High-Tech Start : Latino Preschoolers Get a Lesson in Pride on Computers

The tiny fingers of 5-year-old Cynthia Ruiz were searching for a big word.

C-Y-N-T-H came pretty fast. But where were the I and the A? Then a grin spread over her somber face, and she looked up with eyes twinkling. “There!” she cried, plunking down the I and A on her IBM computer keyboard.

At the Ford Day Care Center in East Los Angeles, preschoolers spell on word processors, not on blackboards, and in special storytelling classes they go beyond the rudimentaries of writing and reading to learn about their rich Mexican history right along with the U.S. Constitution.

The integrated, high-tech approach seems more akin to child care programs in competitive Beverly Hills than to anything normally found in a poor community. Yet it is key to the Mexican American Opportunity Foundation’s goal of providing poor Latino children with sophistication and pride, “so when they get to school they won’t join gangs and fail like so many of our children do,” said Dionicio Morales, president of the foundation.

With an annual budget of $4.5 million--most of it from the state of California and major corporate donors--the foundation offers a bilingual curriculum of writing, reading, storytelling, counting and history to students 18 months through 5 years old.

Begun in 1973 with just 17 students, the foundation’s day care program has grown to eight centers serving 1,500 disadvantaged Spanish-speaking children in Southern California. Families pay on a sliding scale--the service is free to the poorest parents, as long as they get work or enroll in job training.

When the computers arrived this year, two of the centers, both in economically depressed East Los Angeles neighborhoods, took what Morales said is another step toward “giving poor children an even shake.”

The Ford Day Care Center and Telegraph Child Care Center received 18 word processors and computer keyboards paid for by Anheuser-Busch Inc. and Sears. IBM trained the teachers to work with word processors, and this fall the “Writing to Read” program was launched.

Now, after a few weeks, “the children go straight for the computers and they just eat it up,” said Teresa Zelaya, supervisor at the Telegraph center.

Using headphones and picture books, children first listen to tape recordings of phonetic sounds as they look at corresponding images of animals or objects. Then they move to a computer to answer questions about the same sounds and words. Each child works at his own pace. Later, in unstructured play, the children explore the computers on their own.

“This is a risk-free approach in which there are no errors and the child has many choices,” said Maria Naldi, Cynthia’s teacher. “They feel so good when they first spell their name on a computer. I have seen incredible changes in such a little bit of time.”

Aura Zapata Chelstrom, child care administrator for the foundation, said that even before getting computers, the children graduating from their centers were “so advanced that when they leave here at 5 1/2, they go straight to first grade. Nobody ever goes to kindergarten, and they all speak and write English by that time.”

In the eastern reaches of Los Angeles, where Latino gangs are often made up of children struggling to understand a foreign language and culture, that is saying a great deal.

Disadvantaged Latino children normally are far behind other children when they enter public school, and many never overcome the language barriers that keep them from catching up, educators say.

The problem is reflected in the Los Angeles Unified School District by a 1988 dropout rate of 40% for Latinos. It is particularly telling in college attendance among Latinos, only 16% of whom even take the high school courses required to enter the University of California, according to the county Office of Education.

The goal of the foundation’s teachers has been to produce bilingual children who can match their high-achieving suburban counterparts when they reach public school, but who also have pride in their Hispanic backgrounds, which will help them compete as adults.

“We feel really strongly about it, that once they get into grammar school, it’s simply too late to start the training,” said Morales, who is also chairman of the child care committee of the National Hispanic Task Force.

“The child care approach has got to change for Hispanics,” he said. “Pepsi, Coke, Kraft Cheese are spending billions of dollars to capture the Mexican consumer buck in the United States, but who the hell is spending a dollar to be sure that our children can cope?”

Some leading politicians seem at least interested. Federal Housing and Urban Development Secretary Jack Kemp visited the foundation’s day care centers during a tour last June, after learning about their innovative approach. In October, Morales met with Labor Secretary Elizabeth Dole, who is investigating a similar idea for improving early education and boosting achievement among the undereducated minorities streaming into the work force.

Cynthia Ruiz is not aware of these big questions surrounding her future. “I like to type. It’s fun!” she said, giggling.

“My favorite thing is to draw, and I know how to spell my name--Manny,” said Manuel Quintero, 5, who anxiously asks his teacher each morning when he will get his turn on the computers at the Telegraph center.

Manny is also learning to electronically draw animals and people on the computer screen, which can produce Etch-A-Sketch-style figures. Such visual messages also play a prominent role in history class, where the children learn from playing with miniature historical scenes created by a special team of federally funded senior Latino artisans.

Mexican history is new to many of the children, whose immigrant parents rarely have a formal education. So the children learn about the discovery of vanilla and cocoa beans, of the human sacrifices practiced by ancient Mexican cultures, and of Ninos Heroes, the 1847 event in which young military cadets were among the last to die defending Mexico City against invading Americans.

“The educators in public school who make policy don’t understand the diversity we face,” Morales said. “Just having teachers who can speak Spanish to them is not enough anymore.”

For Teresa Zelaya, at the Telegraph center, the proof is in the impression her students make when they enter first grade.

“We get nothing but letters of recognition and praise from the schools where our children go,” she said. “If only every child had this chance.”