In the Spring of 2006, the nation watched as unprecedented numbers of students walked out of their schools in opposition to U.S. House of Representative Bill 4437: The Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Control Act. The students’ energy and optimism for the future were palpable. These were not the apolitical, apathetic or out-of-control teenagers that the media often depict.
Today, in the midst of increasing political measures to deny basic rights and services to immigrants, we must remember that Latina/o students are part of a growing movement for social justice. Many are bilingual, the children of immigrants. Latina/o organizers see these students’ potential, but so do military recruiters, who are ubiquitous on working-class campuses. However, the U.S. government and America’s schools are doing little to build on these students’ strengths, invest in their futures or ensure their place in institutions of higher education.
In some cases, schools are actually squelching students’ cultural resources and their enthusiasm for learning. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the scripted “drill and grill” education that feeds our current “testocracy” under No Child Left Behind. Such forms of education foster endullment and rote memorization over critical thinking and active engagement. Likewise, the elimination of bilingual education and the limited use of multiculturally aware curriculums in K-12 classrooms devalue students’ cultural capital and hinder our advancement as a diverse society. Even in institutions of higher education, there are few courses on the dynamics of power and inequality, and programs in Asian American studies, Black studies, Chicano/Latina studies, and American Indian studies remain underfunded, understaffed and under assault.
Within our colleges and universities, too many poor and working-class students are being excluded. Using 2002 data, Hispanic Outlook journalist Michelle Adam exposed vast socioeconomic gaps in college completion rates. Though more than half of all 18-to-24-year-olds from families making over $90,000 had obtained a bachelor’s degree, only 6 percent of their counterparts from families making less than $35,000 had graduated from college. Since the 1980s, neoliberal reforms have devastated social programs like affirmative action, designed to increase the rates of college attendance among the under-represented. At the same time, the U.S. government’s emphasis has moved away from grants and toward loans. So, students rather than taxpayers are covering the costs of higher education. For example, in the California State University system, declines in state funding from 2002-2005 were passed on to students as fee hikes, pricing working-class students out of college. A 2005 report from the California Faculty Association indicates that though college applications at the CSU campuses are at a record high, student enrollment has declined.
