Hispanic/Latino Education

Latino students have historically faced educational settings in which their home culture, language, and heritage are not valued and they are coerced into assimilating the dominant culture. Many students struggle to adopt a school identity under such circumstances and fail to succeed in school. The result has been a need for real reform in dealing with the difficulties facing Latino students and the practices put into place to help them reach their social and intellectual potential.

The politics of identity strongly influence the formation of Latino adolescents' ability to succeed in school. The current climate in many schools' practices results in “subtractive schooling” in which the cultural, community, and linguistic resources a student brings to the school environment are “subtracted” and dismissed as irrelevant and unvalued within the dominant school culture. A number of different researchers document how schools in the United States have historically failed to recognize the Hispanic students' knowledge as a potential resource and instead view their backgrounds as a problem that must be overcome through an assimilationist model of cultural and linguistic eradication.

Reformers have sought to implement practices that mitigate the assimilationist educational practices. An examination of deculturalization programs historically utilized within the United States includes segregation and isolation, forced change of language, curriculum and textbooks (that reflect the culture of the dominant group), use of teachers from the dominant group, and the frequent reality in which dominated groups are not allowed to express their culture or religion. These methods continue to be employed to a large degree within American schools, resulting in the student's self-worth, as embodied by his or her primary culture and language, being diminished and the worth of his or her identity questioned.

Reformers contend that the climate of the classroom is not politically neutral, but serves as a place of cultural transmission. They assert that the hegemonic values of the dominant culture are transmitted through the everyday rituals and routines of the classroom as well as through the transmission of ideas. The traditional teacher-dominated classroom reflects the balance of power found in society at large. That is, students are rewarded for performing according to the expectations of the dominant culture. The nature of the students' socializing experience is largely dependent upon their socio-economic background, and therefore the “hidden curriculum” is somewhat different for many bicultural students than for other students. Students from the dominant culture are naturally better prepared to meet the expectations of mainly White middle-class teachers and administrators and to simply “do school” better than many of their bicultural counterparts. Reformers argue that in an educational system that devalues minority students' cultural worth, the school perpetuates the problem of the student's inability to develop a school identity. As a result, many bicultural students fail to find validation within the largely Anglo academic environment and resort to a street identity within a familiar culture in which they can find acceptance for who they are and what they know.