Just for some background, Paraguay has two official languages. One is Spanish and the other is Guarani – an indigenous language that most people learn to speak even before Spanish. But generally Paraguayans switch back and forth in conversation from Spanish to Guarani, so both are pretty equally used. It can get a little confusing for us Americans who don’t know any Guarani. Case in point, the previous English teacher before me once told her class that she had three tattoos, not knowing that the word “tattoo” in Guarani means “vagina”. The high school boys still won’t look her in the eyes.

Although it is only spoken by roughly four million people, and nowhere outside of Paraguay and around its borders, the government insists that it be taught in all Paraguayan schools. This includes the Macchi Institute that I am teaching at. Even though it was built, funded and run privately by Americans, it still has to comply with the Ministry of Education’s mandates. For the American administrators of the school, adding a Guarani class to the already packed schedule (Paraguayan students take about 20 different classes a year) seems unnecessary. Their argument is that the students are already taught Guarani in their homes and it isn’t spoken anywhere else so unlike learning English, it doesn’t exactly open any doors. Guarani is also not a written language so transforming it into one for teaching purposes seems unnatural. But the counterargument is that Guarani is an integral part of Paraguayan heritage and culture and not teaching it in schools may lead to it dying out. Either way, it is an interesting debate and one that may be having a greater effect on the Paraguayan education system as a whole, since right now it is ranked among the worst in the world.