By DAVID MANGURIAN, Opoqueri, Bolivia

The innovative program began in 1990 as part of a package of sweeping education reforms with goals that go far beyond basic instruction.

"We have to rescue our culture, because the children are trying to forget it," says Cornelio Ochoque Gómez, director of the primary school in Opoqueri, one of several thousand isolated villages dotting Bolivia's vast altiplano. He sympathizes with indigenous parents who fear that they will lose their children to the Spanish culture of the cities. "We have to respect and preserve what is ours," he says.

But living in a society where Spanish is identified with progress and power, and where native languages signify backwardness and poverty, creates a conflict for indigenous adults. Many are unsure where they want their own children to fit in.

"Sometimes these parents, Aymara or Quechua, don't allow their children to speak their own language," says Humberto Aguirre, director of education for the Department of Oruro, a region with a predominantly indigenous population. "But when they go to the city, they shield themselves from urban culture and don't want their children to learn Spanish. Bilingual education is important because their language is their culture."

Bolivia's new indigenous language texts have illustrations showing children and adults dressed in indigenous clothing doing activities that rural children can recognize and learn to respect.

"The old textbooks had pictures showing city life, homes with electric lights and stairs," says Ochoque Gómez. "The rural kids don't know what these things are. Their villages don't have electricity or buildings with stairs."

He continued: "People who live in the city have always looked down on rural people. What we want is respect for everyone, city or rural, because we're all equals."

The reform program is also working to eliminate stereotypes of the role of women in society. At present, school enrollment and educational achievement are lower for females in Bolivia than for males, and illiteracy among women is twice as high as for men, in large part due to the tradition of keeping boys in school while girls help at home (see the April issue of IDBAmérica for a cover story on this problem).

Plans call for all future Bolivian public school textbooks (not just those in indigenous languages) to include illustrations of boys and girls playing together in traditionally gender-segregated activities, with the girls depicted as equals instead of subordinates.

"The concept of equality is very important," says Aguirre. "But achieving it will take years."

Bolivia's educational reform program, financed with the help of an $81.4 million IDB loan, aims to extend primary and secondary education to 100 percent of the country's school-age population. The program also plans to boost technical and higher education to prepare students in skills needed by the labor market. Additional aims are to impose equity, particularly to benefit indigenous students and girls, and to increase the efficiency with which educational services are provided.