Why Latin Students Underachieve

All my life I've been surrounded by a large percentage of Mexican immigrants. It was just a part of life like grass being green. Recently, as I've moved into larger communities I've been exposed to immigrants from Ukraine, Norway, and Korea. For the most part, this new batch of immigrants are much more successful in school. Most people say that it's poverty that holds the Latino student down, but the other immigrants often came from worse situations. After reading Hector Becerra's L.A. Times article, an answer began to form.

As a teacher, you hear principals tell you that if we raise the bar, students will leap over it. Some students will, but there are always some that do not. As a new teacher, these were my students. In my community, this meant I had a large population of Latino students and I loved it. But, I still struggle to figure out why they are satisfied with barely passing. Just graduating is good enough for them. I can see so much more for them, but they don't even imagine it.

After reading Becerra's article, several quotes stood out to me. Rocio Chavez, a student at Lincoln High School in Los Angeles, just graduated and is heading to college. Something her mother never thought about. "I guess she didn't expect that from me, either. And now that I'm going to move on to college, she's kind of scared. She gets kind of sad I'm leaving. She's like, 'You're supposed to graduate from high school, go to work and help me out.' "

I have many students that work all summer long and into the fall. Every hour outside of school is spent sleeping, eating, or working. The idea that education doesn't end at high school graduation is unfamiliar. Becerra writes that to many Latinos education falls second to work. In other words, if you're not working, you don't have value. This would explain why so many Latino males have a great internal conflict when it comes to finding value in education. When they work all summer and pull in several hundred dollars a week, the family values them. When they get an A in math, the family shrugs.

Becerra also writes about how Fidel Nava, a coordinator for English learners at Lincoln High School, still grapples with his family in getting them to understand his line of work. "A lot of my relatives don't see my job as a stressful job at all," Nava said. "If I tell them I'm tired, they say, 'Why? You're not doing any labor. You're not doing anything.' "

You're not doing anything if you're not laboring. It's this frame of mind that will not just keep a student down, but keep a culture down. Change occurs through reading, writing, speaking, and other non-physical labors. The Latino culture will not change until they collective realize their children have an untapped genius that can change America. On May 1, 2006, Mexicans across the country held the Great American Boycott. It showed their strength, but what has come of this display? Has life changed for any Latino? The answer is no. Nothing changed and until education becomes a Latino family value, nothing will.

Sources
Hector Becerra, Why do Asian students generally get higher marks than Latinos?, Los Angeles Times, July 16, 2008