Cavazos’ View Is ‘Too Simplistic’
Re Your editorial “Are Latino Parents to Blame?” (April 12). I take great issue with Secretary of Education Lauro F. Cavazos’ simplistic remarks at the first public hearing of a federal task force on the crisis in Latino education.
As a fellow Tex-Mex, educator and parent, it’s unbelievable that Cavazos is not aware of the dimensions of the educational problems facing Latinos. Perhaps the blame must be placed on educational administrators who are too far removed to have any positive solutions and instead complicate matters by placing blame on the parents of our dropouts. Your editorial hits the nail on the head, “Cavazos is oversimplifying a complex social problem.” Of all people, he should know better. How can he blame parents for the dropout rate?
Living in a technological society does not afford our people any better opportunities in education. It’s still a luxury they can’t afford. It’s a poverty cycle that is hard to break unless we stop blaming the victims and start finding solutions. As more educators become bilingual and more accepting of the cultural uniqueness of all their students, the bridge to the educational institutions will be crossed by the Latino parents. When these parents are greeted in their own language and are made to feel welcome at our schools, they will also become part of the PTA and other advisory groups that are greatly needed in the educational system. Those special outreach efforts have already proven positive. Lest we forget, “Children do not fail, we, educators fail.”
Children who know only Spanish don’t have a problem, they are our clients. We, as educators, have a problem if we can’t communicate with them. Cavazos should go to any elementary school the first day of classes and look at our children’s happy Latino faces--they are eager to learn. They have also been told at home how they are going to learn to read and write. But return and look at the faces of our third-graders. If they are still smiling, they are going to make it; if they are not, they will drop out as soon as they are able. We need to make a greater effort to retain our students in our schools.
Let us all unite to alleviate the dropout problem. Lauro F. Cavazos, please don’t stand in our way. We are not going to be part of a problem. President Bush, Cavazos’ boss, can be part of the solution. An increase in the budget allocation for education will help the efforts to open up the educational process to all our students.
ENRIQUETA LOPEZ RAMOS
Santa Ana
Enriqueta Lopez Ramos is a professor of Spanish at Cypress College.
