Hispanic Americans: Comparative Considerations and the Educational Problems of Children*

Abstract

This paper presents an overview of the diversity in character among the various Hispanic-American subgroups. The author compares the following subgroups historically and demographically: Mexican-Americans, Cuban-Americans, Mainland Puerto-Ricans, and "other" Hispanics. As a group, Hispanic-Americans lag far behind the majority population in any array of standard educational measurements. 40% of Hispanic-American students leave school before 10th grade. Children of "immigrant" minorities, such as Chinese, Japanese, and South and Central Americans, tend to do better in school than "caste-like" minorities, such as Black Americans, Mainland Puerto-Ricans and Mexican-Americans in the US. The author discusses several models which explain why Mexican and Puerto-Rican Americans fail in American schools at such high rates: 1) culture of poverty, 2) the various schools emphasizing "discontinuity" between the minority Hispanic and the majority culture, and 3) the psychosocial approach. Features which differentiate immigrants from caste-like minorities include 1) caste-like minorities were incorporated into the society against their will, whereas historically, immigrant minorities choose more or less freely to leave their country to enter a new social order; and 2) immigrants may anticipate or fantasize that in the future they will return home to enjoy the fruits of their hard work in the foreign land. 2 factors alleviate the longterm effects of the hardships and discrimination immigrants face: 1) the levels of discrimination became less evident as accents disappeared and names were Anglicized; immigrants develop a dual frame of reference, enabling them to evaluate their current reality against the reality of life back home; and 3) hard work in the new land will at the very least benefit the children in the future. Factors which veto the Mexican immigrant case as a heurstically "paradiomatic" immigrant minority include: 1) many Mexicans still resent the loss of 1/3 or Mexico's territories to Anglo colonists, 2) Americans still treat Mexican immigrants as a "case-like" minority despite the fact that they are immigrants, and 3) many of the "immigrants" lack official immigrant status.

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