Bicultural Education Movement Analysis

Even though I live in a small town, it still holds a lot of history. The walkout in Crystal City, Texas was a major event that made Mexican Americans remembered. In Cynthia Orozco’s article she says the Crystal City High School walkout happened because Chicano’s were not being giving equal rights. (Orozco) Orozco

In the meantime at San Francisco State College, students in the Third World Liberation Front (TWLF), a coalition of African-American, Latino, and Asian-American student groups, began demanding reforms that addressed the concerns of students of color and the surrounding community. After more than a year of negotiating with the school and organizing students, they called a strike on November 6, 1968, that became the longest student strikein United States history. When it was finally settled in March 1969, many of the students' demands were met, including the establishment of a School of Ethnic Studies.

Students organized a peaceful walkout that lasted a couple days, they organized themselves so they could all walk out at the same time, some of this walkouts turned very brutal but even with the police attacking them they did not stop the walkouts, specially when Sal Castro and other leaders were arrested, students got together to raise their voices and make the government see they had rights. After that walkout the government had no more option than to listen to the students and make a fair educational system, by that time bi-lingual education increased 25% and students had more power over the educational

Students started walkouts because they were being mistreated and discriminate. They were not offered the same rights as a white teenager. Also, they were not allowed to speak Spanish at any time during

Members of such groups had walkouts from schools in Denver and Los Angeles in 1968 to protest Eurocentric curriculums, high dropout rates among Chicano students, a ban on speaking Spanish and related issues.

At that time there were a Chicano Movement which also called the Chicano Civil Rights Movement and that’s for Mexican American educational, social, and political equality rights in the United States, which also students originations played an important role in that movement and if we focused more in education we will find that many Mexican-American have no option but to accept the unfair rules at schools like Terry the little girl.

By becoming actively involved in the community and in politics, Chicano activist began to achieve community self-determination. By starting to speak up and act for the Chicano community, Chicano activist broke free of the chains which have tied them down since the white man came to their homelands and drove them from out of Atzlan. A great example of Chicanos involving themselves in their community came from the walkouts staged by the Chicano youth in East L.A. In Ian Lopez’s Racism on Trial, Lopez states, “the student strikes symbolized the awakening of Mexican youth to a political consciousness of themselves and of their ability to fight for equal treatment.” (Lopez 23). By organizing the walkout the students began the Chicano communities search for self-determination and pursuit of equality. Then there are movements such as the farm workers movement which brought to the public’s attention the dehumanization of the Chicanos field workers. People such as Cesar Chavez took the political approach to win the Chicano community equality (Chicano!).

The Chicano power movement of the 1960's is characterized by Carlos Munoz, jr. as a movement led by the decedents of Mexican Americans who pressed for assimilation. These young people, mostly students, became tired of listening to school rhetoric that stressed patriotism when they were being discriminated against outside the classroom. Unlike their parents, the young people of the Chicano movement did not want to assimilate into mainstream America and lose their identity, they wanted to establish an identity of their own and fight for the civil rights of their people.

So some of the strategies they used to get their rights back is legal pressure, speeches, and protests. So the what they did for legal pressure was used to to put pressure on congress to allow colored people/student to go to school. Speeches they used them to send messages to let other people to now that their were going to to make move to let colored student to go to all white schools

When the cancellation was announced, Latino students organized a student walkout from their school. However, it was this activism that fueled the anti-Chicano Studies argument.

In the 1970’s when Chicanos began to revolt and fight for what they believed in, there was a lot of violence happening. The riot in which there was “one resulting death, fifty injuries, and righty arrests demonstrates all the chaos and rioting that the Chicano community was experiencing. For many years Chicanos were considered the silent or forgotten majority. “This situation was to change dramatically in the mid- and late-1960s as an independent movement developed in response to the specific oppression of the Chicano people, which had a dynamic and revolutionary logic of its own”. Throughout this time there was also much progress occurring for the Chicanos. ‘They had rose from 652,879 in 1960 to 1,228,594 in 1970, an increase of almost 90 percent”, Chicanos were no longer becoming the minority but they were now becoming the majority. There was progress for the Chicano in school and in the work field. They were no longer ignored as they were in the past years. There were more Spanish-speaking teachers and more educational programs for the Chicanos. Although the Chicano community had advanced and was starting to receive more fair treatment, there was still a lot that needed to be done. There were no associations for Chicanos, and they were not really represented in congress either. In the 1960’s the advancement was noticeable and it was good for the Chicano community, but in the 1970’s the progress that had occurred had began to erode. Although progress in education had been

Both of these events were historical; the Edcouch Elsa walkout was a life changing event for those students and for the rest of their culture. Now, schools offer Bilingual Services to students which primary language is Spanish and there is also a scholarship for Hispanics. Furthermore, they have the same opportunities as anybody else to apply for scholarships, loans and grants. The Pharr Riots were also a historical event and life changing for Hispanics. Unfortunately, it involved a death when fight for their equality. The city of Pharr improved, their mayor resigned and it was when the first Mexican-American city mayor was elected. The elected offices were dominated by Mexican- American offices

An issue they had was that they didn't have their own way of getting an education without being segregated; underpaid teachers taught the Chican@ students, and students had to use used books in order to read what they were being taught. In document 5, found in website thericarddreport.com one can see an image of students in Texas, 1946 in a classroom reading a book with the teacher in the back maybe following along as they read. In the second image there's a building that looks like an hold house, but is where the school is. Schools that Chican@ were taught at weren’t that good: they had little light which made it hard for them to read, they had lack of resources, and bad construction for students to do work in. In a documentary watched in class students weren't allowed to talk in spanish when it came to going to a regular school. For Chican@ students being able to show their culture was a must, but to be educated they had to risk showing their culture. The goal Students wanted was a better education with more freedom to learn without struggling. They wanted to live in an environment

La Causa, or “The Cause” of this movement, began as farm worker strikes in California and Southwest region. (Montejano, 10) Farmworkers demanded fair wages and suitable working conditions, but they also faced inequality outside of the workplace. Inspired by Cesar Chavez, young Chicanos in San Antonio began to form organizations that would challenge the injustice and inequality treatment they faced as citizens of the United States. The Civil Rights Movement of African- Americans also impacted and influenced the young generation of the Chicano Movement. They shared one common enemy: the white- elite. Their basic rights as a citizen were being withheld and they organized to fight to retrieve them.

However, there are questions as to whether or not teachers possess biases that would influence their teaching methods and curriculum. Taking a class in educational diversity is only a start in addressing those biases that may have been unconsciously created. It is the writer’s sincere hope that researching and writing a paper on multicultural education will be a stepping stone toward the critical examination of biases and practices in regards to diversity in the classroom that will continue to influence the readers throughout their educational