The Silencing of Latino Student “Voice”: Puerto Rican and Mexican Narratives in Eighth Grade and High School

Abstract

Narratives of 27 Puerto Rican and Mexican students, written first in eighth grade then again as juniors in high school, address the important question of "Who am I?" and illustrate school-sponsored silencing, with students' critiques of their educational experience ignored by both the elementary and the high school. The narratives also provide a window into the high dropout rates of Latino children, the reasons behind students" academic decisions, and interventions needed to change negative schooling processes and outcomes. By giving witness to these voices, we as readers help ensure that through their writing, these Latino adolescents do not just speak but that they are heard. In sixth grade my teacher was Mr. S. Mr. S. had a stick. If you were talking or something he would hit you with it. His stick's name was "George." He had wrapped it in tape so that when he hit you it would hurt more. In seventh grade my teacher had red hair and when she spoke to someone she always spit at that person. Since she retired we got a substitute until the principal could find another capable teacher. So our teacher for a long period of time was Mrs. R. We used to call her "chocolate chip" because she had a big mole on her upper lip. After Mrs. R. we had another teacher who we thought was going to be our permanent seventh grade teacher. She lasted about two days I think. Then she left for an eighth grade class... and the teachers kept changing. That seventh grade was so confusing I didn't learn a thing but I tried. My worst experience was in 5th grade. I got stupid in Math. I had a very low I.O,W.A. score. I didn't know how to divide. When my teacher used to call on me to do a division problem, which I couldn't do, I started to cry. He used to yell at me. So I sometimes just didn't go. I didn't understand anything until 4th grade. Then I got a regular [nonbilingual] teacher and it was awful. He was so mean. He would act like we were in the army and make me stand for punishment in the closet. I hated regular class. These statements are excerpts taken from eighth grade "autobiographies" and offer a profile of poor and working-class Puerto Rican and Mexican students at their point of entry into Lares High, a predominantly Latino high school in Chicago. 1 The autobiographies are part of the students' school files made available to me while engaging in an ethnographic study of Lares from the end of the 1990-91 school year

Cultural Explanations for Racial and Ethnic Stratification in Academic Achievement: A Call for a New and Improved Theory

“…Often schools succumb to massive oversights in their curricula and pedagogy by erasing the different histories and social and economic realities of their students with only token nods to and discussions of difference (Banks, 2001;Delpit, 1997;Dempsey & Noblit, 1993;Flores-González, 2002;Pollock, 2004;Valenzuela, 1999). Also, we know that connections exist between students' social locations (e.g., their race, class, and immigrant status), culture, and how they learn (see King, 2005;Lee, 2007;Nasir & Hand, 2006 That is, particular policies of the school forced children to either assimilate and succeed or identify as Mexican American, be "silenced" and have their critiques of school ignored (Quiroz, 2001) and consequently disengage from school. Similarly, Flores-Gonzales (2002) describes the ways in which a Chicago school pushes Puerto Rican youth to either "street" or "school" identities; these identities in turn have implications for whether they drop out of high school.…”

Engaging contexts: Drawing the link between student and teacher experiences of the hidden curriculum

“…Because of my long-term setting engagement and my commitment to the study participants, the results cannot be adequately understood without including how I, the second author of this paper, functioned as a participant-observer (Louitzenheiser, 2002;Peshkin, 1988;Quiroz, 2001). Indeed, my social location--as a young African American woman researcher from a lower middle class background--informs how I understand the research.…”

Prereferral Interventions

“…In a qualitative study of eighth-grade and high school journals, Quiroz (2001) found that these journals contained highly personal perspectives of classroom teachers.…”

“…The journals showed that from a generally optimistic view of school and their future careers in the eighth-grade, by eleventh-grade these students views shifted to generally negative, hopeless views of school and careers. As Quiroz (2001) reminds educators, for a voice to be empowering, it must be heard.…”