LATINO EDUCATION, LATINO MOVEMENT

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LATINO EDUCATION, LATINO MOVEMENT Alicia P. Rodriguez School of Education

University of California at Berkeley

Latino populations are finally being included in the popular imaginary of what a U.S. “American” looks like, thanks largely to Latino writers, scholars, artists, and cultural critics who are examining the lives and experiences of Latinos in the context of a nation that has always had Latino residents and that is witnessing a marked increase in their numbers as we approach the next millennium.’ This is occurring in a period of extreme xenophobia, where “the growing brown hordes” are being blamed for many of the social problems plaguing the United States (for example, gangs, economic recession, poverty, violent crime, teenage pregnancy, and welfare abuse) and are paradoxically being told to become American or “go back where you came from.” Although the scope of the Latino emergence seems pervasive to some and narrow and inaccurate to others, the crisis of Latino representation is growing and threatening to further disempower Latinos economically and socially. For many Latinos, including myself, who have deplored the negative representations of Latinos and their role in the formation of mainstream culture, the apparent explosion of scholarly and artistic works created by Latinos is a welcomed and hopeful sign of legitimacy and acceptance.

Four books written by Latinos on the educational experie.nces of Latinos have been some of the latest contributions. The Other Struggle for Equal Schools: Mexican Americans during the Civil Rights Era; Transformations: Migration, Family Life, and Achievement Motivation Among Latino Adolescents; Over the Ivy Walls: The Educational Mobility of Low-Income Chicanos; and “Where Something Catches”: Work, Love, and Identity in Youth have expanded the public perception of Latinos as a problem (a “minority” in turmoil) to a complex group of people with agency who have struggled and continue to struggle for and with education despite the numerous obstacles set before them.2 The first three books concern Mexican Americans and Mexicans and the latter deals with Puerto Rican youth living in Puerto Rico. While it is well-known that Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans have

1. While I use ”Latino” throughout this essay to refer to those people residing in the United States who come from or have ancestry in Latin America, the label implies more similarity between the specific Latino groups - Mexican, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Cuban, Central American, and South American - than actually exists.

2. Ruben Donato, The Other Struggle for Equal Schools: Mexican Americans during the Civil Rights Era [Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997); Carola Suarez-Orozco and Marcelo Suarez-Orozco, Transformations: Migration, Family Life, and Achievement Motivation Among Latino Adolescents (Stanford Stanford University Press, 1995); Patricia Gandara, Over the Ivy Walls: The Educational Mobdzty of L O W - ~ R C O ~ ~ Chicanos (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995); and Victoria I. Munoz, “Where Something Catches”: Work, Love, and Identityin Youth [Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995).

EDUCATIONAL THEORY / Spring 1999 ,! Volume 49 / Number 2 0 1999 Board of Trustees / University of Illinois

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very different experiences and histories in the context of the United States, which should caution us from referring to these two distinct groups as being equivalent, they do share experiences in contrast to other Latino groups. Both Puerto Rico and Mexico were (and are) colonized by the United States, and because they are close geographically they have highly mobile immigrant populations that maintain strong connections to their homeland through continual migrations back and forth. Due to political impediments and geographic distance, other Latino populations such as Guatemalans, Cubans, and Colombians have been less connected to their home- lands. Furthermore, Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans have the lowest educational attainment and the highest levels of poverty of all Latinos.

The four books reviewed in this essay are all about transformations and departures from ethnic stereotypes. The authors provide us with lenses through which we can view the aspirations, struggles, dreams, and lives of Latinos in depth. In many ways, the books are about “making” Latinos human and visible, putting them on the cultural map of the United States, and making it clear that Latinos are a significant part of and participants in American culture and society. As Juan Flores and George Yudice put it, “Latinos. ..do not aspire to enter an already-given America but to participate in the construction of a new hegemony dependent upon their cultural practices and discour~e.”~ Given that the focuses of these four books are very different, from the history of Chicano political activism around school reform to the relation between work and identity among Puerto Rican youth, I will treat these books separately and discuss how they contribute to the ongoing inquiry into the participation of Latino youth in the educational system and the factors that contribute to their marginalization, achievement, and failure. A discussion of contemporary educational reforms that are adversely impacting the futures of Latino youth, such as Proposition 209 and 227 in California, will be brought into the discussion.

CULTURAL TRAITS, CULTURAL LIMITATIONS: STRUGGLING FOR EQUITY Much educational policy in the United States has been premised on the belief

that dfferent ethnic groups possess certain cultural traits and propensities that delimit their intellectual abilities and what their educational path should be. For example, the establishment of the first federally supported American Indian board- ing school in 1879, the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania, was based on the belief that American Indians needed to be tamed and anglicized and taught the American values of economic ownership, individualism, patriotism, and hard work. Manual labor was considered the kind of work best suited for American Indians. The schools, deliberately located far away from the reservations of the children, stripped the young students of everythinghhan, including their language. Exclusive use and

3 . Juan Flores and George Yudice, ”Living Borders/Buscando America: Languages of Latino Self-formation,” Social Text: ~eoxylCulturelIdeology 24 (19901: 73.

ALICIA P. RODRIGUEZ is Postdoctorate Fellow in the School of Education, University of California at Berkeley, 4501 Tolman Hall, Berkeley, CR 94720. Her primary areas of scholarship are sociology of education, multicultural education, social theory, and educational reform.

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teaching of the English language was an integral component of the civilizing mission of these schools. It was thought that “the learning of English would lead to the absorption and practice of white values by Indian~.”~ Echoing the interests of the federal government, Richard Pratt, founder of the Carlisle Indian School, wanted to immerse “Indians in our civilization and when we get them under [hold] them there until they are thoroughly soaked.”5

Similarly but perhaps less brutally, U.S. public schools have stripped Mexican immigrant youth of their ethnicity, pushed them to become “American,” and relegated most of them to vocational education. As Ruben Donato documents well in the first chapter of The Other Struggle for Equal Schools, Mexican American children before the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision were educated in schools and classrooms separate from whites and given predominantly vocational education classes (such as classes on cooking, hygiene, and mechanics), art instruction, Americanization classes, and English language instruction.6 Educational leaders believed that segregated schooling would benefit Mexican children by boosting their self -esteem and psychological well-being because they would not feel pressure to compete with white students and would also be protected from their taunts.’ The rationale for vocational and art education for Mexican Americans was based on the belief that Mexicans did not have the mental capacity for higher order thinking and that Mexicans were naturally artistic people, as exemplified in their colorful artwork and textiles and musical styles. Whites viewed the exponentially increasing dropout rate of Mexican American students and their eventual entry into the low-skilled, low wage job force as being the fault of the Mexicans, not the schools. Basing the intellectual inferiority of Mexicans on I.Q. test results, most psychometricians “failed to raise questions of power, low wages, ethnic discrimination, and power differentials between Mexican and white communities.”8

Donato’s study raises questions about power to explain the patterns of educational inequality for Mexican descendants in the United States. The book concen- trates on a small school &strict in Northern California, which he calls Brownfield, which challenged the power of the status quo and demanded that the school district attend to the educational needs and desires of its rapidly growing Mexican American population. Between 1964 and 1979, the Mexican American parents and community members who organized to push for educational reform recognized that they and their children were being marginalized, undereducated, and pushed out of school.’ School officials recognized this as aproblem but blamed the students: “They claimed

4. Joel Spring, The Arnerjcan School 1642-1993 (New York McGraw Hill, 1994), 145 5. Ibid., 144. 6. For an example of how schools reproduced social class and racial inequalities and how school districts linked Americanization and homemaking for Mexican American girls, see, Pearl Idelia Ellis, Americaniza- tion Through Homemaking (Los Angeles: Wetzel Publishing, 1929). 7. Donato, The Other Struggle for Equal Schools, 14-15 8. Ibid., 26. 9. At the time in California, 50% of MexicanAmerican students droppedout of school hy tenth and eleventh grades and 40% of the students in “mentally handicapped” classes were Mexican American although they were only 14% of the student population. Ibid., 61.

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that it was the students' poor home environment, nutritional deficiency, low aspirations, and unpredictable residency that contributed to their school failure. The stereotype was that Mexican American parents were not interested in educating their children."lo Mexican American parents and activists, on the other hand, blamed negative teacher attitudes toward their children for the high dropout rates.

We are used to thinking of African Americans as being the only ethnic group that has actively protested against educational discrimination and inequity in the United States. But although the Brownfield case may seem unusual given the relative invisibility of Latinos, Latinos were demanding educational equity long before Brown." Guadalupe San Miguel, Jr. chronicles a case in 1928 in Atascosa County, Texas where Felipe Vela filed a complaint with the Charlotte Independent School District.12Vela wished to enroll his adopted child, who he claimed was not Mexican, into the white school rather than the Mexican school where she was assigned. The superintendent agreed with Vela on the basis that his daughter was intelligent and spoke English (and Spanish) well, yet he believed separate schools were still necessary. A couple of years later, LULAC (the League of United Latin American Citizens), a critical political and legal force for Latinos at the time, challenged segregation for the first time through the courts in Independent School District v. Salvatierra. In this case in Texas, "Mexican American parents alleged that their children were being denied the equal protection of law under the Constitution because a separate school was maintained for them by the Del Rio Independent School District. "I3 The parents were fundamentally opposed to separating Mexican American and white children. The court argued that segregation for educational reasons - in this case, it was believed that a separate school for Mexicans who had poor English language skills was justifiable and optimal - was not unconstitutional. LULAC lost their first case. However, LULAC was more successful in 1945 in Mkndez v. Westminster School District, when the Civil Court of Appeals of Orange County, California ruled that Mexican American segregation violated state law and the U.S. con~titution.'~Both San Miguel's andDonato's works do much to correct the historical record. Donato's book expands the black-white discourse of school desegregation to demonstrate that all Mexican Americans are not passive consumers of education and have fought (and continue to fight) for educational rights.

In 1976, following the mandate to institute bilingual education programs throughout California and in response to the 1974 Lau v. Nichols decision, the Assistant Superintendent of Brownfield, despite strong opposition from white

10. Ibid., 62. 11. See Guadalupe San Miguel, Jr., "The Struggle against Separate and Unequal Schools: Middle Class Mexican Americans and the Desegregation Campaign in Texas, 1929-1957," History o f Education Quarterly 23 [ 1983): 343-59. 12. Guadalupe San Miguel, Jr., "Roused from our Slumbers," in Latinos and Education: A Critical Reader, ed. Antonia Darder, Rodolfo D. Torres, and Henry Gutikrrez (New York: Routledge, 1997), 135-57. 13. Ibid., 146.

14. Kenneth J. Meier and JosephStewart, Jr., The Politics ofHispanic Education: U n Pasopalante y dpatras [Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), 67.

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parents, implemented a Bilingual Education Master Plan that included incentives for teachers to learn Spanish and obtain certification in bilingual education and pro- posed the creation of one pilot bilingual-bicultural scho01.’~ Efforts in the 1980s to further educational equity and desegregation were minimal, resulting in the desegregation of two elementary schools in the predominantly white and middle-class Atherton community in the south of the district. Finally, in the 1990s the battle between residents of Atherton and the predominantly Mexican and poor Brownfield community culminated in Atherton deconsolidating from the Brownfield school district and forming their own district. As elsewhere, segregated schooling for Mexican Americans living in Brownfield became the norm. The battle for equal educational opportunity in Brownfield has been re-played in other communities around the United States.

With the recent passage of Proposition 227 (the Unz-Matta initiative) in Califor- nia, California voters have decided that schools should return to the way things were before 1976.16 But now, rather than segregating Mexican children for years so that they learn English faster and become Americanized, these limited English speakers and others with limited English proficiency will be taught English in one year and mainstreamed with their peers as soon as possible. Ron K. Unz, Gloria Matta- Tuchman, and their supporters claim that bilingual education programs are mediocre and that they retard students from learning English and other academic subjects. The Unz-Matta initiative and other English-only initiatives (like the Riggs Bill on bilingual education, which is in the process of being deliberated in Congress and seeks to extend the Unz-Matta model throughout the nation) basically suggest that to be an “American” means that one is a monolingual English speaker.“ Like other nativistic and undemocratic propositions that California voters have passed in the past few years, such as Proposition 187 and Proposition 209, which arise from fears of the “browning” of California, the desire for economic success, and a belief that racism has been eradicated or, at least, does not affect educational achievement,

15. Donato, The Other Struggle for Equal Schools, 106. The Lau decision “stated that steps had to be taken to make schooling comprehensible to the child with limited English,” but it did not mandate bilingual education.

16. The objective of Proposition 227, the ”English Language in Public Schools Initiative Statute,” is to abolish bilingual education in California. Ron K. Unz, a multimillionaire software entrepreneur and former Republican gubernatorial canhdate, and Gloria Matta Tuchman, a first-grade teacher, former national board member of U.S. English, and 1998 candidate for State School Superintendent of California, are co- authors of the proposition. Unz and his supporters believe that bilingual education must go because it does not successfully teach children English and is too costly. Instead of bilingual education, the 1.4 million limited-English-proficient (LEP) students in California (25% of the k-12 public school students) would “be educated through sheltered English immersion during a temporary transition periodnot normally intended to exceed one year” (Initiative Statement: English Language Education for Children in Public Schools). It should be noted that although there are 1.4 million LEP students, only 30% of these students are in a bilingual education program.

17. U.S. Congressman Frank Riggs, Republican from California, sponsored a bill (H.R. 3892) that would virtually eliminate federal bilingual education programs and requires LEP children to learn English in two years. The Bill, The English Language Fluency Act, passed by a vote of 221 to 189 in the House of Representatives on September 10, 1998. The bill will next move to the Senate where it will be discussed in the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources and later voted on by the Senate. President Clinton has promised to veto the bill if it comes to hls desk,

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Proposition 227 has the potential of furthering the divide between whites and people of color and perpetuating a caste-like society where very few people of color, relative to their numbers, will have access to the powers and privileges that come with educational and economic success.’8 As Donaldo Macedo suggests,

It would be more socially constructive and beneficial if the zeal that propels the English Only movement were diverted toward social struggles designed to end violent racism and structures of poverty, homelessness, and family breakdown, among other social ills that characterize the lived experiences of minorities in the United States. If these social issues are not dealt with appropriately, it is naive to think that the acquisition of the English language alone will, somehow, magically eclipse the raw and cruel injustices and oppression perpetrated against the dispossessed class of minorities in the United States.lg

The effects of these nativistic propositions and general political trends in California have extended throughout the country. Other states are following California‘s lead. Given the rapid ethnic diversification of its population, California can be seen as a barometer of the future United States.

In 1967, then-Governor Ronald Reagan signed a bipartisan bill ending the 95- year-old state education English-only mandate. It is disheartening to think that thirty years later there are states like Arizona, which recently struck down their 10- year old English-only Law, while a state like California continues to limit the educational opportunities and civic rights of immigrants and limited English speakers through ballot initiatives that are vague, nativistic, and anti-democratic. Beginning with Proposition 187 and now with 227, Californians are saying that public institutions are not required to provide all Californians opportunities for educational success, economic security, and civic participation. As Judge Thomas Tang argued in the Arizona Supreme Court Ruiz v. Hull decision, which eliminated the English-only Law, ”there is a critical difference between encouraging the use of English and repressing the use of other languages.”20 In other words, the political intent of English-only laws and legislation like Proposition 227 is not only to promote the use and importance of the English language, but also to devalue non- English languages and the cultures, societies, and people from which they derive. One could argue that Proposition 227 is directly linked to the anti-Mexican senti- ment of its cousin, Proposition 187. It is not so much that Unz, Matta-Tuchman, and Riggs disapprove of bilingualism, but that immigrants, such as Mexicans, refuse to suppress their native culture and languages once they come to the United States; that they do not become “American” fast enough, or ever. But does the lack of English proficiency or undocumented status mean that one will be disloyal to the United States? Unz and company do not really care that Mexicans and other immigrants

18. In 1994, the Republicans in California campaigned for Proposition 187 which would deny public education, public social services, and publicly funded health to undocumented immigrants and their children (even if the children are American citizens). The proposition was accepted by the majority of the Californians who voted, but it was not implemented because it was thrown out of federal court. Proposition 209, which calls for the elimination of affirmative action in California, was passed by California voters in 1996. The U.S. Supreme Court found the proposition to be constitutional.

19. Donaldo Macedo, ”English Only: The Tongue-tying of America,” in Darder et al., Lntinos and Education, 271.

20. Reiterated by Karen K. Narasaki, Executive Director of the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium, in a press release issued by the consortium on 28 April 1998.


become full-fledged citizens with rights and privileges equal to white Americans and the most enfranchised Americans. Rather, as in the case of segregated andvocational education for Mexican immigrants documented in Donato’s book, Unz seems to want to use English language instruction as a way to control the growing brown masses.

The problem with the form of English language instruction mandated by Proposition 227 is not that one year in a sheltered English-immersion program may not be a good way for some students to learn English, but the assumption that it is the only and most effective way to learn English. Because the one-year English learning model has never been tested, its effectiveness with all age groups and all ethnic groups is uncertain. We may find that some children will learn English faster than they did in their previous bilingual classes and will even excel in the mainstream classes, but we may also find that many more will obtain a less than adequate command of English after the one year and will fail miserably once they are mainstreamed. Language acquisition researchers have found that for most people one year is not enough time, without extra extensive tutoring, to learn English fluently. As James Crawford states,

Research over the past two decades has determined that, despite appearances, it takes children a long time to attain proficiency in a second language - especially the kind of decontextualized language needed to succeed in school. Often LEP students are quick to learn the conversational English used on the playground. But they normally need four to seven years to acquire academic English, if provided quality bilingual cducation, or seven to ten years, if prcivided only ESL instruction?’

There are many examples of non-native speakers of English, such as Richard Rodriguez, Linda Chavez, Jaime Escalante, Fernando Vega, and many others less famous, who have learned English without the help of bilingual education programs and have been //successful” -academically, socially, and economically.22 Rodriguez, Chavez, Escalante, andVega have all been outspoken critics of affirmative action and bilingual education. They champion the American motto of educational opportunity that claims that all people in the United States can achieve academically, economically, and socially if they try hard and take advantage of all the opportunities at their disposal. In deference to the opponents of bilingual education, a true test of its merits would be to look at the academic performance of LEP students and how long it took them to learn English before the nationwide implementation of bilingual education following the 1974 Lau v. Nichols decision, which found equal access to education was being denied to students who did not know English in mainstream classrooms. A similar comparison could be made between LEP students who were never enrolled

21. James Crawford, Best Evidence: Research Foundations o/ the Bilingual Education Act (Washington, DC: National Clearinghousc for Bilingual Education, 1997).

22. See Richard Rodriguez, Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodziguez (Roston: David R. Godine, 1981 J; Richard Rodriguez, Days of Obligation: A n Argument with My Mexican Father (New York Penguin Books, 1992); and Linda Chavez, Out of the Barrio: Toward a New Politics of Hispanic Assimilation (New York: Basic Rooks, 1991). Fernando Vega is a Regional Honorary Chairman of the “English for the Children” Campaign (Proposition 227). As a former member of the Redwood City Board of Education, he helped develop bilingual education programs throughout city schools. Later he became &senchanted with bilingual education and rallied against it.

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in bilingual education programs and students who were in such programs for several years. In such a comparison, one may find that academic achievement and development have more to do with the level of encouragement for academic success from family, teachers, and others, their educational track, and their expectations that education has rich rewards. Luis C. Moll notes that most students in bilingual education programs are working-class children, including many Latinos, who do not have access to resources for educational success and are subjected to low-level ed~ca t ion .~~ The question we need to ask is whether Proposition 227 will turn the tide of school failure and dropping out that has been an all-too-common experience for a vast number of Latino children. The kind of parent activism and educational involvement documented in Donato’s study will need to increase throughout the state of California to prevent the failure that looms ahead.

In a preliminary study of six high schools in California and Arizona that were extremely successful in educating Latino (primarily Mexican) students with limited English abilities, Tamara Lucas, Rosemary Henze, and Donato discovered that the schools exhibited eight features that made them successful with students who were often pushed out of the educational system. The features of the schools included valuing the students’ languages and cultures, making the education of language- minority students a priority, offering a variety of courses and programs for language- minority students, encouraging the parents of language-minority students to become involved in their children’s education, and being committed to empower language-minority students through education.24 In most of the schools, most of the teachers learned and spoke Spanish and were in close communication with the parents of their students. In one school, the Latino principal did away with the remeha1 programs, including the bilingual program, created a bilingual program that was rigorous and included college preparatory courses, and quadrupled the size of the bilingual teaching staff.

Although the Lucas et al. study focused on schools that serve Latino language- minority students, it is common sense that the personalization of the schooling experience and the high expectations for students that the researchers found in the schools, across the board, would benefit all students regardless of English language ability. Given the crisis in education for Mexican Americans and other Latinos, more of whom drop out than complete high school, creating schools that care about them and believe in their intellectual abilities could have profound effects on their educational success or failure. It is clear that the Unz-Matta initiative disregards what will happen to students once they are mainstreamed despite adequate English proficiency for academic success. Furthermore, the initiative threatens teachers with lawsuits if they do not uphold the terms of the mandate, that is, if they “willfully and repeatedly” use the native language of their LEP students. In a study

23. Luis C. Moll, ”Bilingual Classroom Studies and Community Analysis: Some Recent Trends,“ Educational Researcher 21 (March 1992): 20-24. 24. Tamara Lucas, Rosemary Henze, and Ruben Donato, “Promoting the Success of Latino Language- Minority Students: An Exploratory Study of SixHigh Schools,” inDarder et al., Latinos andEducation, 3 79- 94.


of an e t h c a l l y and linguistically diverse high school in Northern California, Laurie Olsen found that many LEP immigrant students who were enrolled in comprehensive ESL classes do not succeed in the mainstream classes because they are not proficient in the academic skills needed for writing and reading English well, and because they face discrimination from their American peers due to their accents, clothing, and general foreignnes~.~~ It is probable that a one-year English language immersion program would exacerbate their social ddocation. Furthermore, getting rid of bilingual education teachers, who are often cherished because of the linguistic and cultural bonds they share with their students, and eliminating comprehensive ESL programs could have devastating effects on the self-esteem and performance of these students.

It is questionable whether the voting public had enough knowledge about bilingual education to make an informed decision on this issue.26 But beyond the matter of an informed or uninformed public is the question of whether educational policy decisions should be decided in the voting booth. Should the electorate or should educational professionals develop and institute educational reforms?

The English-only advocates have successfully made many people believe that bilingual education, of any form, is damaging to LEP students, badly delivered, and fundamentally un-American. But many of the problems with bilingual education come not so much from the viability of the concept, as from its implementation. Many schools that offer bilingual education do not have nearly enough certified, trained, and competent staff to deliver quality bilingual education. Many school lstr icts have resorted to hiring bilingual aides who are not trained in bilingual education and do not have educational degrees beyond a high school diploma. These aides teach three-fifths of the limited-English-proficient children in high-poverty sch~ols .~~Rather than avote ona “one-size-fits-all” Englishlearning model, the State Education Department should have begun an evaluation of existing bilingual and ESL programs, inclulng bilingual teacher training, and instituted ongoing assess- ment of the linguistic and academic progress of bilingual students. Certainly, bilingualism has many benefits in our increasingly global economy. Numerous studies that have examined the relations between language, culture, and education have found that ”the more students are involved in resisting assimilation while maintaining their culture and language, the more successful they will be in school .... maintaining culture and language, although a conflicted decision, seems to have a positive impact on academic success.”28 Such evidence suggests that bilingual

25. Laurie Olsen, Madein America: Immigrant Studentsin Our Public Schools [New York: The New Press, 1997).

26. Sixty-one percent of the voters approved of Proposition 227. I question the fairness of including the proposition in a primary election when fewer numbers of voters vote than in the main election in November.

27. Crawford, Best Evidence: Research Foundations of the Bilingual Education Act. 28. Sonia Nieto, “Lessons from Students on Creating a Chance to Dream,” Harvard Educational Review 64 (1994): 419.

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education, done well, can have extraordinary effects on the academic performance and life chances of LEI? students.

MOTIVATION AND INSPIRATION The de iure and ”voluntary” educational segregation of Mexican Americans

from the 1890s to the present has been premised on a belief in their limited intellectual abilities due to deficient social and cultural characteristics. Such perceptions are often based on the perceived cultural deficits of students and their unwillingness to adapt to the culture and norms of the school. The idea of “Mexican cultural traits” raises a question about culturally sensitive education and what it means. What are these “typical” or commonly held Mexican cultural traits and values? Are there Mexican learning styles (as many educators have argued there are for African Americans and other ethnic minorities) that should be addressed in the school setting? Carola and Marcel0 Suarez-Orozco’s study, Transformations: Migra- tion, Family Life, and Achievement Motivation Among Latino Adolescents, suggests that some of these “Mexican” traits and values would include the centrality/ importance of family, communitarianism, respect for authority figures, and desire for education. They argue that it is extremely difficult, but not impossible, to make schools sensitive and responsive to children of Mexican descent, given the range in acculturation of these students - from being new to the United States to being second-, third-, or fourth-generation Mexican American. Given such diversity within a monolithically perceived Mexican American population, what then can schools do to respond to this population and its diversity? Schools have rarely been able to attend to the differences across ethnic groups let alone the dfferences within ethnic minority groups.

Over three years, the SuArez-Orozco research team engaged in a psychosociological study of four groups of adolescents - Mexicans living in Mexico, recent Mexican immigrants to the United States, U.S.-born Mexican Americans, and whites. They sought to determine if there were differences between the four cohorts in terms of achievement motivation, effects of immigration, influence of peers, and pressures of adolescence. They examined the paradox of why second-generation Mexicans are behind whites and African Americans in terms of educational achievement and occupational status despite the model of assimilation that suggests that each new generation usually does better than the previous generation and eventually achieves parity with the mainstream population. Through interviews, “objective and projec- tive” testing, and naturalistic observations of 189 adolescents, Suarez-Orozco and Suarez-Orozco found that Latinos (namely, all of the youth of Mexican ancestry in their study) saw the family as being “the single most important aspect of their l i v e ~ . ” ~ ~ T h e same was not true of the white adolescents who valued peers over family.

In regard to achievement motivation, the white adolescents tended to &splay ambivalent attitudes toward school, especially school authority figures, and a low

29. Ninety-two percent of the Mexican and Mexican immigrant adolescents, 86% of the second-generation adolescents, and 74% of the white Americans felt that “in life, family is the most important thing,” Suarez- Orozco and Suarez-Orozco, Transformations, 115.

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level of concern with achievement. They were more likely to say that they did not like school than the other cohort groups. They saw school as “a necessary frustration that will ensure agood job and the good life.ff30 The Mexican and Mexican immigrant adolescents displayed more positive attitudes toward school and school authorities. They viewed authority figures as being fair and they felt shame and sadness if they let the teacher down. The Mexican Americans were a mix of the three other groups. However, unlike the others, in their stories the theme of failure prevailed. The authors suggest that discrimination, the stresses of minority status, alienating schools, economic hardship, and the pressure to work may be reasons for the high dropout rates of second- and third-generation Mexican Americans and their lack of faith in schooling. This finding is in contrast to the cultural deprivation reasoning often used to explain the high dropout rate of Mexican A m e r i ~ a n s . ~ ~ Basically, many people, including teachers, believe that low-income Mexican-American children are destined to drop out because they do not possess the academic discipline necessary for success. Discipline, hard work, and valuing education are not perceived to be cultural traits of Mexicans. But HCctor R. Cordero Guzman argues persuasively that the disproportionately high dropout rate of Latinos and African Americans in high schools around theunited States cannot be the fault of the students and their culture:

Arguably, if only a few students were not completing their high school education and going on to college one might want to focus primarily on the individual factors that determine the specific outcome. However, when between one third and one half of the population is not completing their high school education, particularly in the inner cities, this seems to be evidence that there are more systematic exclusionary forces at work. In this sense “push-out” is a more accurate concept than “drop-out” to describe the totality of the process.3z

The Suiirez-Orozco study supports Cordero Guzman’s argument. The findings of the study “suggest that Latino families and Latino culture in general do indeed foster the values and behaviors that are conducive to achieving in schools. Therefore, whatever problems Latinos face in U.S. schools cannot be the consequence of so- called cultural or familial deficits.’f33 Interestingly, despite the differing levels of alienation from and contentment with school, most students in this study did aspire to go to college.

One of the most important findings of the Suiirez-Orozco study was that “the more acculturated students become, the more skeptical and ambivalent they are about A Filipina-American student in Olsen’s ethnographic study char- acterizes well this ambivalent stance toward high school, which comes, in part, from students’belief that adults do not care about their education and well-being given the deplorable condition of many public schools in the United States:

30. Ibid., 182. 31. For a thorough discussion of deficiency and bias theories of racial inequality, see Mario Barrera, “A Theory of Racial Inequality,” in Darder et al., Latinos and Education, 3-44. 32. HCctor R. Cordero Guman, “The Structure of inequality and the Status of Puerto Rican Youth in the United States,” in Darder et al., Latinos and Education, 87. 33. Suarez-Orozcn and Suirez-Orozco, Transformations, 183. 34. hid., 183.

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SO for US, school is just, you come to classes and you just sit there. And if YOU sit there 10% enough, after four years they give you a diploma. After a while you figure it out -you don’t get anything and you don’t give anything. The only ones who don’t get it are the ESL kids. People tell us, we should be more like them, we should try hard, we should try as hard as they do. I get so mad! They are so blind! They still believe. But sooner or later, they’ll get it, too. We just don’t matter.35

Although their similar attitudes of skepticism and ambivalence may suggest that white and Mexican-American students succeed and fail in school at equal levels, this is not so. Schooling for whites can be a “necessary frustration” that may be alienating, but it is still relatively familiar and affirming, culturally. Most white students manage to progress through the system and receive their diplomas, in part because they do not experience the discrimination, racism, despair, and economic hardships that contribute to failure. These students benefit from a schooling experience that places “white” and “middle-class” values at the normative center. In contrast to stereotypes about Mexicans, the high achievement motivation of Mexican adolescents clearly supports the notion that the disproportionate place- ment of Mexican descent students in low-level and special education classes is not based on lower academic ability or on low motivation, but rather on social and cultural dislocation. For the Mexican-American students who live in two worlds - the Mexican world of their ancestors and the white world of some of their peers - and who are economically disadvantaged, the feeling of ddocation is the greatest.

What is going on in American schools that is turning students off to schooling and high achievement? Douglas E. Foley, in his ethnographic study, Learning Capitalist Culture: Deepin the Heart of Tejas, gives a partial response to the complex interplay of ethnicity, acculturation, and achievement in U.S. schools. Foley’s work documents the political struggles between Mexican Americans and Anglos in a small south Texas town during the 1970s and how the complex interethnic relations affected the social lives and identities of Mexican-American and Anglo teenagers. The study shows how the local high school reproduced class inequalities culturally. Combining Karl Marx’s concept of self-objectification through alienated labor, Jiirgen Habermas’s theory of communicative action, Ezlring Goffman’s view of rituals of degradation and rebellion, and the ethnographic approaches of Shirley Brice Heath and others who examine differences in the use of “linguistic” and “cultural“ capital, Foley develops a “performance theory of cultural reproduction and resis- tance” to explain the class and racial patterns perpetuated in this predominantly Mexican and poor rural town. He views the different interactional skills of the students from different social classes and races as representing different levels of cultural or linguistic capital. Foley contextualizes his theory in the following manner:

In the anthropological sense, these various interactional moments can be thought of as ageneral ritual process. These ritualized communicative events are a vital part of how youth are generally socialized into ”mainstream” American “capitalist culture.” Such situational speech acts are performances in Goffman’s sense, which dramatically and symbolically present the societies’ ideal class roles and communicative styles. During these communicative moments, some youth become socially prominent and leaders, some passive and conformist and others rebellious and

35. Olsen, Made in America, 60.

RODRIGUEZ Latino Education. Latino Movement 393

marginal. Economic classes and inequality are “culturally reproduced,” therefore, through this ritual process that schools constantly

He found at North Town High School that American values were learned, reinforced, and performed through the rituals of football and dating, segregated social groups, and interactions with teachers in the classroom. All students struggled between adopting an institutionalized, mainstream identity and one rebelliously crafted by themselves. Foley seems to suggest that the mediocre teaching in this town contributed to students’ disinterest in academics. But the levels of disinterest were nuanced from the “good (Anglo) students” who feigned interest and manipulated teachers, to the Mexican working class ”vatos” at the hack of the class who were demeaned and berated by teachers. In the final analysis, Mexican working-class children “were subjected to the most relentless stripping and resocialization,” possessed less cultural capital, and exhibited lower aspirations than the middle-and upper-middle class students, of whatever ethni~ity.~:

Although the Suiirez-Orozco study does much to challenge myths about the inferiority of Mexicans and to suggest that powerful social forces, such as those demonstrated by Foley, are to blame for the failure of Mexican Americans in U.S. schools, these authors do not provide us with satisfactory suggestions ahout what schools could do to reverse these trends. For example, what can be done to divert students’ attention fromperformative, ritualizedpractices that are more valued than academics? Furthermore, although the book is entitled Transformations: Migration, Family Life, and Achievements Motivation Among Latino Adolescents, when it actually focuses only on Mexicans and Mexican Americans, it would be important to consider whether the oppressive and conformist forces of schooling operate for Mexican Americans in the same way that they do for other Latinos. It seems that to address these questions requires that more detailed, qualitative work needs to be done to examine how Latinos from different national and cultural backgrounds are experiencing school and what the combination of factors are that contribute to their success or failure.

Furthermore, a qualitative approach would permit analysis of the differences between Mexican and Mexican American girls and boys which is lacking in their study. Su6rez-Orozco and Su5rez-Orozco imply that there is more similarity between the girls and boys than may actually exist. They briefly stated that the responses and stories of the Mexican and Mexican-born girls “tended” to be more similar to the Mexican and Mexican-born boys than to the white American girls, yet they did not specify the gender of the students when discussing the data.38

WORK AND LOVE Victoria I. Munioz found that for Puerto Rican youth living in Puerto Rico, being

happy, fulfilled, and successful in schooling and work can he a long process. MU~OZ’S

36. Douglas E. Foley, Learning Capitalist Culture: Deep in the Heart of Tejas (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990), 192. 37. Ibid., 161.

38. Suarez-Orozco and Suirez-Orozco, Transformations, 115, 158.

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qualitative work, “Where Something Catches”: Work, Love, and Identity in Youth, is a study of 56 youths in Puerto Rico and how their identity development is shaped by the love of their work. In an attempt to understand how “something caught” in them in such a way that they pursued certain goals, Mufioz’s research poses the following questions: “What is the relationship between opera manurn dei (that particular combination) and identity? How are love and work understood and experienced by youth? How are love and work a part of identity development during youth? J’39

The students, ages 14-33, came from six educational and occupational training sites around Puerto Rico. These Puerto Rican youth are confronted with the same kinds of social problems Latino youth on the U.S. mainland face: high dropout rates, declining literacy rates, high crime, drug abuse, and the spread of AIDS. In the midst of what is in many ways a battle zone, the youth portrayed by Muiioz confronted numerous obstacles in achieving their dreams and aspirations.

Some of the questions the youth were asked were: For you what is work? How do you define i t? What meaning does it have for you? Mufioz found that the subjects considered work to be gendered. For the men, work is a primary identity without which they would not be “men.” Women, on the other hand, are on the border between work and the obligations of taking care of the home. She shows how their work is enhanced or challenged their gender identity. Throughout the book Muiioz gives very thoughtful portrayals of the individual youth around themes of how they came to the place that they are now and what struggles, help, and changes they made on the way. The youths each experienced numerous obstacles, diversions, and triumphs on the road to careers that include security guard, musician, cook, and youth counselor. Some had a large amount of support from home and knew what career they wanted to pursue from the time they were very young. Others were caught up with drugs and crime, became pregnant at a young age, or suffered from a severe illness and struggled hard to pursue their dreams. These youth are not the gangbangers and dropouts of popular imagery. They are youth of dffering abilities, aspirations, and interests who are refusing to fail, refusing to become yet another Latino statistic. They are youth who came to commune with the moment when “something catches.’’ As one of Muiioz’s subjects said, ”For me, music is not my end, it’s my medium to get to my ends, my medium to get to something, to get somewhere.”4a

There were multiple and immeasurable factors that contributed to the successes of these inspired and driven Latino youth. Although we may like to think that we can isolate all the factors that account for Latino failure and success and, thus, develop general theories of academic achievement, as studies such as those by the Suarez- Orozcos and Ghndara may suggest, it seems clear that there are several key elements that in combination increase the chances of success. One key factor that numerous

39. Muiioz, “Where Something Catches”: Work, Love, and Identity in Youth, 4. 40. Ibid., 200-1.

RODFXUEZ Latino Education, Latino Movement 395

subjects reiterated is the presence of teachers and educators who have high expectations of Latino students. Many of the Latino students who made it into college-track courses indicated that their Latino peers in the general and remedial tracks are just as intellectually capable as they are, but due to teachers who do not believe that they can actually achieve at high levels, they repeatedly feel beaten down and thus resign themselves to the lower tracks and lower aspiration^.^^ It is a vicious cycle in which low expectations and, thus, low academic performance feed into ethnic and class stereotypes and the acting out of these stereotypes.

Certainly, the racial and class patterns and barriers in different educational and occupational tracks are unfair, imbalanced, and in need of change. But we must be careful, as Muiioz’s work suggests, not to equate “success” only with being college- bound. School-to-work programs, although philosophically objectionable in that they tend to limit the aspirations of certain students at an early age and perpetuate class reproduction, are sites where low-income students and students of color normally disenchanted with school become inspired to complete their schooling and pursue a career.42 Perhaps we need to look at the positive elements of such programs, such as socially relevant and creative curricula, small class size, motivated teachers, applied learning, and strong school-community relations, and see how they can be extended throughout the general curriculum. Moreover, it is perfectly legitimate for students to prefer a career that does not require a 4-year college education over a career that (purportedly) requires a bachelor’s degree. But the fact that certain youth aspire to vocations that do not require much schooling beyond high school does not mean that their schooling should be anti-intellectual or that they should be in the lowest educational tracks separate from the college-bound students. Developing students who are challenged, forward-looking, motivated, and happy in their work and studies should be the goal.

MAKING EDUCATION WORK

In Over the Ivy Walls: The Educational Mobility of Low-Income Chicanos, Patricia Gandara examines individuals who defied the expectations of failure to succeed beyond the norm for Mexican Americans. Ghndara reveals the factors that combined to make fifty Mexican Americans/Chicanos obtain Ph.D.’s, J.D.’s, and M.D.’s despite the odds against them due to their economically poor family background. Basically, Ghdara argues that the more that families of color adopt “white middle-class ways“ - that is, be authoritative (as opposed to authoritarian), provide a rich intellectual home environment (with many books], and encourage independence - and when these values are also reflected in the culture of schools,

41. See, for example, Sonia Nieto, Affirming Diversity: The Sociopolitical Context of Multicultural Education /New York: Longman, 1992); Nieto, “Lessons from Students on Creating a Chance to Dream;” and Olsen, Made in America.

42. By “school-to-work programs” I am referring to vocational programs in high schools that link students directly to employers. The programs, which often comprise about half of the students’ school day, focus on the specific skills students need to eventually obtain jobs in the partner companies. Students learn a range of professions, from those that are fairly low-skilled, such as computer data entry, to those that are more highly skilled, such as biotechnology laboratory work.

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the greater the probability that they will achieve in Parental involvement in school and their ability to extract resources for their children (cultural capital) are also associated with high academic achievement.

Most of the fifty male and female professionals that Gandara interviewed benefited from these conditions for success:

The picture that emerges of the home environments of most of these subjects is one in which a high premium was placed on ideas and information, in spite of the very limited formal education of the parents. It is also interesting to note that, while mothers were commonly described as being avid readers, and on the average had slightly more education than their husbands, it was almost always fathers who were noted to have inspired the children’s learning through their teaching. It was most often the fathers who seemed to have the particular penchant for studying and discussing a specific topic: the opera, music, history, or science. Hence, while mothers encouraged and inspired their children, fathers showed them the wonders of the world and invited them to pursue its my~teries.4~

Another important factor that contributed to the success of the fifty subjects was the quality of the schools they attended. Most of the subjects (60-70%) attended schools outside their barrios that were predominantly white and middle to upper-middle class. In these schools they were tracked into college preparatory courses where they were often the only Chicanos. The subjects found that their ability to straddle their predominantly white academic world and their Chicano home world and reconcile the differences was integral to their future success in predominantly white college settings. The strong ethnic identity they maintained despite their academic segregation was key to their academic success. The single most important characteristic that these subjects considered salient in their academic achievement was persis- tence. For these Chicano students who did not fit the stereotype of a “college student,” being able to achieve at a high level, sometimes completing more than one degree, was a triumph.

One of the more interesting findings of this study was discussed in a short chapter on the role of family stories about ancestral wealth and loss in the achievement motivation of the Chicano subjects. These stories, true or mythical, seemed to inspire the subjects and make them hopeful that they could achieve the success and good fortune their ancestors once had. Oftentimes in thesestories, usually told by the mother, the mother was said to descend from relatives in Mexico who were highly successful, wealthy, and intelligent. In some of the stories the ancestors lost their wealth. Thus, the children could think that the poverty that their families experienced was not their fault. Images of these talented family members served to instill in them the belief that they could emulate their ancestors. GBndara wonders, “Could it be that the stories were a form of cultural capital, an explicit means of passing on middle class attitudes and dispositions about self-worth, competence, and hopeful- ness from one generation to another?”45 The idea that these stories are a form of cultural capital that have powerful affects on the aspirations of poor Chicanos is fascinating. This form of cultural capital is very different from the kind normally associated with academic achievement. It would be interesting to know if these

43. Gandara, Over the Ivy Walls, 28.

44. Ibid., 41.


familial stories are told in other low-income households and have as much of an impact as they did for Gandara’s subjects.

The chapter that compared the women in the study to a sample of younger women like them who went to graduate and professional school in the late 1980s and 1990s is particularly insightful and illustrates that the United States may be digressing rather than progressing in regard to educational equity and opportunity. The Chicanas of the oldergeneration were focused, confident women who performed better than the men and knew at an earlier age than the men that they were going to college. These women benefited from the feminist movement of the 1970s and the efforts made to further educational opportunity through recruitment programs targeting students of color and low-income students. The women of the 1990s, the second sample, had wholly different experiences and met roadblocks on their path to and through college. While they, like the older cohort, attributed their drive to excel to their mothers, many experienced academic difficulties before college. Additionally, more than half of this sample was married or had been married by the time they completed their graduate education, as opposed to most of the older Chicanas who were single and childless throughout their schooling. And unlike the older cohort, a smaller percentage were recruited to college. By the 1990s, equal opportunity programs diminished and Chicano enrollments in colleges had declined from the 1970~:~

Unfortunately, the diminution of equal opportunity programs has reached an extreme in California with the elimination of affirmative action in 1996. In one year, the percentage of Latino, African-American, and American-InQan freshman admitted for Fall 1998 decreased by 54.7 percent at the University of California-Berkeley. These three underrepresented population groups comprised 20% of the admitted freshmen in 1997 and 11.3% in 1998. The greatest decline was among African- American admits - a 64.3% decline. Of the applicants offered admission for Fall 1998,2.4% were African American, 5.5% Chicano, 2.1% Latino, andO.3% American Indian.47 Other less prestigious University of California campuses experienced less of a decline in the numbers of underrepresented incoming freshmen students accepted and, in some cases, accepted more underrepresented students than theyear before.4* More underrepresented students accepted admission to the University of

45. Ibid., 54.

46. It is important to note that the majority of female Ph.D.’s, both in the 1970s and 1990s, obtained their degree(sJ in disciplines that are accustomed to having large numbers of women represented - social welfare, Spanish, education, and biology - rather than in male-dominated disciplines like physics, math, and engineering. This was also largely true for the Chicano Ph.D.’s.

47. Native American admits dropped by 58.9%, Chicanos by 56.3%, and Latinos by 21%. Jesds Mena and Gretchen Kell, “Admission Numbers Disappoint: Chancellor Pledges to Keep Berkeley’s Doors Open to All Californians,” Berkleyan, April 1-7, 1998, 1 and 11. 48. Looking at the entire University of California system, which includes eight undergraduate campuses, underrepresented minority students represented 17.5% of the freshmen accepted in Fall 1997 and 15.5% of those accepted in 1998. University of California-Riverside accepted more underrepresented minorities in 1998 thanin 1997, anduniversity of California-San Diego and Berkeley accepted over 50% fewerin 1998 than in 1997. Laura Schiebelhut, ”Meeting Marked by Student Protest,” Daily Californian, 15 May 1998, 1 and 6.

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California-Berkeley than expected due to extraordinary recruitment efforts, which even involved the Chancellor calling individual students to encourage them to attend the u n i v e r ~ i t y . ~ ~ Nevertheless, some declined admission in protest of the elimination of affirmative action. The mother of two African American prodigies in West Virginia did not allow her sons to accept admission to Berkeley for 1998 due to philosophical objections to the elimination of affirmative action. Although her children gained admittance based on “merit,” she realized that her gifted children were exceptions when it comes to the academic achievement patterns for African American The number of “underrepresented minorities” admitted to teh fall 1999 freshman class is 29.1% higher than in 1998. The population represents 13.2% of those offered admission for fall 1999. the University of California-Berkeley has stepped up recruitment efforts from last year to encourage these students to accept admission.51

There is an argument to be made that we, as a society that is highly racially stratified, should sacrifice arbitrary admissions criteria for the sake of diversity and equity. Affirmative action is one of the best ways to further equity for groups of people who are barred from certain opportunities due to the accident of birth. Furthermore, students, especially students of color and low income students, should not be penalized for attending substandard schools that do not prepare them adequately for college and life, in general. The University of California system has tried to address this problem and counteract Proposition 209 through the new “Four Percent Plan.” In March 1999 the University of California Board of Regents passed the Four Percent Plan which virtually guarantees acceptance to at least one Univer- sity of California campus to the top four percent of graduates from each high school in the state. Their eligibility to one of more of the universities will be based on their performance in University of California-required courses taken in high school and their performance on the SAT test and other assessments normally considered in selection and admission. The Plan is expected to be implemented in fall 2001.

Although there are some urban and rural schools that offer the advanced and rich curriculum of “good” suburban schools, the most advanced curricular track is not accessible to all students. In reality, and unlike Gandara’s subjects, most Latino and African American students can never benefit from these courses because they are tracked out of them well before they enter high school. Once in high school, most cannot achieve an academic record that would permit them to enter and succeed in the academic track during their four years of high school. As we well know, there are students of color and poor students who do manage to defy the odds and achieve at high levels. These examples, like the prodigies from West Virginia, are fodder for

49. It is expected that 10.3% of the incoming freshmen wiIl be Latinos, African Americans, and Native Americans. However, the number could be higher because 15 % of the applicants in 1998 &d not state their race or ethnicity (in 1997, only 6% declined to state their race or ethnicityj. Linda Lou, ”iMatriculant Rate Higher Than Expected,” Daily Californian, 22 May 1998, 1 and 6.

SO. See Vicki Smith, “Mom Keeps Prodigies at Home in Protest,” Associated Press, 30 May 1998. 51. Jesus Mena and Janet Gilmore, ”Minority Students Post Modest Gains in Admissions,” Berkleyun, 7 April 1999, 1 and 7.


those who oppose affirmative action and claim that anyone can succeed if they try hard enough. But the dynamics that lead to success or failure are much more complicated than that. Gandara suggests a few factors held in common by her subjects that may account for their academic success.

FROM LATINO ADVANCEMENT TO LATINO RETROGRESSION Certainly, bad schools are not the only factors in Latino educational failure.

Poverty, racism, hopelessness, English language hfficulties, or a simple disinterest in academics or schooling also play into the equation. But as educators who should be concerned with the achievement and welfare of all students, especially the most disenfranchised, there is much we can do to make school meaningful and effective despite the obstacles. Retrogressive educational reform proposals llke Propositions 187,209, and227 make ourworkmore difficult because they reinforce the racialization and social class patterns of school achievement. The most hopeful sign that this pattern of regression can be stemmed is the activism of youth and parents and their analysis of the problems that affect them. I recently attended a lunch time protest against theUnz initiative at a California high school that was very effective, creative, and hopeful. Strapping tape on their mouths that said “English only” and binding their hands with red, white, and blue ribbon, these young people sent the message that the Unz initiative will make it much harder for people with limited-English- proficiency to achieve in the educational system. Also at this school, during the past year Latino parents have begun to organize in mass to advocate for the educational welfare of their children, who they believe are being dismissed and underserved by the school. Similar mobilizations of Latinos have occurred throughout the state. Four years ago, high school students across California staged protests against Proposition 187 and they are continuing to protest, now against 227. Another hopeful sign is the work of public interest advocacy organizations, parents of LEP students who are challenging Proposition 227 in class-action lawsuits, and superintendents, like Bill Rojas of San Francisco, who has pledged to defy 227 if it is implemented by the state.52 Civil rights advocates were not successful in throwing out Proposition 209, but they were with 187. However, the Students for Educational Opportunity at Berkeley are seeking to place an “Equal Education Opportunity Initiative” on the June 2000 ballot that will call for a reinstatement of affirmative action policies in public education. My tempered optimism lies with such people, who continue to challenge the United States to uphold its own cherished principles of democracy. Patrisia Gonzales and Roberto Rodriguez note that while Proposition 227 supports democracy in the sense of simple majoritarianism, it opposes a more just democracy that requires an informed and politically active citizenry:

In the case of Proposition 227, we would argue that some who voted for it were subjected to outright falsehoods by noneducators, unsupported by facts or research. However, we do believe that many more voters -without children - were indeed well-informed, but decided to make another statement against the “brown and yellow hordes.” America’s body politic desccnded to something quite unusual: curriculum according to the will of the electorate. Perhaps what’s next

52. See Carol Ness, “Bilingual Measure Headcd to Court,” San Francisco Examiner, 3 June 1998, A1 and A8 andNanette Asimov, “Prop. 227 Challengedin Lawsuit,” San Francisco Chronicle, 4 June 1998, A1 and A13.

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is ”Americanization” schools for those who fail to learn English and American values within a year.. . .This is “democracy” at work. However, we live in a republic -that is, a nation of laws, designed to guard us against the tyranny of the majority. T h s is a dangerous road because tomorrow, it won’t simply be people of color who will be targeted, but children, non-Christians, women, workers, small-business owners, etc., until there will be no one left to fight b a ~ k . 5 ~

The studies of Donato, Suarez-Orozco and Suarez-Orozco, Muiioz, and Ghndara demonstrate that Latino youth can be highly motivated and inspired to achieve educationally and occupationally if provided with the necessary conditions for their success, without having to suppress their ethnic identity and native language in the process.

Ruben Navarrette and Richard Rodriguez experienced trauma and isolation on their roads through Harvard, Stanford, and Columbia, but they maintained hope throughout most of the journey. j4 Unfortunately, most Latinos in the United States often see limited options due to the poor educational system, oppressive caste-like racial and economic hierarchies, their invisibility, and incessant reminders of their minority status. The signs are not hopeful that the educational achievement trends for Latinos will reverse in the years to come. For a long time, Latinos have had the lowest levels of educational attainment, highest dropout rates, and hlghest illiteracy rates of all major population groups in the United States.55 To reverse this trend it seems necessary, as Antonia Darder argues, for Latinos and other disadvantaged students to be given more resources than those who have class privileges that help them achieve at the highest levels.56 Such a reallocation of resources could further fairness, equality, and democracy but should not be considered the sole solution. As educators and citizens who care about the health and well-being of all youth, we should go against the norm and take progressive steps to develop an educational system that is equitable, democratic, just, and caring.

53. Patrisia Gonzales and Roberto Rodriguez, ”Seeking the Root of the Truth,” Universal Press Syndicate, 12 June 1998. 54. Ruben Navarrette, Jr., A Darker Shade of Crimson: Odyssey of a Harvard Chicano (New York: Bantam Books, 1993); and Rodriguez, Hunger of Memory. 55. See Sonia M. Perez and Denise De La Rosa Salazar, “Economic Labor Force, and Social Implications of Latino Educational and Population Trends,” in Darder et al., Latmos and Education, 45-79. 56. Antonia Darder, “Creating the Conhtions for Cultural Democracy in the Classroom,” in Darder et al., Latinos and Education, 331-50.

Documents

LATINO EDUCATION, LATINO MOVEMENT