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         Precious Knowledge: Fighting for             Mexican American Studies



        Unbeknownst to me, Mexican-American students have a 50% drop out rate, the highest in the United States.  Precious Knowledge: Fighting for Mexican American Studies highlights a Tucson, Arizona high school Mexican-American/Raza Studies program.  The Spanish expression la Raza means the people or the community.  Student's interviewed stated that they "feel like the education system wants them to fail" and "nothing was done to help them get into college."

        in 1997, the Hispanic Studies Department was created in the Tucson Public School District.  After this program was implemented there were noticeable changes in student achievement and decreased drop out rates.  One of teacher's descriptions of the progress bring made was best said as, "plant a seed and the seed will grow."  Later, in 2002 the Mexican-American Raza Studies was born.  It's focus was knowing where you came from, knowing yourself, advocacy for love, and monitoring the way you think.  This class lead to student's finally talking about what they were learning and making the community part of their school.

        Unfortunately, resistance was met from local legislators and superintendent Tom Horne.  Tom Horne states that "radical ideas should be abolished."  Meanwhile the class was discussing all kinds of oppression, humanity, and freedom.  The class thrived on community, service and advocacy.  It's too bad the students were considered to be angry, young radicals.  In 2009, the bill (SB 1069) died prior to becoming a law.  There were protests, and the student's were met with opposing folks burning the Mexican flag, physical threats, and even death threats.  It was so nice to hear these young people chanting "the people united, we'll never be divided" and "education's not a crime."

In the end, bill HB 2281 prohibited the courses.  The student's saw this as "hateful legislation."  It was reassuring to see Dr. Jeffrey Duncan-Andrade in the documentary adding that people are finding different ways to caste kids and their inability to learn.  He states that students do not have a "dysfunctional relationship to learning", but a "dysfunctional relationship to school."  It reflects on his publication Note to Educators: Hope Required When Growing Roses in Concrete.  He theorizes the emphasis of Hokey Hope.  

This hokey hope is peddled in urban schools all the time. It is akin to what Martin Luther

King Jr. (1963) referred to as “the tranquilizing drug of gradualism” (para.

5): an individualistic up-by-your-bootstraps hyperbole that suggests if urban

youth just work hard, pay attention, and play by the rules, then they will go

to college and live out the “American dream.” I do not condemn this false

hope because I doubt the importance of time and hard work for creating


change. Rather, this hope is “hokey” because it ignores the laundry list of ineq-

uities that impact the lives of urban youth long before they get to the under-

resourced schools that reinforce an uneven playing field.





 

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/raza-studies-defy-american-values/

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