Chicana/o Struggles for Education: Activism in the Community

1. Changing Patterns of Mexican American Education

Between 1900 and 1960, school officials provided Mexican Americans with limited, substandard, and inferior public educational opportunities because of their subordinate status in the society and their cultural and linguistic characteristics. Those in power made sure that the adult members of the Mexican American community were structurally excluded from influential positions in public education and denied or discouraged from participating in the shaping of public school systems and their content. The pattern of education that developed in the first half of the twentieth century, with a few minor exceptions , then was that of community exclusion.1 Mexican origin students also were unwanted in the schools. Local and state schoolofficialsaswellaspoliticalleaders,Angloparents,andthegeneralpublic viewed them as racially inferior, culturally backward, and socially undesirable. These negative views in combination with intense pressures from political and economic interests opposed to their education soon led to the development of substandard and inferior forms of schooling. Students were denied equitable access to the schools, given separate and unequal facilities, institutionally mistreated in the schools, and provided with an imbalanced and subtractive curriculum . The imbalanced curriculum focused more on vocational training than academic instruction. The subtractive curriculum sought to divest the children of their Spanish language and their cultural heritage. The result of these actions was the emergence of a pattern of poor school performance.2 During the latter part of the twentieth and early twenty-first century, these historic patterns of education changed as a result of new social, economic, and political factors. The following provides a sketch of these changes and continuities since the 1960s and the forces impacting them over the decades. ONE Changing Patterns of Mexican American Education 8 chapter one DISCONTINUITIES IN PATTERNS During this period, two distinct patterns were significantly changed—the structural exclusion of the Mexican community and the linguistically subtractive curriculum. Prior to 1960, as noted above, Mexican Americans were excluded from important positions of influence in the public schools. Officials also demeaned, devalued, and suppressed the children’s language. Both of these patterns were significantly modified in the post-1960 years. From Structural Exclusion to Differentiated Inclusion The pattern of structural exclusion was disrupted and replaced with one of inclusion after the 1960s. During the latter part of the twentieth and early twenty-first century, Mexican origin individuals gained increased access to important positions in all areas of public education. They were elected to state, county, and local boards of education, appointed to state and private university boards of regents, and hired in increasing numbers as superintendents , principals, teachers, counselors, and faculty members. A new development in this period was their appointment or election to federal policy-making positions in Congress and in the Department of Education.3 Notwithstanding this increased access, they continued to be underrepresented in all of these positions. Their inclusion, in other words, was not signi ficant but limited and uneven in nature. Generally speaking, two patterns emerged—one of differentiation and one of tokenism and exclusion. The former pertained to positions within institutions that served the elementary and secondary grades in the public schools, the latter to those in higher education . The pattern of differentiated access to power can be observed in local and state board representation. Representation in these institutions ranged from moderate to significant. In major urban areas where Mexican Americans comprised a significant proportion of the school-age population, access to local school boards was relatively moderate. In 1960, for example, there were no ethnic Mexican school board members in three of the top five largest school districts in the country, although the percentage of Latina/o students in these cities was either growing or already appreciable. The school districts with significant numbers of ethnic Mexican children and no school board representation were Houston, Los Angeles, and Chicago. This situation changed by 2009. In this year, their representation in these local school changing patterns of mexican american education 9 boards increased, but only moderately. It ranged from 22 percent in Houston to 28 percent in Los Angeles.4 Despite their increased representation, it failed to keep pace with the overall percentage of Latina/o students in the school-age population.5 Their proportion of the total school-age population for each of these cities in 2009 was: Houston—61 percent, Los Angeles—73 percent, and Chicago—39 percent. Mexican Americans thus continued to be underrepresented on these...