Welcome to PuertoRicans.com

Professor Manuel Hernández Essays Collection Email: mannyh32@puertoricans.com Website http://www.geocities.com/mannyh32/ or http://www.editorialplazamayor.com/autores/manuel_hernandez.htm http://groups.yahoo.com/group/latinoliterature (Yahoogroup for the discussion of literature and education) For additional: HC-O1, Box 8552, Luquillo, Puerto Rico 00773 or e-mail. mannyh32@puertoricans.com Dec 6, 2007 -New Book Presentation - The Birth of a Rican - By Manuel Hernandez-Carmona

Latino/a Literature Seminars

Manuel Hernandez has given seminars on how to integrate Latino/a Literature in the English Classroom in cities across the United States, Puerto Rico and Mexico. He is willing to visit your school, community center, corporation and institution and share his view on this new literature. The literature can serve as a bridge for further literary analysis and can help students improve their scores on city, national and state testing requirements.
(Click here for curriculum vitae)

The Value Question in the Education of Latinos
By Manuel Hernandez copyright@2006
mannyh32@yahoo.com

Within the American core value system, education ranks extremely high. While I grew up in a close knit Puerto Rican family in the legendary Sleepy Hollow, New York, in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, my teachers imparted education as the most important value in American society. But when my family moved back to their homeland, the Island of Puerto Rico, in 1974, I immediately felt the shift in value system.
As a pre-adolescent in the sixth grade at an elementary school in Luquillo, Puerto Rico, I wanted to excel in school, but classmates and teachers alike described my attitude as shameful and egotistic. Even my best friend nicknamed me “soberbia” (excessive pride). It was not that education was not valued, but family, friendship and religion were above the value of an education.
It was not until at the age of fifteen, I went back to New York City and worked in an umbrella factory from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm and witnessed the day to day physical and emotional abuses that my fellow laborers experienced that I convinced myself that an education was the key to a higher quality of living.
For hundreds of thousands of Latino families that migrate to the United States, there are other values that do not necessarily substitute education but undermine its position in the value scale of the education of Latinos. There is a lot of talk about the potential of Latinos in America. From the world of politics to the world of music and entertainment, Latinos have become groundbreakers, frontrunners and pioneers. But education must move up the scale of values to further upgrade economic development and social mobility.
The overwhelming impact of the Latino family (“familia”) and its constituents is without reasonable doubt one of the most important values in the American Latino family. When it is time to decide whether to leave family behind for a college education or register in a school out of town or out of state with a better reputation in the field, there is much more than finances and scholarships to consider.
There is no doubt that we are gaining ground. According to an article by Matthew Pinzur from the Miami Herald, in Miami, advanced placement scores for Latinos are higher than ever. Miami-Dade had the largest number of Latino students passing the test recently. This is good news, and I applaud every local and national effort in the improvement of the academic enhancement of our children, but we must refocus and redesign a vision in education and transform education into our most powerful value. Why not take advantage of those who have done exactly that and present them as role models to those five million Latino children who are in American schools today?
We do not have to reinvent the past to make a dent in our children’s values, but we need to act now, tomorrow may be too late. Only then will we guarantee the legacy not only as the largest minority in the United States, but also as a people that redefined the education of our children and generations to come.

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