Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-r6qrq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T16:44:36.870Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Status of the Historiography of Chicano Education: A Preliminary Analysis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Guadalupe San Miguel Jr.
Guadalupe San Miguel Jr.*
Affiliation:
University of California, Santa Barbara
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In the last two decades the field of social history, including the study of ethnic minorities and education, has undergone a renaissance. Historical studies, for example, have expanded traditional notions of the concept “education” to include all institutions that “educate,” have provided critical interpretations of the public school's evolution and function in an advanced capitalist society, and have shed new light on continuing issues in American education. Historical studies on ethnic minority groups, and especially Chicanos, have also been done, many of them by minority group members themselves. These new published works have increased our understanding of the process of immigration, illuminated the nature of conflict—racial, cultural, social, economic—in the Chicano community, and provided data on the origins and development of Chicano barrios throughout the Southwest. Despite the renaissance in the historical studies of both minorities and public education in the United States, little has been written on the educational past of Chicanos. As late as 1985, for example, not one single book providing an interpretation of their experiences in the schools had been published.

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 26 , Issue 4 , Winter 1986 , pp. 523 - 536
Copyright
Copyright © 1986 by the History of Education Society 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Examples of major revisionist studies are Katz, Michael B., The Irony of Early School Reform: Educational Innovation in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Massachusetts (Cambridge, Mass., 1968); Karier, Clarence, Shaping the American Educational State: 1900 to the Present (New York, 1975); Tyack, David B., The One Best System: A History of American Urban Education (Cambridge, Mass., 1974); Bowles, Samuel and Gintis, Herbert, Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life (New York, 1976). A critique of the revisionist position can be found in Ravitch, Diane, The Revisionists Revised: A Critique of the Radical Attack on the Schools (New York, 1978).Google Scholar

2. For a discussion of the state of these studies see Arroyo, Luis L., “The State of Chicano Labor History, 1970–1980,” 1–8, and Camarillo, Albert M., “The ‘New’ Chicano History: Historiography of Chicanos in the 1970s,” 9–18, in Chicanos and the Social Sciences: A Decade of Research and Development (1970–1980), ed. Ortiz, Isidro (Santa Barbara, Calif., 1983). See also Garcia, Mario T. and Garcia, Richard A., “History,” in Sourcebook of Hispanic Culture in the United States, ed. Foster, David William (Chicago, 1982), 3–33.Google Scholar

3. Weinberg, Meyer, A Chance to Learn: The History of Race and Education in the United States (New York, 1977), 140–77.Google Scholar

4. Ibid., 142–43.Google Scholar

5. Estrada, Lawrence J., “A Chronicle of the Political, Legislative, and Judicial Advances in Bilingual Education in California,” in Bilingual Education and Public Policy in the United States, ed. Padilla, Raymond V. (Ypsilanti, Mich., 1979), 102–3; del Castillo, Richard Griswold, The Los Angeles Barrio, 1850–1890: A Social History (Berkeley, Calif., 1982), 88–89.Google Scholar

6. For an overview of the exclusionary character of public education see Weinberg, , A Chance to Learn; Carter, Thomas P. and Segura, Roberto D., Mexican Americans in School: A Decade of Change (New York, 1979).Google Scholar

7. Heath, Shirley Brice, “Our Language Heritage: A Historical Perspective,” in The Language Connection: From the Classroom to the World, ed. Phillips, June K. (Skokie, Ill., 1977), 23–51; and Kloss, Heinz, The American Bilingual Tradition (Rowley, Mass., 1977). See also Andersson, Theodore and Boyer, Mildred, Bilingual Schooling in the United States (Washington, D.C., 1970); Keller, Gary D. and Van Hooft, Karen S., “A Chronology of Bilingualism and Bilingual Education in the United States,” in Bilingual Education for Hispanic Students in the United States, ed. Fishman, Joshua A. and Keller, Gary D. (New York, 1982), 3–19; De León, Arnoldo, The Tejano Community, 1836–1900 (Albuquerque, N.M., 1982), 187–94.Google Scholar

8. Leibowitz, Arnold, Educational Policy and Political Acceptance: The Imposition of English as the Language of Instruction in American Schools (Washington, D.C., 1971). See, for instance, del Castillo, Griswold, The Los Angeles Barrio, 88–89; Castro, Raymond, “The Bilingual Education Act: A Historical Analysis of Title VII,” in Perspectivas en Chicano Studies, ed. Macias, Reynaldo Flores (Los Angeles, 1977), 81–122; Estrada, , “A Chronicle,” 97–108; Keller, and Hooft, Van, “A Chronology of Bilingualism,” 3–19.Google Scholar

9. For two different views of the evolution of this federal policy see Miguel, Guadalupe San Jr., “Conflict and Controversy in the Evolution of Bilingual Education Policy in the United States: An Interpretation,” Social Science Quarterly 65 (June 1985): 505–18; and Ravitch, Diane, The Troubled Crusade: American Education, 1945–1980 (New York, 1983), 271–80.Google Scholar

10. Miguel, Guadalupe San Jr., “From a Dual to a Tri-partite School System,” Integrated Education 17 (Dec. 1979): 27–38; Gonzalez, Gilbert G., “Segregation of Mexican Children in a Southern California City: The Legacy of Expansionism and the American Southwest,” Western Historical Quarterly 16 (Jan. 1985): 55–76; Miguel, Guadalupe San Jr., “The Origins, Development, and Consequences of the Educational Segregation of Mexicans in the Southwest,” in Contemporary Issues in Chicano Studies: A Multidisciplinary Approach, ed. Garcia, Gene, Lomeli, Francisco, and Ortiz, Isidro (New York, 1984), 195–208.Google Scholar

11. Gonzalez, Gilbert G., “Racism, Education, and the Mexican Community in Los Angeles, 1920–1930,” Societas 4 (Autumn 1979): 294–96; idem, “Racial Intelligence Testing and Mexican Children,” Explorations in Ethnic Studies 5 (July 1982): 36–49.Google Scholar

12. Hendricks, Irving G., “Early Schooling for Children of Migrant Farmworkers in California: The 1920s,” Aztlan 8 (Fall 1977): 11–26; Miguel, Guadalupe San Jr., Let All of Them Take Heed: Mexican Americans and the Quest for Educational Equality in Texas, 1918–1981 (Austin: University of Texas Press, forthcoming), 62–115; Carter, and Segura, , Mexican Americans in School; Miguel, Guadalupe San Jr., “Inside the Public Schools: A History of the Chicano Educational Experience,” Atisbos: Journal of Chicano Research (Summer-Fall 1978): 86–100.Google Scholar

13. Gonzalez, Gilbert G., “Educational Reform in Los Angeles and Its Effect upon the Mexican Community, 1900–1930,” Explorations in Ethnic Studies 1 (July 1978): 5–26; Garcia, Mario T., Desert Immigrants: The Mexicans of El Paso, 1880–1920 (New Haven, Conn., 1981), 110–26.Google Scholar

14. del Castillo, Griswold, The Los Angeles Barrio, 87.Google Scholar

15. Gonzalez, , “Racial Intelligence Testing”; idem, “Educational Reform in Los Angeles”; Garcia, , Desert Immigrants, 114–15.Google Scholar

16. Gonzalez, , “Educational Reform in Los Angeles,” 25.Google Scholar

17. del Castillo, Griswold, The Los Angeles Barrio, 88; Weinberg, , A Chance to Learn, 150–51. For a historical overview of theoretical explanations of poor academic achievement among Chicanos during the twentieth century, see Vaca, Nick, “The Mexican American in the Social Sciences, 1912–1970,” El Grito, Part I, 1912–1935, 3 (Spring 1970): 3–24, Part II, 1936–1970, 4 (Fall 1971): 17–51.Google Scholar

18. De Graaf, Lawrence B., “Recognition, Racism, and Reflections on the Writing of Western Black History,” Pacific Historical Review 44 (Feb. 1975): 22–51; Jacobs, Wilbur R., “The Indian and the Frontier in American History: A Need for Revision,” Western Historical Quarterly 4 (Jan. 1973): 43–56; Romano-V, Octavio I., “The Anthropology and Sociology of the Mexican American,” in Voices, ed. Romano-V, Octavio I. (Berkeley, Calif., 1973), 43–56. See also Reese, William, “Neither Victims nor Masters: Ethnic and Minority Study,” in Historical Inquiry in Education: A Research Agenda, ed. Best, John Hardin (Washington, D.C., 1983), 230–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19. del Castillo, Griswold, The Los Angeles Barrio, 88–89; De León, , The Tejano Community, 187–94.Google Scholar

20. Balderrama, Francisco, In Defense of la Raza: The Los Angeles Mexican Consulate and the Mexican Community, 1929 to 1936 (Tucson, Ariz., 1982), 55–72; Garcia, Mario T., “Americans All: The Mexican American Generation and the Politics of Wartime Los Angeles, 1941–1945,” Social Science Quarterly 65 (June 1985): 278–89.Google Scholar

21. De León, Arnoldo, “Blowout 1910 Style: A Chicano School Boycott in West Texas,” Texana 12 (Nov. 1974): 124–40, quote taken from 135.Google Scholar

22. Miguel, Guadalupe San Jr., “The Struggle against Separate and Unequal Schools,” History of Education Quarterly 23 (Fall 1983): 343–59; Allsup, Carl, “Education Is Our Freedom: The American G.I. Forum and the Mexican American School Segregation in Texas, 1948–1957,” Aztlan 8 (Spring, Summer, Fall 1977): 27–50.Google Scholar

23. Miguel, San Jr., “The Struggle against Separate and Unequal Schools,” 343–59; Balderrama, , In Defense of la Raza, 55–72.Google Scholar

24. For several studies on the emergence of segregated schools see footnote 10 above.Google Scholar

25. Wollenberg, Charles, All Deliberate Speed: Segregation and Exclusion in California Schools, 1855–1975 (Berkeley, Calif., 1976), 108–35; Gonzalez, , “Segregation of Mexican Children in a Southern California City,” 55–76.Google Scholar

26. Miguel, Guadalupe San Jr., “Mexican American Organizations and the Changing Politics of School Desegregation in Texas, 1945–1980,” Social Science Quarterly 63 (Dec. 1982): 701–15. See also Allsup, , “Education Is Our Freedom.”Google Scholar

27. Miguel, San Jr., Let All of Them Take Heed, ch. 3: Aroused from Our Slumber.Google Scholar

28. Carter, and Segura, , Mexican Americans in School, 14–28.Google Scholar

29. Miguel, San Jr., Let All of Them Take Heed, ch. 4: On the Home Front.Google Scholar

30. Gomez-Quinones, Juan, Mexican Students por la Raza: The Chicano Student Movement in Southern California, 1967–1977 (Santa Barbara, Calif., 1978).Google Scholar

31. Miguel, Guadalupe San Jr., “In the Background: Conflict and Controversy in the Evolution of Bilingual Education Policy, 1965–1973,” NABE Journal 7 (Spring 1983): 23–40; Vega, Jose E., Education, Politics, and Bilingualism in Texas (Washington, D.C., 1983).Google Scholar

32. Miguel, San, “Conflict and Controversy,” 505–18.Google Scholar

33. del Castillo, Griswold, The Los Angeles Barrio, 88; De León, , The Tejano Community, 187–94.Google Scholar

34. Carter, and Segura, , Mexican Americans in School, 17–18.Google Scholar

35. Miguel, San Jr., Let All of Them Take Heed, ch. 6: Beginning with the Beginner.Google Scholar

36. Douglas Brackenridge, R. and Garcia-Treco, Francisco O., Iglesia Presbiteriana: A History of Presbyterians and Mexican Americans in the Southwest (San Antonio, Tex., 1974); De León, , The Tejano Community, 187–94; Garcia, , Desert Immigrants, 110–14.Google Scholar

37. See, for example, Fogartie, Ruth Ann, Texas-born Spanish-name Students in Texas Colleges and Universities (1936–1948), Inter-American Education Occasional Papers (Austin, Tex., 1948).Google Scholar

38. Carter, and Segura, , Mexican Americans in School, 17.Google Scholar