Latinization of U.S. Schools

Successful Teaching and Learning in Shifting Cultural Contexts

Jason Irizarry

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9781594519581
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317257004
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Fueled largely by significant increases in the Latino population, the racial, ethnic, and linguistic texture of the United States is changing rapidly. Nowhere is this 'Latinisation' of America more evident than in schools. The dramatic population growth among Latinos in the United States has not been accompanied by gains in academic achievement. Estimates suggest that approximately half of Latino students fail to complete high school, and few enroll in and complete college. The Latinization of U.S. Schools centres on the voices of Latino youth. It examines how the students themselves make meaning of the policies and practices within schools. The student voices expose an inequitable opportunity structure that results in depressed academic performance for many Latino youth. Each chapter concludes with empirically based recommendations for educators seeking to improve their practice with Latino youth, stemming from a multiyear participatory action research project conducted by Irizarry and the student contributors to the text.

PART 1

CON UN DEDO NO SE TAPA EL SOL

AN OVERVIEW OF LATINO EDUCATION

The issues confronting schools serving an increasing number of Latino students are vast and complex. At times, the task of educating students of any racial/ethnic or linguistic background in an era of high-stakes testing and rigid accountability measures may seem daunting and overwhelming, even for the most seasoned, optimistic, and ambitious educators. In their haste to respond to the persistent gaps in achievement between students of color and white students, fostered by an unequal opportunity structure, many schools have turned to the latest “canned curricula” to create a script that, if adhered to, “is guaranteed to increase” test scores, often at the expense of co-constructing a quality, well-rounded education for students.

Often overlooked in these efforts to improve Latino student achievement are larger forces at play that also affect the quality of education students receive, including but not limited to racism, linguicism, nativism, and xenophobia, among others forms of oppression. In these difficult times, many teachers, students, and families are struggling to fight back against what Ira Shor (1992) refers to as the “conservative restoration,” right-wing efforts to dismantle the gains of the civil rights movement. Specifically targeted in these “culture wars” are many of the progressive innovations in education, including ethnic and women’s studies, affirmative action, and multicultural and bilingual education.

The conditions under which students are educated are rarely addressed as part of the curriculum. In these difficult times, transformative educational practices are sorely needed but too often go overlooked. The marginalization and undereducation of Latinos and other students of color cannot be remedied by following the newest fad in pedagogical practices, making changes in policy without the resources to support their implementation, or focusing more on assessment. The chapters contained in this section explore the contexts influencing Latino education. They remind us that continuing to construct educational experiences that fail to address the sociocultural and sociopolitical realities of youth and their communities is a futile endeavor, like trying to cover the sun with your finger.

1

THE LATINIZATION OF U.S. SCHOOLS CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES

with Susana Ulloa, Graduate Student

The increased Latino presence in the United States over the past twenty years is undeniable, and the influence Latinos have had on shaping the cultural tapestry of the country is profound. Latinos have been at the epicenter of elections for political office, targeted as a swing vote and credited with playing a key role in the elections of former president George Bush (Suro, Fry, and Passel, 2005) and the current president, Barack Obama (Lopez, 2008). The increased numbers of Latino voters have enticed many politicians to begin to speak to the needs of this burgeoning, diverse community. Population gains among Latinos have not been lost on those within corporate America, who have shifted marketing strategies to attract their piece of the approximately 1 trillion dollars in Latino yearly spending power (Bowker, 2009). The winds of change are blowing and will continue to blow across Los Estados Unidos de América.

The more than 47 million Latinos in the United States currently account for approximately 14 percent of the population, making Latinos the largest “minority” group in the United States. Because of the youthful average age of Latinos, as well as increases in immigration to the United States from Latin America and the Caribbean, the Latino population is expected to soar to approximately 133 million by the year 2050 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2008a). Fueled largely by population growth among Latinos, in less than four decades people of color will outnumber whites in the United States. Although often referred to as “minorities,” Latinos are an emerging majority, already surpassing the white population in many communities and constituting the majority of students in school districts across the country, from Los Angeles, California, to Hartford, Connecticut, to Miami, Florida.

Although often lumped together, Latinos are not a monolithic group. The majority of Latinos in the United States are of Mexican descent (62 percent), followed by Puerto Ricans (9 percent), Central and South Americans (9 percent and 7 percent, respectively), Cubans (5 percent), and those of other Latino backgrounds (8 percent) (U.S. Census Bureau, 2008a). The experiences of groups included under the umbrella term Latino are varied, reflecting different histories, (im)migration patterns, and experiences in the United States.¹ Although viewed largely as an “immigrant population” or “new arrivals,” Latinos have a history in the United States that dates back centuries (MacDonald, 2004; Montero-Siebuth and Melendez, 2007). More recent growth in the Latino population has not been confined to states in the Southwest or Northeast, where Latinos have had a long-standing presence. The fastest-growing Latino populations are in the Northwest, South, and Midwest, in states like Tennessee, Utah, Minnesota, Washington, and Georgia (Center for Immigration Studies, 2003; Pew Research Center, 2005), where nascent Latino communities present new challenges for educators suddenly immersed in the “new Latino diaspora” (Wortham, Murillo, and Hamann, 2002). This chapter examines the Latinization of U.S. schools as well as the challenges and opportunities for educators presented by the changes to the racial/ethnic and linguistic texture of the United States.

MAPPING LATINIZATION

Although the surge in the Latino population and greater visibility of Latinos and Latino culture may be novel or even unfamiliar to some, Latinization is not a new phenomenon. The process of Latino self-definition and self-representation in the context of what is now commonly referred to as the United States can be traced back hundreds of years to the establishment of the first Latino communities in this country (Lao-Montes, 2001). Although the recent numeric increases among Latinos have resulted in increased attention—both positive and negative—given to the rapidly growing Latino population, we would be remiss to mark the inception of Latinization with the “Latin Explosion” (Cepeda, 2001; Farley, 1999) in music in the 1990s, when artists like Ricky Martin, Shakira, Jennifer Lopez, and Marc Anthony enjoyed mainstream success, selling millions of records and concert tickets to Latinos and non-Latinos alike, or with the monumental 2000 census, which provided empirical evidence for the oxymoronic title given to Latinos: “majority-minority.” Rather, Latinization in the United States has been an ongoing process in which Latinos have attempted to assert and preserve their cultural identities in the face of constant pressures to assimilate, shed their cultural identities, and adopt Anglo cultural norms. Certainly, cultural identities don’t develop in a vacuum. As Latinos have asserted their cultural identities, they have left an indelible mark on the cultural landscape of the United States and simultaneously been shaped by “outside” forces that influence the production of latinidad, or ways of being Latino.

Current manifestations of Latinization find their historical antecedents in the cultural collisions between Anglo and Latino culture dating as far back as the mid-nineteenth century. Much of the southwestern United States was once northern Mexico, annexed by the United States in 1848 after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican-American War (Zinn, 1999). When more than half of Mexico was seized and incorporated into the United States, those Mexicans that remained did not immediately shed their cultural identities and blend into the melting pot that welcomed and absorbed many western European immigrants. In fact, Latinos in the Southwest, a region that many continue to refer to as “occupied America” or Aztlán, the cultural home of the indigenous Nahua peoples (Acuña, 2004), sought to preserve their language and culture by championing provisions in state constitutions and through other legal means that would acknowledge the cultural and linguistic sovereignty of Latinos in the newly colonized territory (Cockcroft, 1995; MacDonald, 2004, MacDonald and Monkman, 2005).

Sizable Latino communities were established on the East Coast in the early and mid-nineteenth century, in places like Ybor City, Florida, and New York City, as exiled Cubans and Puerto Ricans launched struggles for independence from Spanish colonial rule from the mainland United States (MacDonald, 2001; Lao-Montes, 2008). Simply put, the Latinization of the United States began prior to the mass influx of western Europeans entering the country through Ellis Island and the ports of New York, referred to as the “Great Migration,” and still continues today. Sole consideration of Latinos as “foreigners” and “newcomers” and the process of Latinization as a recent or short-lived phenomenon would be shortsighted and historically inaccurate.

Evidence of Latinization abounds; you can hear it, see it, and taste it. The sounds of Latinization are audible in the public sphere, where Spanish is spoken by more than 12 percent of the population of the United States; extolled through reggaeton, salsa, cumbia, Tejano, hip-hop, mariachi, and merengue rhythms emanating from radio stations and across television programs catering to Latino viewers; and in the popular press through periodicals and media outlets such as People en Español and CNN en Español, as well as Spanish-language newspapers such as El Diario La Prensa, Nueva Opinión, and La Voz.² The United States is the second-largest Spanish-speaking country in the world, with more than 42 million people reported to speak the language fluently (U.S. Census Bureau, 2008b). This number does not include the approximately 4 million Puerto Ricans who live on the island of Puerto Rico, a colonial possession, whose native-born residents are citizens of the United States. The population of Hispanohablantes in the United States is larger than the Spanish-speaking populations of Spain (41.5 million), Colombia, (40.7 million), and Argentina (38.8 million) and is second only to Mexico, which has more than 101 million residents who speak Spanish. The cultural milieu created by the interactions between Latinos and members of other cultural groups forces us to reconceptualize the cultural identity of the United States as a nation.

Latinization has clearly become more visible, particularly as “brown” folks become the largest identifiable minority. Again, the Latino presence has infiltrated the “mainstream” with popular television shows like Ugly Betty, which was originally a Spanish-language telenovela broadcast throughout Latin America as Betty La Fea, as well as Dora the Explorer and Diego, cartoons appealing to both Latino and non-Latino children. The process of Latinization is evident in marketing campaigns and the commodification of Latino culture. It is palpable in the proliferation of Latino restaurants and expansions of fast food chains offering Latin-inspired cuisine like Pollo Tropical and Taco Bell.

Latinization, however, is about more than music, television shows, marketing plans, and food; it is about Latinos constructing and enacting identities of latinidad, asserting agency, and announcing their presence to the world. Latinization and discourses of latinidad occur in a broader sociopolitical context that can be characterized by a climate of antipathy and suspicion toward Latinos, especially Latino immigrants. Recent publications have taken an alarmist tone, citing Latinos’ retention of aspects of their cultural identities as detrimental to the future of the country:

The persistent inflow of Hispanic immigrants threatens to divide the United States into two peoples, two cultures, and two languages. Unlike past immigrant groups, Mexicans and other Latinos have not assimilated into mainstream U.S. culture, forming instead their own political and linguistic enclaves—from Los Angeles to Miami—and rejecting the Anglo-Protestant values that built the American dream. The United States ignores this challenge at its peril. (Huntington, 2004, p. 30)

Comments like these are reflective of an anti-immigrant and, more specifically, anti-Latino immigrant climate. Hate crimes against Latinos increased by 40 percent between 2003 and 2007, augmented in large part by a rise in violence against immigrants (U.S. Department of Justice, FBI, 2008). Physical violence against Latinos has been rampant in states along the border between Mexico and the United States, as armed civilian militia groups target alleged so-called illegals. In the summer of 2009, the former executive director of the Minuteman American Defense, an anti-immigration vigilante group that purports to defend the U.S. border, and two of the group’s members were charged with the murder of an Arizona man and his nine-year-old daughter and the attempted murder of the man’s wife (Oppmann, 2009). Many other alleged border crossers have been killed by vigilante violence. The anti-Latino backlash can be felt in other regions of the country as well. One case receiving considerable attention occurred recently in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, where two white men beat Luis Ramirez, a twenty-five-year old Mexican immigrant and father of two children, to death while shouting racial epithets. The two assailants were convicted of simple assault but cleared of the more serious charges. After a federal investigation, three police officers involved with the case have been indicted for their alleged role in a cover-up, which more than likely influenced the outcome of the case (Pitts, 2009). The potential police cover-up suggests that in communities like Shenandoah, Latinos don’t have meaningful access to a system to redress their maltreatment.

Racist, anti-immigrant, and anti-Latino sentiment shapes the larger sociopolitical contexts in which Latino youth are educated. Schools, as sites where Latino identities are enacted, contested, and renegotiated, have not been exempt from nativist tendencies or a propensity for assimilationist approaches to the education of Latino students. As such, the tensions emerging between Americanization and Latinization agendas in schools require a closer examination.

THE LATINIZATION OF U.S. SCHOOLS

Because many communities are segregated by race/ethnicity as well as socioeconomic status, schools are often the first places where Latino youth encounter discrimination based on race, language, and/or class. Most immigrant groups have experienced discrimination at some point in their history. However, Latinization in the context of the United States has been especially contentious because of Latinos’ desire to hold on to important aspects of their cultural identities. For this reason, Latinos have been described as “unassimilable” (Glazer and Moynihan, 1963), opting for a model of integration based on cultural pluralism, where individuals can retain and have their identities affirmed, as opposed to one based on assimilation and Anglo conformity, where individuals shed their cultural identities in favor of adopting the cultural norms of the dominant group.

Latino struggles to preserve their cultural identities and receive equitable educational opportunities have been met with resistance throughout history. Take, for example, initiatives in the Southwest to exclude Latino children from schools serving white students, as evidenced in Alvarez v. Lemon Grove School District (1931), Mendez v. Westminster (1945), and other court cases. In both cases just mentioned, Latino families were victorious, securing access to schools for their children. Although these legal victories established a foundation and legal precedents for the Supreme Court’s decision to declare de jure, or legal, segregation unconstitutional in 1954, Latinos were not officially recognized as covered under the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, decision until 1973 (Cockcroft, 1995) and today remain one of the most segregated groups in U.S. schools.

More recent efforts to curb the tide of Latinization can be seen in the attack against bilingual education and the elimination of bilingual programs in California, Arizona, and Massachusetts, states that educate more than 10 million English learners (ELs), the overwhelming majority of whom are Latino Spanish speakers. Instead of treating Latino students for whom English is a second language as “emergent bilinguals” with the potential to communicate in multiple languages, as posited in the work of Ofelia García and her colleagues (García, Kleifgen, and Falchi, 2008), schools in these states and most others across the country have as their primary goal getting students to become fluent in English with little, if any, attention given to nurturing the development of the students’ first language. Teaching content and academic skills in the students’ primary language while they acquire English is a seen by many critics as “anti-American” (English First, 2009). Notably, the one-year sheltered immersion models that replaced bilingual education programs in California, Arizona, and Massachusetts are not based on widely accepted data on language acquisition, which unequivocally state that it takes, on average, five to seven years to gain academic proficiency in another language (Brisk, 2006; Crawford, 2000; Cummins, 1999; Garcia, 2005).

The elimination of bilingual education has been devastating for ELs (Gutiérrez et al., 2002). A case in point is Boston, Massachusetts, where a comprehensive evaluation of the impact of the policy change documented negative results. English learners in Boston Public Schools (BPS) had one of the lowest dropout rates in the city prior to 2002, the year the ballot initiative eliminating bilingual education was passed. More recent data regarding the achievement of ELs in BPS indicates that seven years later, they now have the highest dropout rate in the city (Tung et al., 2009).

Research has documented the success of bilingual education in simultaneously teaching students curriculum content in their native language while helping them acquire academic English (Freeman, 1998; Perez and Torres-Guzmán, 1996; Valdés, 2001). However, because of the controversies surrounding bilingual education, stemming, we argue, from efforts to curb Latinization, bilingual programs across many of the other forty-seven states have been truncated. In many schools, as described later in Chapter 7, teachers and administrators have implemented unofficial English-only policies that prevent students, even students who are biliterate and fluent in English, from communicating in Spanish. Some teachers may even think they have the best interests of the student in mind, contending that they are preparing “them for the real world and the real world operates in English,” as one teacher shared at a professional development presentation we delivered with the students. The population of Spanish speakers in the United States, numbering more than 40 million, might argue otherwise. The real world is multilingual, although English undoubtedly remains a dominant mode of communication in the United States.

Beyond the curbing of multilingualism, one-way, assimilat...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction Teaching and Learning in Shifting Cultural Contexts: Pa’ que lo sepas
• Part 1 Con un dedo no se tapa el sol: An Overview of Latino Education
• Part 2 Ojos que no ven, corazon que no siente: Latino Student Identities
• Part 3 Quien siembra vientos, recoge tempestades: Policies and Practices Affecting Latino Education
• Part 4 No hay bien que de mal no venga: The Transformative Potential of YPAR
• Epilogue YPAR as a Shared Journey and Destination
• Notes
• References
• Index
• About the Author