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Re: [NetworkAztlan_News] Rodolfo F. Acuña l Chicana/o Studies (40 years) : What are they? l Rough Draft l 16 October 2010
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From: Rosalio Munoz
To: NetworkAztlan_News@yahoogroups.com
I have to take issue with Rudy on this one. I think content is the most basic. I also don't think Chicano/a studies is an academic thing, it is an ideological/spiritual pursuit that does have to do with learning, learing about institutional racism, historically and in its current forms and the approaches to deal with it, coping and dismantling and replacing with justice, with becoming more human and our cultural assets and appreciation is also involved. I think it is about the whole people, raza, but also la raza humana. Its about raising the class and democratic conciousness and behavior of we the people.
Also I have different definitions I guess about what modes of production and epistomology are. To me different modes of production are capitalist, socialist, feudalist, classic slavery, primitive communism (hunting and gathering they said in my old anthro classes. To me epistomology deals with idealism vs materialism philosopically. I also have different ideas on what colonialism is. I think we live under state monopoly capitalsm where institutional racism is a primary lever for cheapening labor an undermining democratic advance.
All that aside I agree with the point about we are being pitted more and more in the global labor market, not only for mano de obra barata but also cesos de obra barata. So all the more the workers and people of the world have to unite!
From: dorinda moreno
To: Latinos in Education
Sent: Sat, October 16, 2010 11:25:36 PM
Subject: [NetworkAztlan_News] Rodolfo F. Acuña l Chicana/o Studies (40 years) : What are they? l Rough Draft l 16 October 2010
On Sat, Oct 16, 2010 at 10:31 PM, Calderon, Roberto
HISTORIA CHICANA
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It has been forty years since the first Chicano Studies programs were initiated on campuses throughout the United States. This accomplishment is a tribute to the tenacity of less than a couple of hundred students who were concerned about the failure of the schools to educate Mexican American students, pointing to the horrendous dropout rate in the public schools.
Since then few scholars of any race have examined this historic phenomenon treating CHS just like any other product of the sixties, forgetting how and why they came about. In many cases it has become the preoccupation of many Chicana/o faculty members to prove their legitimacy. It is not uncommon for them to claim this legitimacy by arguing that Chicana/o studies is a content field distinguishing CHS programs from service departments and pedagogical fields such as education.
Every wave of scholars for the past forty years has ignored important epistemological questions. Because of this we have to suffer through a rash of conferences rehashing movement events without dealing with the genesis of individual programs or the nature of CHS. Instead of probing how and why CHS came about, we theorize what it is and avoid an epistemological understanding.
Few scholars have attempted to answer why the development of CHS has been so uneven. They have not dealt with basic questions such as the historical differences within southwest states themselves. For instance, Texas and California are often as different as the disparate Central American nationalities. Population and modes of production in these states differ even within the states there are the distinctions, i.e., northern and southern California. El Paso, the Rio Grande Valley, and San Antonio.
Under the sway of the elitism of the academy, many CHS scholars claim that CHS is a content field. They claim that they are just as rigorous as the other disciplines. It is common in academe for the hard sciences to occupy the top of the pyramid, followed by the social sciences, the humanities, and the arts with education occupying the lowest step—research not teaching rules.
In academe, rarely are teaching methods discussed. Methods more often refer to research methods. Within this logic quantitative techniques trump qualitative evidence. Similarly research institutions trump teaching colleges with the state more generously rewarding researchers. The teaching load at research and teaching institutions is distinguished by the actual time devoted to teaching. Professors at research institutions teach lighter loads, get more sabbatical time and grants to fund research.
This pecking order has influenced the development of the disparate programs. For instance, it has only been until recently that the Chicana/o studies department at California State University at Northridge has been able to attract Chicanas or Chicanos with doctorates from tier one institutions. I have spoken to Chicanos who professed their commitment to the revolution who told me that they had not gotten a PhD to work the same hours as a high school teacher.
This attitude was common to Chicanas/os across the board regardless of gender or whether they were Marxists, feminists or nationalists and it profoundly affected the development of what is today called Chicana/o studies.
In considering outcome, it would have been important to define and debate teaching methods.
My first proposition is that there is a difference between Chicana/o studies programs that are defined by a curriculum rather than individual course in the traditional disciplines. For instance, Chicana/o history is not Chicana/o studies, it is a field within the discipline of history where common historical methods are used to research, study and teach that corpus of knowledge of Mexican American people. In the same vein, Chicana/o literature does not study, research or teach CHS but it is a field within the discipline of literature.
My second proposition is that Chicana/o studies are not defined by its content rather they are bound together by a pedagogy that defines their purpose. It is the foundation used to motivate and teach Latina/o students. The content is an important motivational tool to inspire students to learn, to correct the negative self-images that have come about through the process of colonialism. This is not unique to Mexican Americans. The national question raged in Europe during the latter part of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries.
Hence, content fields studying CHS should have developed within the context of a pedagogy, which should have given it a sense of purpose.
Other than perhaps at California State Northridge the focus has been on the development of content fields. Little integration has taken place. There has been an artificial pursuit of finding a common research methodology which is almost impossible. It is not enough to say that a multidiscipline approach is part of its course of study. A more natural linking is pedagogy.
In struggling toward an identity for Chicana/o studies I have tried to convey this particular vision to colleagues. However, they often ignore me and I am certain that they write it off as cada loco con su tema (every madman to his own opinion).
I did not find much of an audience until I came into contact with La Raza Studies program at the Tucson Unified School District. As mentioned, today it is under attack by conservatives and neo-Nazis who say that it is unpatriotic because it teaches about Mexicans and emphasizes teaching methodology using the principles of Paulo Freire, John Dewey and Edwin Fenton—rejecting the model that students should be warehoused.
This flies in the face of the goal of educating students. The Tucson outcome has been more than encouraging. Currently Latino and African American males have the lowest in third grade reading tests in the nation. The Latino high school dropout rates nationwide hovers around 56 percent, higher if the dropout from middle school to high school is included. Only about 24 percent of graduating Latinos go on to college, mostly to community colleges.
Tucson’s Unified School District's Ethnic Studies and Mexican American Studies programs has reversed these trends. The dropout rate in this program is 2.5 percent. Students in the program significantly outperform their peers on the state's standardized AIMS tests and 66 percent of these students go on to college.
This semester the program is offering 43 sections and serves 1500 students in six TUSD high schools, with similar programs at the middle and elementary school levels. “The classes are designed to be culturally relevant – to help the students see themselves in the curriculum and make them see why education is important for them. If they see themselves in the educational literature they find more reasons to read and write, to research and draw conclusions.”
Central to La Raza Studies is the use of critical theory which essentially means that they use the Socratic Method, a powerful, teaching tactic for fostering critical thinking. It focuses on giving students questions, not answers. It has been used at the better law schools to prepare American law students for Socratic questioning.
Apparently critical thinking threatens many white Americans who do not want Mexicans to question their version of the truth. In the late 1960’s California Superintendent of Schools Max Rafferty called a reform movement advocating a similar inquiry method of teaching social science subversive because it taught students to question.
Logically, Americans should be elated that Mexicans are learning and are motivated to go to college. So why are they trying to eliminate it? The truth be told, they don’t want Mexicans to succeed. They want them to live up to the stereotype and to be subservient. They don’t want competition for higher paying jobs; they don’t want to endanger their poorly paid reserve labor pool.
La Raza Studies people are serious about their pedagogy. This past July they held the 12th Annual Institute for Transformative Education in partnership with the University of Arizona School of Education. The institutes feature educators from across the United States. http://www.tusd.k12.az.us/contents/depart/mexicanam/index.asp.
The presenters and the participants are multiracial, i.e., scholars such as Pedro A. Noguera, Executive Director, Metropolitan Center for Urban Education New York University, and Angela Valenzuela, University of Texas Austin. Their focus is to improve teaching effectiveness.
For the past forty years, every reform measure that involves better teaching has been shot down by the American electorate—bilingual education, affirmative action, racial integration, smaller class sizes, etc. Even though programs such as La Raza Studies prove, that when programs are properly thought out and supported, they work. A pretext is almost always found to eliminate them.
Americans want to continue the same old blame game. In the 1920s they blamed Mexican culture and sought to Americanize Mexican American youth. In the sixties they blamed the parents, the Mexican family. Today they are blaming the teachers.
The bottom line is that the United States has effectively saved capital trillions of dollars by draining professionals trained from other countries; at the same time, it out sources well paying technical jobs and production to poor countries. The United States does not need an educated workforce. It goes back to “why educate Mexicans, who’s going to pick our crops?” Rather than educate Latinos the solution is don’t educate them, build prisons. Keep them south of the border and if we need them, rent them, like we do U-hauls.
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From: Rudy Saves [hchsc003@csun.edu]
Sent: Saturday, October 16, 2010 4:25 PM
Subject: Chicana/o Studies
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