By Gilda L. Ochoa
When only one of the 22 students raised her hand, I was not surprised. It is the rare student who begins college having learned the history of Mexican Americans in schools. This time, the question was how many knew about Mendez v. Westminster-a 1947 case that resulted in the elimination of de jure segregation for Mexican students and was influential in the Brown v. Board of Education decision. I probably would have received a similar reply had I asked about the Lemon Grove Incident of 1931 where the activism of Mexican immigrant parents resulted in the first successful desegregation case. Typically, a few more students know about the 1968 Chicana/o School Blowouts, but these overall patterns of historical exclusion are deep and their ramifications are real. Not only are many students denied access to crucial history, but also the myths about education, meritocracy, and equality are kept intact. By not providing students with the tools to understand the historical continuities and changes in schools, we may be reinforcing beliefs that so-called student failure is rooted in individual students, families, and teachers-not in a legacy of structural and educational injustice. As I hear students' anger about not learning this history until college, I also think about the millions of students who are not able to attend college and may never learn this history.
This year is the 40th anniversary of the Chicana/o School Blowouts, and I wonder how schools, communities, and the media will mark this important movement. Will it appear in an assignment, a lesson, a paragraph, a footnote, or will it be left out completely? Will it be taught as an event to be romanticized from the past that has no bearing on us today? Will it be co-opted in a slogan devoid of a political movement, presented as a struggle led by just one person, or will it be used to help understand today's schools and inspire a new generation of students?
In the 1960s, inspired by the black Civil Rights Movement, the farmworkers movement, and the land rights struggles in New Mexico, Mexican American students were increasingly voicing their dissatisfaction with the history of discrimination and unjust schooling. As historian Gilbert Gonzalez has described, this schooling was informed by beliefs that Mexicans were biologically and culturally deficient and structured by vocational tracking, school segregation, unequal facilities, and Americanization Programs. The emphasis was on making Mexican Americans into English-speaking and Anglo-practicing individuals as quickly as possible. Many schools had rules against speaking Spanish, and students breaking such rules faced punishment and humiliation.
Growing increasingly frustrated, youth mobilized, and in March 1968, over 10,000 East Los Angeles students walked out of their schools protesting a system of educational inequality. Carrying "Chicano Power" and "Viva La Raza" placards, students had a list of nearly 40 grievances and demands for the Los Angeles school board. At a time when about half of Mexican American students did not complete high school, students shifted the debate from theories blaming students and families to one that centered on institutional injustices. They demanded bilingual and bicultural education, more Mexican American teachers, relevant curriculum, accurate textbooks, and the end of curriculum tracking and prejudiced teachers who steered Mexican American students into vocational classes.
Though students were organizing for quality education, the police overreacted to their demonstrations, and the media caught police officers beating and arresting students. The school walkouts, along with depictions of police brutality, galvanized community members, and Mexican American students throughout the Southwest and Midwest also demonstrated for educational justice. The walkouts drew national attention to the vast disparities in schools and helped to set in motion the formation of Chicana/o Studies classes, programs, and departments in colleges and universities throughout the United States.
What Is Learned by Teaching
About the Chicana/o School Blowouts
Hopeful
Angry
Mad
Faithful to the Movement
Con mucha esperanza
Enojada
Fiel al movimiento