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Volume 1 Issue 1 (2003)
Teaching Latino
Culture/Creating Paths to Success: Mentoring Latino Students Through the
Classroom
Ellen M. Gil-Gomez
Division of Comparative Studies in the Humanities
The Ohio State University
Abstract
With the recent projections of the expansion of the U.S. Latino
population, the rhetoric surrounding the educational system at all levels is
being positioned as defensive and protective rather than dynamically and progressively
incorporating future change. The author offers insights gained from her experience
as an educator and mentor of Latino/a students. She has found that, despite
the institutional rhetoric of “diversity” or of “multicultural”
education, other institutional priorities have hampered her ability to formally
mentor Latino/a students. The essay suggests alternative strategies that work
from the margins of institutional systems.
When I began thinking like a futurist about Latinos and Latino
Studies in the 21st century my mind went right to the importance of education.
While this could be an obvious place for an educator to turn I felt it more
important than as just reflective of my own work. With the recent projections
of the expansion of the U.S. Latino population being much discussed, there does
not seem to be an equally powerful discussion about the challenges the country
will encounter to improve the lives of these Americans. Rather, the rhetoric
generally turns to how to protect communities and services from these
“newcomers.” Thus, the educational system at all levels is being
positioned as defensive and protective rather than dynamically and progressively
incorporating future change. Paralleling this rhetoric of fear is the frightening
continuation of the mis-education or the loss of education for the Latino community.
It’s not an understatement to say that the threats to Latinos in the new
century begin early and go deep. Indeed, with statistics that reflect only 54%
of Latinos graduated high school in 1990, down from 62.9% in 1985, the future
is ominous (Heyck 2).[1]
While I have been lucky enough to make it through the educational
system, to earn my doctoral degree and to now be a teacher, I’ve realized
that I’m still not entitled to function as I would choose within the
university educational system. While my desire is to give back to Latino/a
students by helping them to negotiate the system, the institution of higher
education itself has routinely made this effort difficult if not impossible.
So, even though every institution where I’ve taught has, at every level,
spoken the rhetoric of “diversity” or of “multicultural”
education they all hampered my ability to formally mentor Latino/a students.
I have been given a number of reasons for the terrible state of Latino/a
student mentoring in the institution which ranged from attacks on Affirmative
Action and consequently the questioning of an Ethnic Studies curriculum, to the
fear of appearing to promote “segregation” by allowing the
possibility of Latino/a mentor groups, to the simple undervaluing of
faculty service directly to Latino/a students and organizations. Thus, as a
Latina professor who was hired to improve the diversity of an
institution—in terms of representation and through developing academic
programs—I routinely had to resort to measures that the same institution
did not support because the leadership wanted me to be their symbol rather than
part of a change that would positively affect
students.[2]
While this has been an undeniable burden to me as an educator, I believe
that my experiences are common for faculty of color and also reflect important
systemic problems that need to be revealed so that Latino/a students can benefit
from the knowledge and better control their own education. It’s only been
since teaching students of color regularly that I’ve fully realized the
lie of equal access to education that our public institutions continue to hide
behind. My resistance to this lie has forced me to work within my own borders.
I’ve since developed my own ability to help create and use informal
networks of Latino students, staff and faculty to address issues and provide a
mentoring system that is, for the most part, still absent from the institution.
And I’ve also refocused the content of my mentoring to encourage students
to think about institutional processes rather than only finding comfort in
building community intimacy, Latino culture and self-preservation.
This has been particularly important in the last year with students
riding a wave of confusion, or unbound optimism, over the newest Latino fad.
I’ve found that recently many young Latinos/as have a false sense of
comfort that has arisen through the media’s valorization of Latino pop
idols. Even with all of the current rhetoric of embracing the Latino
“other” in the media with this new cycle of hype that proclaims the
embracing of Latinos in America—“The Latin Boom” and
previously the “Decade of the Hispanic”—the rhetoric does
little to change the realities of Latino
communities.[3] In fact the media
hype represents a lie that Latinos have a newly emergent power and status in the
U.S. marketplace. If this is true, why do Latinos need “special”
rights and treatment? Just within the last year I have seen an increased number
of Euro-American students using this new wave of “celebration” as
the “proof” that all is well in the melting pot. These students
also feel that if population growth continues as the government projects it will
very shortly be them who need “protecting” from this Latinization.
Clearly the stage, the television, and the movie screen differ vastly from the
street, the classroom, and the office. This newly emerging conflict is another
example of the cultural schizophrenia mis-education that young Latinos/as must
daily negotiate. The larger society daily communicates this new
“truth” of Latino/a power and success whereas the majority of
Latinos/as experience something very different.
It is generally true that U.S. Latino cultures encourage and promote
community and personal connections as the primary roads to success. On the
other hand, the academy does not generally validate these pathways, rather
bureaucracy is the system and rhetoric is the language that is empowered. The
personal and communal are to be left at the door if you are to be welcomed at
the table. This culture clash can ultimately destroy both Latino/a students and
faculty if they are unprepared for it and unsupported within it. I’ve
witnessed the devastating consequences of this on numerous students as they
suffer deep confusion about why they feel they are being dismantled by something
that is supposed to be building them up.
This process of destruction can happen on a number of levels, all of
which have profound consequences on students. They can be actively damaged by
racist comments made by faculty and students in the classroom, they can be made
to feel invisible and inconsequential by having Latinos/as ignored or absent
from the university’s curriculum, and they can be hampered in their own
study by the lack of Latino/a faculty members and/or those knowledgeable about
the field. Indeed, I recently had a Latina undergraduate tell me in
frustration: “I made it to college and assumed I could just study.
I’ve begun to find out that it’s not that easy” (Medina).
What’s remarkable about this sentiment is not it’s novelty but
rather it’s commonality for Latinos/as. Again, the schism grows and the
choices shrink.
By turning a critical eye to this system of oppression that is currently
built into the academy by demystifying if for Latino/a students, who are very
commonly first generation college students, then they can learn strategies to
defend themselves against this devastation and respond as they choose. They
might work directly within existent Latino networks and organizations or equally
importantly they might begin to feel entitled to a culturally relevant education
in whatever field they choose. Connecting students to a larger network of
options benefits the student and teacher because it does not only
replicate the validity of the personal relationship but also the multiple
functions of community networks. It also protects the teacher from being made
indispensable to students and more able to balance her commitments as is
necessary for professional survival.[4]
By balancing the importance of personal contact and institutional
rhetoric Latino/a students and faculty can better advocate for issues important
to their communities and at the same time find success in their educational and
professional lives. Many times these two elements are seen in opposition as if
one can’t be both a professional and a community advocate. In my view
this is a major factor in the sometimes-subtle mis-education of Latinos/as.
Many are taught, either directly or indirectly, that they are at fault for their
“passionate” but inappropriate responses to institutional problems.
These reactions further push Latino/a students to the margins of the university.
By learning strategies gleaned from faculty experience, students can have
greater success in furthering their goals and agenda.
It is perhaps the curriculum that can make the biggest impact on
Latinos/as. I do not primarily mean a curriculum that is well established and
directed to a large Latino/a student population, although I don’t
undervalue the importance of Latino/a Studies in any arena. Rather, my
experiences as a teacher are on campuses with a relatively small Latino/a
population—including students, faculty and staff members—and with no
institutionally recognized Latino/a Studies courses. In all cases I took a job
in order to build courses for Latinos/as and other students of color. Because I
have encountered, to varying degrees, the atmosphere that I’ve already
described, I saw the power of the smallest classroom moments spent focused on
Latinos/as.
Classrooms provide a validated space in a university where the place of
Latinos/as is undervalued, attacked, or ignored. Latino/a Studies courses can
celebrate Latino culture, educate non-Latinos on Latino experiences, and
encourage Latinos/as to learn about the diversity and differences within their
own community. An institutionalized space about Latinos/as and for Latinos/as
can have a profound personal and professional impact. Indeed as Ana Castillo
writes:
Learning about our [culture and history] is a way of learning
about ourselves, an acceptance of oneself as an individual and of her/his
people. Then we may educate the world, including our own communities about
ourselves. But more importantly, it will show us another way of seeing life and
the world we live in now. (Massacre 6)
There
are clearly a variety of curricular contexts and institutionalized spaces
wherein Latino/a Studies is taught or included. I have taught about Latinos/as
in numerous contexts with a variety of results and I do feel it valuable to
discuss these examples here in order to clearly illustrate the classroom’s
connection to the mentoring process. I focus here on the three main ways in
which Latinos/as are included in the university curriculum and consider how each
one of these avenues carries with it benefits and liabilities when considering
its adequacy to further faculty mentoring in the classroom setting. Thus, I
will not discuss how each example reflects the larger—and more hotly
debated—issues of the narrowly focused university curricula or the ongoing
lack of sensitivity to diverse cultures in higher education. Indeed my
assumption, and my argument, is that as a whole the position of Latino/a studies
in the university has been tenuous at best and clearly under fire from a range
of disciplines and communities as non academic and unimportant. Therefore I
have chosen to assume indisputable facts: Latino and Latina students will
continue to enroll in our universities and they can be mentored through the
inclusion of Latino/a Studies material in a range of curricula no matter how
individual states, university systems, or campuses feel about the field. The
three main frameworks within which university courses present Latinos/as are: as
stand alone courses in Latino/a Studies, as topics courses within Latino/a
Studies or other discipline, and as selected material or examples within a
larger disciplinary discussion with no clear connection to Latinos/as.
I believe that the last example, the inclusion of Latinos/as as selected
material or examples is currently the most common framework wherein students
will have contact with Latino/a Studies. The liabilities to this approach are
primarily the continued promotion of the illusion that Latinos/as are irrelevant
in the “universal” version of events in core courses, and the
varying levels of dismay and disappointment this “fact” has for
Latino/a students. Latinos/as as example primarily posits that this
community’s issues are easily categorized and quantified and that they
don’t leak into the real concerns thus they easily remain positioned as
“the other” in the classroom. Indeed, in this scenario Latino/a
students can be called upon to give “expert” testimony about
“their “ experiences and ideas on these few occasions. These
moments can enrage students sensitive to the above-mentioned processes and at
the very least embarrass them as being made to represent this
“problem” group.
While the liabilities can be quite destructive in the hands of an
insensitive instructor, at the same time an effective instructor can find
numerous benefits and opportunities for mentoring in the same environment and
context. Because courses that focus on a broad range of examples also tend to
be introductory or major core courses by nature, the majority student population
tends to be the majority in these classrooms as well. In other words, it can be
fairly assumed that the majority of students are not signing up for the course
in order to learn about the “one” Latino/a example. Therefore when
the instructor uses class time to discuss Latinos/as within the course’s
broader context it can newly situate them as important and relevant. This small
moment can do much to redress the routine silencing of Latino/a students. Most
Latino/a students are trained not to expect to learn about themselves, their
communities, or histories in the university classroom. Thus, in a site wherein
it would be the norm to continue and even to promote this erasure, the smallest
example can have profound impact.
In my experience it can have the most impact on those Latinos/as who
wouldn’t consider taking a specific Latino/a Studies course because they
don’t seem themselves as “political” or in need of the
information. Young Latino/a students may even be encouraged to challenge their
training of silence in a more deliberate
way.[5] In my classrooms these are
the most common of the mis-educated Latinos/as, those who feel that succeeding
without changing the system, or even questioning it, is the goal. Indeed this
is the group that educator and historian Rodolfo Acuña warns in his most
recent edition of Occupied America when he says “the dream is over,
wake up!” (462).[6] For an
instructor, it is no small success to encourage a student to take their first
step out of their silence or denial and into a more active learning role. It
should be clear then that any time a student is encouraged to see herself as an
active agent in her own education a mentoring moment has
occurred.[7]
The next most common curricular setting is where Latino/a Studies topics
appear in other disciplinary contexts. These courses can sometimes have
explicit disciplinary space or be taught under a topic heading only when a
qualified instructor is available. Clearly on a programmatic level the
difference between the two is enormous. However, again I’m focused here
on the classroom’s impact on students. Placing the issues concerning
Latinos/as within other disciplinary boundaries can change students’
perceptions of the “majority” versus “minority”
territory. Consequently, it can serve to reterritorialize the entire
disciplinary landscape. Latino/a students could both select these courses
intentionally or take them for a specific major requirement thus the difference
between the majority student population and the Latino/a students is not as
drastic as in the previous example. An instructor in these circumstances has
many opportunities to mentor Latino/a students. Students eager to take the
course have the opportunity to learn and grow through an in depth study of the
material, and to make a connection with a qualified instructor who might serve
as an informal academic advisor, and/or as a means through which to discuss
issues that affect Latinos/as in higher education. For those students who may
have chosen the course for pragmatic reasons and not for the topic, they have
the opportunity to be introduced to the field in the comfortable “home
territory” of their discipline, and perhaps to be challenged as to how the
material relates to their own interests. Latino/a students in these courses
tend to feel more apart of the institutionalized process and are soon able to
speak as themselves and not as a representative of anything in particular. They
can also begin to bridge the more anecdotal or personal experience of their
lives and families with the more foreign academic environment and processes
through a Latino context.
The last framework I want to discuss here is the Latino/a Studies course
within a larger program. Clearly this is the best place for Latino/a students
who want to learn more about their own cultures and communities to go to do this
study, as well as to find like-minded students. As instructor’s mentoring
in this setting can be far simpler because the elements of support are easily at
hand: information and a support system. The one limitation I’ve found in
these courses can be students’ desire to sometimes personally bond over
information rather than to think critically about it. In these instances less
personal but more strategic mentoring can encourage students’ need to do
this community building, but also to emphasize the context and direct them to
develop strategies in response to the problems they share. These contexts
generally encourage students to build their own communities with each other and
concurrently to imagine ways of using the institution to shape what they want
for themselves and their larger communities.
I’ve come to believe that while there are real limitations for
Latino/a students and faculty if there are no institutional systems in place to
support them, there are also potential benefits to working in the margins. In
my experience, the main benefit of this margin is the freedom to discuss issues
that the institution itself doesn’t recognize, or publicize, or would
rather deny. Obviously, the majority easily ignores issues such as
institutionalized racism, classism, white supremacy, entrenched power, and
elitism. With the ability of different generations of Latinos/as to discuss
these topics, formally or informally, a covert and potentially subversive
training takes place. This training can provide an important alternative to the
seduction of assimilation that so many times confronts students. To be educated
about the complexities—the good and the bad—in one’s own
culture and community by those who value it and its place in the personal and
academic journey, allows for more choices than just the “either/or”
of assimilation and marginalization.
Indeed, it would also empower students to recognize the more common
contradictions and complications that Latinos/as feel on a daily basis because
we are routinely undecipherable to American society and its
institutions—racially, ethnically, nationally, linguistically, culturally,
economically and politically. The awareness of this very fact can initially
give students comfort that they are not coming to their education with a
deficiency, but more profoundly can help them value the training that
they’ve already had as outsiders to the educational system in the United
States. The majority of Latino/a students who enter the university do so with
a skill that the academy claims to value most: critical analysis, thinking and
awareness. Most have just not been trained to recognize these abilities in, and
in their academic approaches, because it generally doesn’t fit the model
taught within the institution’s boundaries.
By validating Latino culture and mentoring Latino students through
academics and the workings of institutional power, faculty can teach students
how to continue negotiating the cultural divides they encounter with collective
support and historical consciousness and without sacrificing ourselves and our
jobs. Again as Castillo has observed: “The ignorance of white dominant
society about our ways, struggles in society, history, and culture is not an
innocent and passive ignorance, it is a systematic and determined
ignorance” (Massacre 5). Given this struggle mentoring should
never be seen as an impediment to one’s career as a teacher. Indeed it is
with knowledge of the struggle that Latino/a teachers can find new ways to
mentor students in any institution’s margins. No Latino or Latina should
be sacrificed to the institution’s ignorance, rather we all need to teach
and remind students and colleagues of its existence and of its power, and of the
possibility of creating paths to success even through the largest of
barriers.
Notes
[1] Indeed the Almanac
of Higher Education 1999-2000 reports when considering the educational
attainment of the United States population (in 1990) over 30% of Hispanics had
only an 8th grade education or lower. On the other end of the
spectrum only 5.9% of Hispanics had completed a bachelor’s
degree.
[2] Perhaps this
institutionalization of the symbolic at the heart of Ana Castillo’s the
“Stalinization of Chicanos/as in Academia” wherein she describes the
myth that women of color academics are the most sought after and thus rewarded
by academe. She states “a certain kind of woman of color, perhaps, one
who will not make most of her colleagues too uncomfortable with her presence
(such as one who is not U.S. born, and whose personal history is unencumbered by
U.S. race and class experiences), and then she must contend over the next six
years as to whether or not they will find her tenurable”
(Massacre 211). Castillo aptly discusses the more common phenomenon that
women of color experience in academe: “Because [politically minded women
of color] stands at the bottom of the pyramid of institutional power, she is
first made answerable to those who have ‘brought her in’ (usually
claiming to be taking the reins into their command on the bases of fighting
racism). And when such a woman does not see herself indebted to anyone and/or
is unwilling to participate in the intrigue of in-house
politics—she’s out” (210).
[3] Ana Castillo describes
the generation of Chicanos/Latinos who grew up in the 1980s whom she feels
embraced the myth that rewards for the “Hispanic” had finally come.
She critiques the emptiness of this unprecedented symbolism of
“Hispanic” success that occurred through both media
images—“Magazines, billboards and even television commercials (Coors
comes to mind) showed young, brown, beautiful Latina models in flashy wear
reaping some of the comforts and pleasures of a democracy based on free
enterprise” (Massacre 31-32)—as well as individually
tokenized political figures.
[4]This point can not be
stressed enough, as the overwhelming numbers of Latino/a faculty members are in
the junior rank or non-tenure track positions. This status of course leaves
them extremely vulnerable to all attacks by the system that they may have to
subvert in order to benefit Latino/a students. Again, according to The
Almanac of Higher Education 1999-2000 in the Fall 1992 the number of full
time faculty with teaching responsibilities were 86.8% white and 2.5% Hispanic.
Within this percentage the total number of Hispanic faculty was 60% in the
junior rank or in a variety of non-tenure track positions.
[5]For example if a survey
course in American literature or history included Latino/a authors or figures
alongside those considered “mainstream” or canonical it could do
much to foreground a range of questions: who is American? What are the
“masterpieces” and why? Who writes history? These initial
questions lead one to a systematic analysis that could potentially uncover
problems within university and disciplinary institutions and structures. The
same kinds of question can occur to Latinos and non-Latinos alike and could, of
course, be asked of other broadly conceived courses such as introductions to
women’s studies, sociology, psychology, anthropology, etc.
[6] Acuña sees as
essential recontextualizing history and the educational system in order to
challenge Chicano/Latino youth that perhaps, because of the successes of the
past, can now too routinely see the world through American culture’s
optimism. He critiques this optimism thusly: “we allow myths such as we
are ‘Hispanics’ to continue, rationalizing that we all have a common
history. We repeat that we share a common culture, forgetting that the culture
we share is a colonial one. In the end, it boils down to the fact that it is
seductive to think of ourselves as powerful. The celebration of our success
perpetuates the myths that Chicanas/os are doing just fine, they just have to
wait for the immigrant to assimilate and they’ll be up there with the
Irish and the Italians who also made it. Time will cure all problems. An
American education will recycle all of us. . . .After all we made it. I think
not” (464).
[7]In my experience it is
most common for these previously silenced or unaware students to come to my
office near the end of class, or even after, and “confess” the
importance that the Latino/a examples had for them. Usually they have kept
their distance from me during the term because they don’t want to seem to
be ingratiating themselves in order to get a better grade. They are generally
aware of the possible inappropriateness that they use a personal networking
strategy in the university setting. Usually these students don’t
drastically change their plans and change fields, for example, but report that
they have begun to see themselves as “real” members of the classroom
and no longer invisible.
Works Cited
Acuña, Rodolfo. Occupied America: A History of
Chicanos. 4th ed. New York: Longman, 2000.
The Almanac of Higher Education, 1999-2000. 1999. The
Chronicle of Higher Education. 25 July 2000. <http://chronicle.com/free/almanca/1999/almanac.htm.
Castillo, Ana. The Massacre of the Dreamers: Essays on
Xicanisma. 1994. New York: Plume, 1995.
Heyck, Denis Lynn Daly. “Introduction: Latinos, Past and
Present.” Barrios and Borderlands: Cultures of Latinos & Latinas
in the United States. Ed. Denis Lynn Daly Heyck. New York: Routledge,
1994. 1-15.
Medina, Lucia. Personal Interview. 17 July 2000.
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