Chicano Students

Thus, the one characteristic that still segregates the Hispanic student is language. That they do not speak English necessitates a bilingual teacher, ESL and bilingual classes, and classrooms grouped according to language, which means a de facto separation by race as well. Into this classroom, because of the high concentration of a people of similar cultures, comes their habits, beliefs, practices, and celebrations along with the students. Valencia summarizes the history and characteristics of second language acquisition and then concludes chapter 4 with "General Policy and Practice Implications for Education," such as "One major goal of Chicano language minority education should be the development of the full repertoire of linguistic skills in English, in preparation for participation in mainstream classes" (113).

Valencia notes that children can learn more than one lang

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of education America makes can begin to be realized: knowledge can become power when used well, and there does not have to be a loss of culture in its use. The potential dropout, alienated perhaps by the English speaking teacher, can then be brought back by the Spanish speaking peer who can demonstrate personally that success is possible if one makes the effort. Carter states that "all social institutions perform educational functions in the sense that they socialize people--that is, they teach them to operate within the framework of socially set norms" (13-14). While this is undoubtedly true, the next question is whether this is good or bad. While on the one hand Mexican-Americans work in the U.S. and many become citizens here, at the beginning of their presence in the United States they were not the dominant culture that created public education, nor were they the principal monetary supporters of the public schools. This sounds mercenary, but it is how many people think when their money is taken by the government; if they at all can they will arrange it to be spent how they want. Second, those influential in the school were those who were politically involved, voting for the school board members, joining the PTA, and basic
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Approximate Word count = 1977
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)

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