Education : Student Speaks in Powerful Voice

Eight years ago, she was a frightened, timid fourth-grade student struggling to understand what her California teachers were saying. Maryela Martinez was then a newly arrived immigrant from Cuba who spoke no English.

Today, Maryela is a senior in the honors program at Saddleback High School in Santa Ana. A poised, self-assured 17-year-old, she not only speaks fluent English but is a straight-A student.

And, for the last year, Maryela has been a powerful figure in California: one of the 11 members of the State Board of Education. The board, which meets once a month, usually in Sacramento, rules on all the textbooks used by public schools in California. The State Board of Education also establishes the broad framework for academic material that will be taught in the public schools.

Gov. George Deukmejian in May, 1988, appointed Maryela as the student member of the board. She became the first Latino student ever appointed to the board.

A student member of the State Board of Education serves only one year, unlike the 10 adult members who are appointed by the governor for four-year terms. But the student member has the same voting power as the other board members, and for the last year, Maryela has been voting on important issues involving California education.

“I got many phone calls and letters when the board was voting on how science should be taught in the schools,” Maryela said. “Many people, including ministers and professors, were interested.”

The State Board of Education in January voted to tighten the guidelines on how such things as evolution are to be treated in science books. Previous policy allowed leeway for religious theories about the Earth’s origin to be taught in science classrooms. The new policy insists on scientific facts.

Maryela said she voted for the new, stricter guidelines on science teaching. She said she found the new guidelines sensible and not repugnant to anyone’s religious beliefs, including her own. “Basically . . . it says that in a science classroom, facts will be presented to uphold a scientific theory,” she said.

Maryela said a great freedom in America--one she said is sadly lacking in her native Cuba--is the right to disagree. For instance, she said, students in America can disagree with what is taught in a science book if they believe the book goes against their religious beliefs. Also, she said, in America students need not take the word of a book as dogma or absolute fact.

“I know for me, for my education, I read as much as I can get my hands on, but not everything I read do I believe. Far from it,” she said.”

Maryela’s parents fled Cuba in 1980, when she was 8 years old. Her father, who is now an accountant in Orange County, wanted freedom for her and her brother, Raoul, who is now 15, she said.

“In Cuba, if you don’t agree with the government’s doctrine, you get nowhere,” she said.

When she was a first-grade student in Cuba, Maryela said, she was forced to vote against an “offending” student--one of her best friends--because the child would not properly wear a red scarf required by the political system. The child, who was only 6, as was Maryela at the time, was taken away from the school after being “voted down” by other students, Maryela said. “I don’t know what happened to her,” Maryela said. The incident still haunts her, Maryela added, and it reminds her of the lack of freedom in Cuba under a Communist regime.

At Saddleback High, Maryela is carrying a 4.6 grade-point-average. “I have a higher grade-point average than 4.0 (straight A’s) because you get extra credit for taking advanced-placement courses,” said Maryela. Maryela’s year on the state board expires this summer. She hopes to attend either Stanford or Harvard next year and her goal is to become an attorney.

“I want to be a lawyer who defends the U.S. Constitution,” she said. “I happen to love the Constitution; it’s not perfect, but it works well to protect our freedoms.”