WHY  ARE WE DOING  THIS ?

THE  EMERGING  HISPANIC  MAJORITY

“WHO CARES?” ATTITUDE:

When the principal of an elementary school in central Texas announced over the P.A. system on May 5th that, “Today is Mexican Independence Day, boys and girls. It’s just like our Fourth of July,” a teacher went to her office to say that she had made a mistake. “Don’t make trouble,” said the principal. “We’ve always taught it that way.” The teacher was author Don Miles, and he began to search for books that would correct the principal’s assertion.

What did he find? There were fifty-six children’s books on the market about Cinco de Mayo.  In almost all of them, the invading French army loses the Battle of Puebla to the Mexicans. Then, when you turn the page, it says, “Now, here’s how to make a piñata for your classroom party.” There is no attempt to say why the French were there, what they wanted, or what happened next. In bookstore appearances all along the Texas border with Mexico - from Brownsville to Laredo - Don Miles found that hardly anyone knows the history behind the battle.

Before a panel of “experts” at a national book convention in New York, Don mentioned that his book,  Cinco de Mayo: What is Everybody Celebrating?,  was selling fairly well at colleges and museum gift shops, but not in mainstream bookstores. The experts’ advice: just change the title to The Secret Diary of Anna Nicole Smith.

Dr. Minerva Miles

SCHOOL “HORROR STORIES”:  

Behind the scenes, over the years, Miles and his wife - Dr. Minerva Gonzalez Angulo Miles - discovered a number of situations that work against Hispanic students. These are just a few:

• Dr. Minerva Miles was supervising student teachers at a number of school districts. In one, she visited a bilingual class and tried to strike up a conversation with a kindergartner - in Spanish. “I don’t speak any Spanish,” said the little boy. That immediately raised a red flag. “Why is this kid in ‘bilingual,’” thought Dr. Miles. It turns out that the district paid so little that it had not been able to attract fully certified bilingual teachers. There had been a parade of substitutes, each lasting for one year, and no one really knew what the state and federal rules were. They were lining up kids in the gym on the first day of school, and those who “looked Mexican” were placed in the bilingual class. The more students they could put in “bilingual,” the more state and federal money they would receive.

• As Don Miles transferred to a new elementary school, the principal told him that she had a problem involving some Hispanic students over the summer. Some of them had managed to “exit” from the bilingual class, but their English was not strong enough to compete on the state’s standardized tests. Others had been removed from the bilingual class because their parents were unhappy with the bilingual teacher and had discovered that - if you put it in writing - you could take your child out of that class. “Just give them to me,” said Don. The combination of five formerly-bilingual students, plus seven Hispanic students who were already assigned to the class, gave him twelve Hispanic students out of a total of twenty. In other words, Hispanics were sixty percent of the class.
   
• That’s normal now in many Texas school districts, but at the time it raised some eyebrows. Here’s what happened:
   
• When the principal arrived to observe a math lesson, the class was seated in a circle on the floor, singing a math song in Spanish, (anglos included!) The Hispanic students couldn’t wait to go home and “show off” what they had learned in math that day, whether their parents were English-speaking or not.
   
• One little girl - highly motivated - wrote beautiful compositions in English. She had been born in Mexico near the gold mine that’s featured in the book and the movie, Treasure of the Sierra Madre.  She almost always got 100’s on her compositions, and she would often surprise the school librarian during “story time” by yelling out things like, “That’s a metaphor!” She wanted to copy her compositions into Spanish, so that she could take them home and read them aloud to her parents. The parents were not only non-English-speaking, but they could neither read nor write in Spanish. You can imagine what pride they felt in an eight-year-old daughter who was getting hundreds in both languages.
   
• A fellow teacher walked up to Don as he was posting the girl’s   compositions - in both languages - on the hallway bulletin board.  “That’s entirely inappropriate,” she said. “They should be learning English.”“There’s her ‘hundred’ in English,” said Don, pointing to one of the compositions.  “This just happens to be a gifted child,” he said. “Gifted? HAH!” said the other teacher, walking away. Apparently, in her little world, “Hispanic” and “gifted” did not belong in the same sentence.
   
• One subject that is not yet tested at the third grade level in Texas is Social Studies.  In the textbook used at the time Don was teaching, token attention was paid to minorities by featuring such notable figures as Benjamin Bannister.  What? You don’t know who Benjamin Bannister is?  He is the black fellow who laid out the streets of Washington, DC, as a surveyor before the city became the nation’s capital. The coverage of Hispanics was even worse:  Juan and his sister are pictured in a photo, waiting for a school bus in Mexico City. Third grade readers are told that they are Mexican. That’s it! As in the case with Benjamin Bannister, the coverage is as bland and boring as possible.
  
  Don asked the principal if he could set the textbook aside and produce a bilingual play for Cinco de Mayo.  It was mostly in Spanish, with English “subtitles” provided by announcers on a hidden microphone backstage. A blond, blue-eyed eight-year-old boy with a German background played the part of General Ignacio Zaragoza - in Spanish - beautifully. Some of the “anglo” kids played the roles of French army officers, reciting their lines in French, thanks to the help of a fellow teacher. Hispanic parents - some with video cameras - crowded the auditorium. Many were “shushing” each other to hear the dialogue, because most of them had never heard the story before.  Six classes - the entire first grade - provided the folkloric dances. The authentic history and culture were shared and enjoyed by all.
   
• Dr. Minerva Miles observed during a semester at Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas, that her anglo students were studying hard for exams in Spanish, while most of the Hispanic kids were not. “They assume they already know it,” she said, “because abuelita (‘grandma’) spoke it with them at home.” That works until the exam asks you to conjugate something in the preterite tense. Grandma had never talked about anything like that. What they were speaking with abuelita was “childhood” Spanish. It’s not the same at college level.
   
• Dr. Miles’ worst case scenario was that of a young man in one of her classes who “looked” very typically Mexican or Mexican American, and whose name was Rodrigo. He was a very quiet student, and almost never volunteered to speak in class. On the last day of class for the semester, Dr. Miles met Rodrigo in the elevator on the way to the classroom. “Buenos dias, Rodrigo,” she said. “¿Como estas?” Rodrigo looked confused. “Huh? What?” he mumbled, as though he didn’t have a clue about how to respond. As Dr. Miles returned home, she said to Don, “There’s a heritage being lost, here. How sad!”
   
• In a number of Texas school districts, students in the bilingual class are deliberately isolated from the rest of the school. Other classes are told not to play with them on the playground. The “bilinguals” sit at tables far from the others at lunch, and are generally not allowed to mingle with the rest of the student body. Instead of hearing English from other children with whom they might otherwise socialize and interact, they are inundated with worksheets. This breeds resentment and a sense of inferiority which only grows as they progress toward high school and eventually drop out.
   
• The Texas State Board of Education, which must approve all textbooks used in the public schools of that state, was preparing at one point to vote on a policy that would cover all social studies and history books for the next ten years. There were news reports that some board members wanted to remove such figures as Cesar Chavez and Thurgood Marshall from such books, because they were allegedly “unimportant.” Cesar Chavez should be well-known to American Hispanics. Thurgood Marshall, for those who may not recall, was a former United States Solicitor General and later a Supreme Court Justice. The proposed action of removing them would deny minority students of two major “heroes” from their respective backgrounds.
   
• Teachers and librarians frequently write to the editors of publications in their fields that many - if not most - of their students are either Black or Hispanic, but that the characters in almost all of their books are White. They complain that it is very hard to find reading material that reflects the ethnic makeup of their communities. A few scattered publishing houses specialize in such books, but they are not backed by a strong national distribution system or effective promotional campaigns. They are not well-known, and the publishing and bookstore industries have little or no incentive to  publicize them or carry their products.
   
• A similar situation exists for authors who write about subjects concerning Hispanics. Many literary agents simply do not care to handle material in that area, making it far more difficult for those authors to find a publisher. At the national convention known as “Book Expo America,” author Don Miles asked a panel of experts who were conducting a seminar on “Latino” publishing if they could name any agents willing to work with authors in that area. They could not.

A  CALL  FOR ACTION

BOOK REVIEWS and BIBLIOGRAPHIES:

We plan to not only post our own reviews of books in the field of Mexican and Mexican American history and culture, but also to maintain a standing online bibliography of those books which we recommend, so that teachers, librarians, parents, bookstores, museums and others in a form which can be easily can easily downloaded. We are already a member of the American Library Association, and on the association’s Multicultural Committee. We subscribe to their magazine, Multicultural Review.  The magazine covers Asian, African and other cultures as well as Hispanic, and we have bought some of the recommended Hispanic books. We agree with most of the reviews, but disagree with others (especially the one for $85 that claims the Mexicans lost the Cinco de Mayo Battle of Puebla!)

Benito Juarez

EVENTS CALENDARS:

Starting with the greater Austin, Texas, area, we plan to post events which are taking place that help the Hispanic community to “share the culture” with others. These will be done in attractive “poster” form, so that they may be downloaded weekly and posted on the community bulletin boards of libraries, museums, schools, bookstores and other venues where they will be seen by a wider audience. We will encourage each institution to appoint a volunteer who will update the posters every week, so that members of the performing organizations will not have to personally visit each location to have their event publicized.

“BEST PRACTICES” SURVEYS:

We plan to organize teams of parents, teachers and others who are interested. They will report inclusive and innovative teaching practices which have a positive effect on the education - not just of Hispanic students - but on entire schools where non-Hispanic students and teachers are becoming accustomed to constructively interacting with the emerging Hispanic majority. Also under our microscope will be the best collections of books and educational materials to address the changing cultural needs of the emerging Hispanic majority. Our results will be published online - most likely on this website - and eventually an awards program may be established.

General Ignacio Zaragoza

TRAVELING EXHIBITS AND SPEAKERS:

What if Benito Juarez or General Ignacio Zaragoza were to visit your school some day? They could be “living history” actors in costume, or they could be statues made of lightweight, easily-transported materials. Their speeches - or the speeches made about them - could be adjusted to the appropriate grade level wherever they go. We have a membership in the American Association of Museums, and have been attending their national and regional conferences to study and prepare for initiating projects in this area.

MUSEUM BOOKSTORES:

As part of our membership in the museum association, we are also investigating the establishment of a marketing connection with gift shops and bookstores in museums which feature exhibits or programs dealing with topics related to Hispanic history or culture. We plan to promote not only books from our recommended list, but toys, clothing and souvenirs which contribute to the sharing of Mexican and Mexican American history and culture in the increasingly diverse American population.

AUTHORS AND HISTORIANS:

A “Speakers Bureau” will be organized, and the Mexican Heritage Consortium will not only act as a “booking agency” for knowledgeable presenters to speak before your organization, but will publicize the event if the general public is invited, starting with the events calendar on this website.