| Latino
Education: Content Changes:
By Manuel Hernandez
When you look at United States Latino?s leading magazines,
you cannot help to see how much we Latinos have ignored significant
and in-depth content changes to our traditional mindsets.
Sections like business, ?cultura? and technology are all over
the Table of Contents. What about education? Why is it so
difficult to understand that without an education, Latinos
risk their social, economic and political voice in America?
Why are we so stuck up in distractions and entertainment while
our one-million high school Latino population faces a new
SAT and other advanced city, national and state mandatory
testing requirements without having the motivation, preparation,
encouragement and skills needed to pass these exams?
For Latinos to have a pro-active role in the world of business
(global entrepreneurship), technology (high-tech enterprise)
and science, the American educational system must consider
the academic needs of the great wave of Latino teen immigrants
who are left out of any kind of academic opportunity because
they lack the language and reading and writing skills necessary
to walk into the American world of opportunities. Without
concrete and specific content changes to the English curriculum,
Latinos will continue to score poorly and advance slowly and
lag behind in their quest of the American Dream.
Major milestones have been reached, but we cannot take for
granted the fact that we have accomplished so much with so
little. The new America is fencing its borders, and we Latinos
must fence up our voice and demand content changes to the
English curriculum in the United States. Hey, even the United
States Department of Education has opened an Office (White
House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans)
that is designing, coordinating and finding ways to improve
the educational excellence of Latino children. But the content
changes must occur within our community not without, no pun
intended.
When will those publishers who they themselves struggled,
hustled and worked extra hard to get published today, call
for a nationwide Latino leader education summit? When will
they publish ?scholarly work? written by Latino academics
and scholars instead of highlighting the curves and breasts
of Latina models and actresses in their front pages? I know
that there are so many issues: immigration, violence, security,
home ownership, teen pregnancy, entertainment, music and politics,
but all of these are dependent on one: education.
Why are we complacent with having a section on the contributions
of Latinos on the Saturday Morning News? America respects
its voices. It is time to speak out in harmony on the content
changes in the English curriculum. This is not the work of
one, but of many working together to provide teens with the
opportunity that by grace we have all received; an education.
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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 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 For
school orders, go to www.editorialplazamayor.com for more information or call
787-764-0455 For a complete bibliography: email me at mannyh32@puertoricans.com
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