Fostering critical thinking as a life skill to prevent child marriage in Honduras: the case of Holistic Education for Youth (HEY!)

In Latin America, child marriage has not fallen as education levels have risen, unlike in other parts of the world. Holistic Education for Youth (HEY!) was designed to address this by building students' critical thinking and decision-making skills, specifically around gender inequality and marriage, rather than assuming that schooling alone would change behaviour. 

This chapter, authored by Diana Pacheco-Montoya and Erin Murphy-Graham of the University of California, presents findings from a design-based research collaboration with the Bayan Association to examine the HEY!, a curriculum designed to prevent child marriage in rural territories by strengthening critical thinking and decision-making skills among adolescents. The HEY! program uses the SAT (Sistema de Aprendizaje Tutorial) curriculum and methodology developed by FUNDAEC in Colombia, adapting its pedagogical approach to address gender inequality, marriage and social norms within secondary education. The analysis appears as Chapter 10 in Life Skills Education for Youth: Critical Perspectives, edited by Joan DeJaeghere and Erin Murphy-Graham and published by Springer in 2021, a volume focused on how life skills education is conceptualized and implemented across school and community settings.

This text examines HEY!, a curriculum developed for rural secondary schools in Honduras to help prevent child marriage. It was created through a research partnership between the University of California, Berkeley and the Honduran non-governmental organisation Bayan Association.

The HEY! curriculum consists of three workbooks used across grades 7 to 11 in Sistema de Aprendizaje Tutorial (Tutorial Learning System) schools, an alternative secondary education model for rural areas. It draws on critical and feminist pedagogies, using discussion, case studies and peer-to-peer teaching to help students examine and question assumptions about gender that they might otherwise take for granted.

This book chapter draws on classroom observations and interviews with students, teachers and parents to explore how students engaged with ideas about gender inequality, and how this shaped their thinking about their own lives and future relationships.

Key messages

• Even where girls' school participation has increased, child marriage rates in Latin America have not decreased, suggesting education alone is not enough to prevent this problem.
• The HEY! curriculum specifically taught students to identify and question assumptions about gender, rather than only providing information about the risks of child marriage.
• Classroom dialogue among peers acted as a 'critical mirror', helping students recognise and reconsider gender-based double standards, such as different social judgements applied to boys and girls.
• Boys in the programme showed signs of recognising and challenging gender inequality, which is notable since many programmes on this topic do not involve or assess boys' attitudes.
• Some students reported that the curriculum directly informed real decisions, including reconsidering marriage or challenging unequal treatment within their own families.
• Critical thinking alone does not guarantee behaviour change; the authors argue it needs to be paired with opportunities for students to work through the discomfort of changing long-held beliefs.