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April 17, 2004
Latinos and
Educational Reform in the United States
(Part 4)
By Manuel
Hernandez/HispanicVista.com
Latinos are no
longer streaming at barriers,
circumstances and struggles of the past
but are looking beyond to establish goals
and objectives, achieve dreams and become
successful as individuals, human beings
and communities. Instead of reverberating
that the educational system has been
responsible, Latinos have been able to
cast away fears of oppression and
hostility and unite to devise an
educational reform that will meet the
expectations and demands of all Latinos
and other emerging communities as well.
In Pat Mora’s
poem “Elena”, a Latina mother
recognizes her defenselessness when
confronted by the reality that her
children attend American schools, speak
English while she feels dumb and alone
because she could not understand them:
…Sometimes I
take my English book and lock myself in
the bathroom, say the thick
words softly, for if I try stop trying, I
will be deaf when my children need my
help (Latino Literature, p.116)
Latinos have decided
to literally come out of “the
bathroom” to work together as a
unified body for the education of their
children.
Looking beyond means
to bury the pain, anguish and
frustrations and stop blaming the system
for setbacks and failures. There has been
too much finger pointing and less
specific, concrete and academic
initiatives on how to tackle the
educational problems that Latino children
face today. Debates, research, studies
and perspectives are needed to examine,
expose, extract and shed insight on the
issues, but it is only when we
researchers, academicians, scholars,
teachers and administrators sit down on a
roundtable to seek a common thread in our
views that we can reform education.
Setting goals and
objectives are the first step in the
ladder of success to reform education. An
educational reform needs to define,
denotatively and connotatively, its goals
and objectives. The negative attitudes,
conflicts, self-inflicted wounds and
historical truths of yonder must be
used as a springboard in the road ahead.
The implementation of the reform will
lead us into a vision of a better
today, a brighter tomorrow and a
greater future which will as a result
help us attain higher academic standards
for our children.
Looking beyond means
to recognize our strengths and build upon
prior experiences. Experiences that are
not only reflective of achievements in
music and entertainment, but a mirror of
the academic successes of Latino teens.
In more than one instance, the four
year old millennium has taught us
all not to take our adversaries for
granted. As we continue to grow in
numbers, our greatest adversary may very
well be the education of our children.
According to his
biographers, President Abraham Lincoln
never really had formal schooling.
Lincoln's family migrated more than once,
and his family lived in very humble
circumstances. In spite of his limited
resources and poverty-stricken
up-bringing, today the world recognizes
his legacy. We Latinos have all the
resources available to make a difference
and leave a legacy for others to follow.
Let us take advantage of the time to
meet, create and design the ladder
of success to envision our children with
a dream, reachable, attainable and
available for all
_______________________________________
Manuel Hernandez, a
contributing columnist to
HispanicVista.com (www.hispanicvista.com),
lives in Puerto Rico where he teaches
school. He has a B.A. and MA Teaching
English. He is a candidate for a PhD. He
has just published a textbook titled,
Latino/a Literature in The
English Classroom (Editorial Plaza
Mayor, 2003). For more information,
e-mail him at mannyh32@puertoricans.com
.
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