Aztlán Arizona: Mexican American Educational Empowerment, 1968–1978

2. A Measure of the Marginalized Mexican American: A Scholastic Survey of Spanish-Surnamed Strangers

25 chapter two A Measure of the Marginalized Mexican American A Scholastic Survey of Spanish-Surnamed Strangers Historically, the Mexican heritage population has been the largest and oldest of the Hispanic subgroups. They consistently represented more than three-fifths of the total US Latino population and, more meaningfully, comprised one-fifth of Arizona’s population by 1970.1 As a result of unique settlement patterns, a range of acculturation rates, and immigration trends, Arizonan-Mexican numbers have grown in absolute terms as they have settled across the state and established an array of resources and organizations to meet their varied educational needs. Yet despite their omnipresence , Arizonan-Mexicans have been mostly seen as a manageable labor force consigned to toil in factories and fields. In its widest scope, ArizonanMexicans found themselves in the anomalous position of living in a state of plenty, yet to which they were denied access by their race and ethnicity. Indeed, throughout the 1960s and 1970s, many Arizonan-Mexicans lived in both a material prison of poor educational conditions and an ideological prison of prejudice. Since Arizonan-Mexicans averaged four fewer years of education than Anglos, this only heightened their disillusionment. More broadly, from 1950 to 1970, the national Anglo education attainment median increased from the “mid-point in the senior high school year to the end of the first quarter in college,” while the Mexican American education median increased from the end of elementary school to the completion of junior high school.2 Whether rural or urban, Mexican Americans were underschooled throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Using 1970 as a barometer, in all urban areas Mexican American young men averaged approximately 26 • Chapter Two 9.7 years of schooling, and their female counterparts averaged 8.9 years of education. In rural regions, Mexican Americans both male and female averaged about 8.7 years of learning. Worse yet, rural farm areas maintained an even lower Mexican American average.3 Similar to Mexican Americans throughout the nation, Arizonan-Mexicans also had a propensity either to not complete middle school or to graduate high school. Arizona’s educational system is an important agent in shaping both individual and collective expectations of the state’s youth because, like the rest of the country, Arizonans are exposed to formal education from the ages six to sixteen, with the majority enrolled for even longer periods. Schools have the capacity to transmit beliefs, ideas, and patterns of behavior that are most consistent with social stability, which prepares students for full participation in society. It is generally acknowledged, moreover , that an effective education is a vehicle for moving and motivating groups of people from rejection, deprivation, and alienation to acceptance, financial prosperity, and inclusion. Like others, Arizonan-Mexicans sought the benefits of public education and resisted exclusion and segregation. In the face of protective citizenry statutes reflected in both the US and Arizona constitutions, Arizona educational efforts at the K–12 and collegiate level have a shameful history. Arizona public schools have failed to meet the needs of their Mexican heritage children. This lack of guidance on behalf of the educational system either indirectly or directly discouraged Arizonan-Mexicans from completing both grammar school and high school, so enrolling in institutions of higher education was rare. In fact, among Arizonans twenty-five or more years of age, most Anglos generally reached college-level education, while many Arizonan-Mexicans averaged a seventh grade education. Most Anglo youth fourteen or more years of age in Arizona earned at least a high school degree, whereas the average Arizonan-Mexican only reached the eighth grade.4 Whether central or southern Arizona, these statistics were virtually the same. In Phoenix, for example, the median years of school completed for Arizonan-Mexicans was 5.3 in 1950 and 6.1 in 1960. By the same token, Tucson’s ArizonanMexican community averaged 6.5 years in 1950 and less than a junior high degree a decade later. At the same time, in both cities, the average education for Anglos in 1960 was college level.5 Equally important, Phoenix and Tucson have a comparable school segregationist past, with each school federally mandated to desegregate in 1973.6 According to the Arizona Department of Education’s racial-ethnic sample survey, 77 percent of Arizonan-Mexican sophomores in 1970–1971 failed to reach their senior year.7 Not even one of every one hundred A Measure of the Marginalized Mexican American...