverty, lower-than-average graduation rates for high school and college, and, more recently, a wave of laws targeting illegal immigrants that has made school seem like less of a safe haven for Hispanic students in some states. Yet, as…

In this article the authors discuss how the perspectives of Paulo Freire were instructive in addressing the challenges of HIV-AIDS education in Guatemalan Maya immigrant communities with minimal formal education and literacy. The forging of a community-based, collaborative, educational program offers several implications for effective teaching and…

Social changes in indigenous Maya communities in Chiapas, Mexico toward increasing levels of formal education, commercialization, and urbanization are transforming traditional Maya developmental pathways toward adulthood. This mixed-methods study is based on interviews with a sample of 14 first-generation Maya university students who have also…