This is the post that makes me cry.
My grandfather and grandmother came from Poland.
They had to make it across Europe and the Atlantic Ocean to come to America.
This was as a time (still is but no one wants to know this) when you had a health check and you needed a sponsor or a job waiting, not an Anchor Baby.
.
Education was very to my family. Learning English was very first step.
My mother remembers helping out the Aunts and Uncles who would sit down and study with their children.
Education in my Border State is just a play for power and votes.
And this makes me cry. Education is everything. It is the window to the world.
Not to be used as propaganda.
The mantra when illegally crossing the border is...
I want a better life for my children.
I want my children to go to school
Don't break up the family
and the most important one
No habla ingles
One of my best friends in California was a teacher.
She has now since retired and is beyond happy.
Why ?
She was a 3rd and 4th grade teacher. She was the teacher everyone wanted their children to have. I did and I wasn't even in her school district ! Her class were fun, exciting and filled with the love of learning.
And then.... California started teaching to the test. So each class and school had to be above a certain number to get funding. You taught what the test was.
Her classes were about half Hispanic and half everyone else and her classes became some of the lowest scoring ones. Very surprising to me.
I found out why one year right after Christmas vacation. Friends were sitting around
having drinks and nibbles and she let slip how she was dreading going back to school. We all guessed wrong...
She said that most of her Hispanic kids would come back with less English that they left with.
During the week she could keep them up with their English but as soon as they went home no English was spoken. Weekend were bad. No English TV not even Sesame Street or cartoons. So after two weeks off her kids had less and less. Even with the ESL classes. If you don't speak it and listen to English how can you learn.
If she wanted to keep a child back to repeat she couldn't. The mothers would come and scream at her that is was her fault that their children were not learning, she was a racist and all the while waving their Mexican flags. It is never their fault all responsibility to teach them was hers. So she would watch her kids move on with less and less English till they dropped out.
So much for the mantra "I want my kids to go to school "
In Tucson there are several school districts the biggest being the Tucson School District.
This school district is in Congressmans Raul Griialve
newly redrawn 3rd Congressional District.
His daughter is head of the Tucson School District which is heavily Hispanic. Her mother in law in also on the board.
Several years ago Tucson High School started a class that was to to a bridge class. It was to be about the history of Mexico open to all students, then it go to be a class for only Hispanic students instead of American history. The class professes the Hispanic kids need to learn about their culture because it made them better students.
Ummm I didn't have a class for Polish students, or my friend didn't have classes on Vietnamese culture. ( Tucson has a huge Vietnamese population) but we need a class in Mexican culture in a city that is covered in the history of Mexico ?
Their proof was every student who took this class got a better grade average. Well yes that was true because every student who took that class got an A.
In all of my children's classes from regular class to AP classes not one class had every student getting an A. Never !
Plus how can your be teaching Mexican History and not know that Cinco de Mayo is about The Battle of Puebla and not Mexican Independence Day.
I learned that in my American History class.
Plus so many of the teaching and book had to do with revolution, guerrilla warfare and insurrection. One of the main heroes was Che Guevara who looks better in a beret and holding a cigar than any man I know.
But many of his greatest anti capitalist quest like Cuba have fallen short. But we saw where this teaching was all going when the Arizona Department of Schools wanted to remove this class to possibly an after school class and held an meeting on this subject. The Tucson High School kids jumped up at the beginning of the meeting and PUSHED the school board members out of the seats to the floor and took over.
Violence rules.
La Raza group and Raul Griialve were very please with this maneuver.
They exploited the children again for their need for voting power.
Education is important, It is just not talk.
It is also responsibility for PARENTS to teach their children and make sure they are learning, doing homework and most of all if you are living in America learning English.
But you will never see this on TV news all you see is the one Hispanic student in school that is doing really great.
Tomorrow, a death and what happen to my best friend.
