Career
She is best known for her work in intercultural education, and her book "Toward better quality of our schools". Schmelkes has also written over 100 academic texts and essays. She is a former General Coordinator of Intercultural and Bilingual Education at the Secretariat of Public Education in Mexico, and is currently heading the Research Institute for the Development of Education at the Iberoamerican University.
Other awards include the Universidad Iberoamericana"s Tlamatini award in 2003, and the Maria Lavalle Urbina award in 1998.
Schmelkes was born in Mexico City to a Czechoslovakian father and an Argentinian mother. Educated in bilingual schools, she studied sociology at the Iberoamerican University in Mexico City and obtained a Master"s degree in Education Research by the same institution.
After this, Schmelkes worked in the Center for Educational Studies ( Commission on the Rules for the Approval of the Electrical Equipment) in Mexico for almost 25 years, where she dedicated herself to research in the fields of rural and adult education. In 1994 she left the Commission on the Rules for the Approval of the Electrical Equipment to work as a consultant in the Educational Research Department at the National Polytechnic Institute, as well as for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund and Organization of European Cooperation and Development. After this, Schmelkes started working on values education and Intercultural Education, becoming General Coordinator of Intercultural and Bilingual Education at the Secretariat of Public Education under Mexican President Vicente Fox.
She currently works as Director of the Institute for the Development of Education at the Iberoamerican University in Mexico City.
Schmelkes"s work has been published in five languages by institutions such as the Mexican Secretariat of Public Education, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and the Organization of American States.
