In America, Latino’s face many struggles that hinder their chances of living the American dream. One of the biggest struggles that Latino’s youth face is dropping out of school due to circumstances they encounter, such as Pregnancy, Gangs and Poverty. Hispanics are the fastest-growing ethnic minority in the United States today. The number of Hispanic students in the nation's public schools nearly doubled from 1990 till present day. The dropout rate of Hispanic youth between age 16 and 19 has been at an all-time high over the past couple of years. One-third of Hispanic students perform below grade level while more than 50 percent of Hispanic dropouts have less than a 10th-grade education. Latinos today are underrepresented in key indicators of school achievement such as high school and college graduation rates, standardized tests, and college entrance examinations.
Latino’s youth now a day are too focused on following trends, which they forget that education is something that is needed in life not only to better you but to create a better living environment for yourself. Education can be the key to success which will open many doors in your life. Without having an education you won’t be able to get a good job and you will be stuck at the bottom of the social class without being able to change that. One of the primary causes of Latino dropouts come from the lack of parental involvement and outreach, lack of professional skills among teachers to work with young boys of color, and the pressing challenges to adhere to high stakes testing. The problems that Latino males face are unique in that they range from language proficiency, immigration and cultural differences where there is a greater pressure to contribute to the family fina...
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...merica. But something that we can do to try to fix this problem is to educate our youth about the importance of education by showing them the benefits of going to school and obtaining a degree. Give the youth an understanding of education and what it offers, Education provides us with knowledge about the world. It paves the way for a good career. It helps build character. It leads to enlightenment. It lays the foundation of a stronger nation. Education makes a man complete. Education is a tool that you would be able to use all your life, for the progress of a nation, for the enrichment of the Latino communities in general, education is important. Every single one of you has something that you're good at. Every single one of us has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That's the opportunity an education can provide.
In Subtractive Schooling: US-Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring, Angela Valenzuela investigates immigrant and Mexican American experiences in education. Valenzuela mentions differences in high schools between U.S born youth and immigrants such as how immigrants she interviewed seemed to achieve in school as they feel privileged to achieve secondary education. However, she found that her study provided evidence of student failure due to schools subtracting resources from these youths. Both are plagued by stereotypes of lacking intellectual and linguistic traits along with the fear of losing their culture. As a Mexican American with many family members who immigrated to the U.S to pursue a higher education, I have experience with Valenzuela’s
In the article “The Latino Education Crisis” by Patricia Gandara who talked about how the rate of Latinos that are educated and graduates from school are so low and how they have low income because most of their parents are not educated and he also stated some solutions that can help like starting an early childhood education to help the student to have more educational interest and so many more. I agree with the author that Latino are facing allot of educational crisis because most of them are less educated, they have less income in their families because parents don’t have enough money to send their children to schools and because the parents lack education. I believe that there are solutions like focusing on early education
The Latino Generation: Voices of the New America is a book written by Mario T. Garcia. This book tells the individual life stories of individual Latino Americans all attending the same class at University of California, Santa Barbra. The book discloses stories and events told by 13 students each who narrate from first person and give us a brief description of their life. The book is composed of 13 sections with an additional introduction and conclusion (Garcia, Kindle). Within this reflection I will describe the key points within this book and compare the stories within this book not only to each other, but also to additional stories of Latino Americans and how Garcia’s book rids the general public of misconception of Latinos.
Both the early-exiters and college-goers share these environmental realities, often times living in unsafe neighborhoods, dealing with multiple relocations, cramped living conditions, and overworked parents. The spatial segregation that perpetuates these realities is executed on class lines, where predominantly immigrant neighborhoods generally have more poverty, and as a result have a higher-crime rate. Gonzales explains how this process is cyclical, poorer people have a higher propensity to resort to criminal activity, subsequently the crime rate is higher, this makes less wealthy people want to live in predominantly Latina/o communities, keeping property values low. If the K-12 education largely bases its funding off of property taxes, Latina/os are more likely to receive a subpar education - thus the masquerade of education as the “great equalizer” comes plummeting down, both the college-goers and the early-exiters are subject to systemic failures. Furthermore, the groups not only share similar economic/financial constraints but they both are partially paralyzed by a sense of paranoia, of fear about the consequences of their undocumented status and the status of their family
Tara Yosso’s is a motivational, informational book that gives us an insight and awareness of how the Chicana/o students struggles throughout their education in the American society. Critical Race Counterstories Along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline, portrays how Latino students have been marginalized in the educational system. Yosso addresses the problems that might be hindering students of color to drop out of school to continue to higher education. She does this research by analyzing various situations that still happen in the K-12 educational system, as in high school, and higher education. Yosso also addresses counterstories to better understand the experiences and struggles Chicanas/os go through in their schooling. Counterstories are important to be able to know what Chicanas/os struggles go through. Also tells about the outcomes that Chicanas/os have overcome when they are in a situation were they ate being underrepresented and how they have been dealing with these unequal educational opportunities. Her book addresses, awareness of how the Chicana/o culture is being underrepresented in the American educational system. It gives an understanding of why the Chicana/o students are leaking out of the educational pipeline. It also shows the obstacles this Latino students have to face to be able to make it through the educational pipeline. Chicana/o students want to continue to higher education they have to transform the educational system and acknowledge this culture to be successful instead of setting them to failure. Furthermore, this critique will analyze the strengths and the weaknesses of Tara Y...
In the book “Academic Profiling” by Gilda L. Ocho, the author gives evidence that the “achievement gap” between Latinos and Asian American youth is due to faculty and staff of schools racially profiling students into educational tracks that both limit support and opportunities for Latinos and creates a divide between the two groups. Intersectionality, the ways in which oppressive in...
As the Latino population in the United States continues to grow, U.S. Census Bureau, 2001, increasing attention is being turned toward understanding the risk and protective factors of immigrant Latino and U.S.-born Latino children and families. The demographic data relating to Latinos in the United States estimate that one of every two people added to the U.S population was Latino, in July 2009 Latino population was the fastest growing minority group U.S Census Bureau, 2010. Despite the increased risk of growing the immigrant families are in lower risk of Social Economic Status, having parents with less education and limited with language and knowledge about education. Immigrating to one place to another is often the most stressful event
Students were grouped by IQ, those who had an above average or higher were helped to go to college and those who had a low IQ’s were not given the support or the push needed to get them into college. Educators allowed low education standards and refused to see students as equals. The advisors set students sights low for the future by encouraging how service jobs were a practical choice for us Mexicans. Cleaning houses were the normal thing to do for Mexican-American females. Students were tired of the inadequate staff and the staff's lack of concern for their students. The students sent out a survey among the other students to see if they were satisfied with what they were getting from their education. The result was that the schools and instructors were not meeting the needs of the students’ more so of the Chicano students.
Stern, G. M. (2009). The 'Secondary'. Why Latino students are failing to attend college. Education Digest: Essential Readings Condensed for Quick Review, 75(1), 46-49. U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics.
“We Latinos are a large population, and we're growing fast. But, it doesn't do us any good if we don't get educated so we can help the next generation. Love education. Work hard. Don't give up. It's all about learning, all about pride, all about life.” These are the words of Rueben Martinez, my Latino hero.
Education is the key to individual opportunity, the strength of our economy, and the vitality of our democracy. In the 21st century, this nation cannot afford to leave anyone behind. While the academic achievement and educational attainment of Hispanic Americans has been moving in the right direction, untenable gaps still exist between Hispanic students and their counterparts in the areas of early childhood education, learning English, academic achievement, and high school and college completion.
However, Hispanics also has a gender role with the highest dropout rates; can you guess what gender has the highest dropout rate? If you said men, then you are incorrect. Actually women have a higher dropout rate than men. Women are also known to be less likely to graduate from college and earn a college degree because most women dropout before even being able to graduate high school. Women drop out for several of reasons, whether they get pregnant, have personal issues, are gang related, or have financial issues at home. Census Bureau statistics has shown that women of the ages of 16-24 dropout rate is 30% and only 10% of those women complete four or more years of college. It is a low percentage of women who attend college and
Hispanics have the highest dropout rate compared to all the other ethnic groups. The rate is 26%. Although, young Hispanics are positive about their future, they place a high sense of honor towards education, and work hard for their futures. But they are likely to drop out of school to become a teenage parent. They also have a higher risk of being exposed to gangs, and compared to Asians and Whites, Hispanics are more likely to live in poverty. Yet native born Hispanics are less likely to drop out of school or become a teen parent. But U.S born Hispanics don’t always do better, some do even worse than foreign born. Like for example, they are twice as likely to have been associated with gangs, be in a fight, or have been caught utilizing one
The education system has been a controversial issue among educators. Requirements of school do not let student choose what they want to study for their future. It’s a big issue to force student study specific curriculums, which don’t help them improve, and what they like to create something. Educators choose a general system for education to all students which based on general knowledge. Intelligent or genius students have to be in that system of education, which doesn’t let them improve their creativity. Educators attempt to change that system to make it better, but their changing was not that great to be an example for the world. Also, did that change qualify education system to compete other systems or not? In some examples and reasons have been made me agree with some of points from Gatto’s and Edmunson’s and disagree them.
Education is a very important aspect of the lives of all people all over the world. What we learn, not just in the classroom, shapes who we are. We take our education everywhere we go. We use it when talking to our buddies about sports or music, we use it while solving a math problem, we use our education while debating with our family whether or not we should watch TV or go to the movies. Our education is the foundation of who we are, since every decision we make and every thought we think is dependent on what we know. Imagine how different the world would be if everyone craved learning to such a degree that at lunch tables all over the world the topic of conversation isn't who likes who, or how drunk someone got over the weekend, but it would be what books were read over the weekend, and what new ideas were thought of. This crave for learning would be an ideal but still suggests need for improvement with the current educational system. It seems that the problem with education is that somewhere along the lines the human race forgot (assuming they, at one point, understood how valuable information is) that learning is not just a mandatory process, but also an opportunity to transcend and open the gateway to a better understanding.