Mexican Americans Essay

I feel that it is important in becoming an elementary teacher with special education that we study and teach about Mexican-American history and culture. The first article that I am going to talk is called, â€Å"Integrating Mexican-American History and Culture into Social Studies Classroom†. The article talks about how Mexican-American are the fastest growing ethnic group in the United States and also the least educated. The article also gives important information on how to prepare teachers for introducing the Mexican-American culture and history in the classroom and school. I feel that it is important in becoming an elementary teacher with special education that we study and teach about Mexican-American history and culture. The first article that I am going to talk is called, â€Å"Integrating Mexican-American History and Culture into Social Studies Classroom†. The article talks about how Mexican-American are the fastest growing ethnic group in the United States and also the least educated. The article also gives important information on how to prepare teachers for introducing the Mexican-American culture and history in the classroom and school. My second article is titled, â€Å"A New Latino Underclass†. This article talks about the Hispanic culture, whether they are American born or an immigrant. The main focus of the article is about assimilation. Heather Mac Donald talks about how illegal immigration is just worsening the Hispanics culture, and how it is taking a turn for the worst. The Mexican-Americans are assimilating their culture with the culture from Mexico. The problem is that the immigrants from Mexico do not want to assimilate the American culture with their own culture. The article also talks about the rise of gangs and how some of the parents support it. It stresses on how gangs are affecting the drop out rate among Hispanics. â€Å"Integrating Mexican-American History and Culture into the Social Studies Classroom† is the first article I am going to discuss. The article starts out talking about how important it is to teach Mexican-American culture in the school. â€Å"Parents value the importance of education for their children, but they don’t always agree with the school’s approaches to teaching and learning, nor accept the secular values as appropriate for their family. † (Escamilla, 1992) Teaching the content of Mexican-American culture helps improve the student’s self esteem. â€Å"Studies have suggested that positive ethnic affiliation among Mexican-Americans (and other groups) greatly influences individual development in many ways, including: lifestyle choices, values, opinions, attitudes, and approaches to learning. â€Å"( Gollnick & Chinn, 2006ollnick & Chinn, 2006) The article also stresses how important it is for the student to study other cultures. This idea is through the term Multicultural education which â€Å"is an educational strategy in which students’ cultural backgrounds are used to develop effective classroom instruction and school environments. † (Gollnick & Chinn, 2006) It is important for the entire student body to ethnic literacy. â€Å"Ethnic literacy allows all students to understand their uniqueness, to understand the complexities of ethnicity and culture, and to take pride in who they are as people. † (Escamilla, 1992) The textbook talks about ethnicity and brings up the term ethnic group or ethnic identity. These terms mainly describe a persons’ national origin, religion, race, and may also include gender class and lifestyles. The article then goes on to talk about how important the teacher’s preparation is to present the material. One of the main problems is that only 30% of the teacher faculty is non-white, but a lot of times in urban districts 70% of the student body is non white. That will play an important part of the resources a teacher and school can afford to buy. The way students’ attitudes about themselves, others, and their school depend on the way they are shaped at school. The Mexican-American students will benefit greatly from getting to learn about their culture, but other cultures at the same time. â€Å"It is important to have cultural relativism, which means we need to learn more about are own cultural than is require. † (Gollnick & Chinn, 2006) Learning and respecting other people’s culture means crossing over cultural borders, which is very important in a multicultural school. The second article, â€Å"A Latino Underclass† talks about gang violence among Hispanics. Gang violence is rising tremendously among Mexican-Americans. The author believes that there is some type assimilation going, but to all the worst element of American life. There has been a debate on whether Mexican immigrants are trying to assimilate into the American culture or not. â€Å"Part of the reason for the gang violence according to David O’ Connell, pastor of the church next door to the Soledad Enrichment Charter School, which is the vortex of LA’s youth gang culture, has been fighting gangbanging for over a decade. † â€Å"Hispanic children feel that they have to deal with problems themselves, apart from their parents, according to Mr. O’Connell, and they â€Å"do so in violent ways. † (Mac Donald, 2004) The parents are even sometimes scared of their own children. The children seem to go towards a cultural of violence at an early age. Constant illegal immigration is playing a big part in all of this. Cultural pluralism seems to be what the immigrants are doing from Mexico, they want to live in America but only practice the cultural ways of Mexico. The article talks about a component of underclass behavior that causes school failure. Hispanics have the greatest drop out numbers in America about 30% compared to 13% black and 7% whites. â€Å"Every parent I spoke to said that she wanted her children to do well in school and go to college. † â€Å"Hispanic parents are the kind of parents that leave it to others,† explains an unwed Salvadoran welfare mother in Santa Ana. (Mac Donald, 2004) The constant flow of Mexicans in America is bringing down the Hispanic education levels, 30% of foreign-born populations in the United States is Mexicans. I found both of the articles on the internet. I was looking for something to do with Mexican-American culture and school. I feel both of the articles relate to each other very well. In the first article they talk about how important it is to study Mexican-American culture, but also to study and understand other cultures. They believe this will help Mexican-Americans stay in school and learn better. The second article talks about how Mexicans are coming from Mexico and not assimilating their culture with American culture, therefore causing a large drop out rate in school. This is very important to understand as a teacher because we need to try and fix the problems of children dropping out of school. If we try to educate them on how to respect different peoples cultures, but also have respect for their own. Maybe they will find learning a lot more interesting and want to be in school. It is also important for them to be able to function in the world with people of all different colors. I believe as a future teacher that no matter what subject I am teaching, there is always a way to keep a multicultural classroom. This topic was interesting to me because this is an ongoing issue that the media has been talking about for years. I don’t believe it is going to go away before I become a teacher. It is important to learn about issues that are going on with the student so that we can better understand what they are going through. Understanding what they are going through will help the teachers help them with issues. The issue is important for all teachers to know about because most of them will have a student of the Hispanic culture in their class. References Escamilla, K. (1992). Integrating Mexican-American History and Culture Into The Social Studies Classroom. Retrieved October 10, 2007, from http://www. ericdigests. org/1992-2mexican. htm Gollnick, D. , & Chinn, P. (2006). In Debra Stollenwerk (Ed. ), Multicultural Education in a Pluralistic Society. New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall. Heather Mac Donald. (2004, July 25). Retrieved October 10, 2007, from The Dallas Morning News, a Latino Underclass Web site: http://www. manhatten-institute. org/html/_dmn-new_latino_underclass. htm.