Education has provided an avenue by which Hispanic-Americans have been able to surmount old stereotypes and succeed at the highest levels. That effort is being advanced by three Texas A&M University liberal arts professors who are addressing the importance of education to the Latino culture: Carlos Blanton in history, Marcos Portales in English and Sylvia Manzano in political science.
(Media-Newswire.com) - Education has provided an avenue by which Hispanic-Americans have been able to surmount old stereotypes and succeed at the highest levels. That effort is being advanced by three Texas A&M University liberal arts professors who are addressing the importance of education to the Latino culture: Carlos Blanton in history, Marcos Portales in English and Sylvia Manzano in political science.
According to Manzano’s Latino Education and Public Opinion: A View from the National Survey ( http://perg.tamu.edu/LNS_report.html ) , 14 percent of the U.S. population is of Latino origin. Over the past 20 years, Latinos have consistently cited education as the most important issue facing the community.
Most Latinos come from families with limited experience with the educational system. In the U.S., 40 percent of Latino adults have a parent that completed high school, the survey concluded. However, progress has been made from one generation to the next. Today, 63 percent of Latinos in the U.S. have completed high school.
Portales, author of Quality Education for Latinos and Crowding out Latinos, stresses the importance of the student-teacher relationship during the K-12 years. “If a student likes his teacher, a student will make an effort to learn,” he says. “If a student doesn’t like his teacher, for whatever reason, learning in school is less important to the student.”
Despite the fact that most Latinos are Spanish dominant, there is a strong agreement among Latinos on the importance of bilingualism, notes Blanton. Over 90 percent of Latinos in all parts of the country think it is important to learn English and also maintain Spanish.
Blanton’s focus is on the heritage and current issues of bilingual education, particularly in Texas. In his book The Strange Career of Bilingual Education in Texas, 1836-1981 ( http://www.tamu.edu/upress/BOOKS/2007/blanton.htm ), Blanton educates his readers on the history of bilingual education. Blanton reconnects Texas with its bilingual past by tracing the many changes that eventually led to the reestablishment of bilingual education in the 1960s and the adopted 1981 state law requiring that bilingual education must be provided in any district where 20 or more students in one grade level cannot speak English.
Though there are some differences of opinion, Latinos are broadly interested in policy that will bolster educational outcomes for the entire group, Manzano concluded. This sentiment is rooted in the idea that all ethnic group members benefit from each other’s achievements. Seventy-one percent of all Latinos think that their personal success depends on how well other Latinos are doing.
Contact: Carlos Blanton: ckblanton@tamu.edu; Marco Portales: mportales@tamu.edu Sylvia Manzano: smanzano@politics.tamu.edu; or Kelli Levey, 979-845-4645 or klevey@tamu.edu.
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