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Symposium scrutinizes drop-out rate
by Janet Goode
The institutions of family, education
and society at large were called upon
Tuesday to come to the aid of
Hispanics in conquering their ever-
rising drop-out rate from elementary
schools through higher education.
.. The bell toffs for THEE!” Dr.
LauroF. Cavazos, president of Texas
Tech University bellowed while
pointing at an audience of more than
200 at the Memorial Student Center.
Cavazos emphasized his concern
over the Hispanic drop-out rate by
citing this quote from British theolgian
and poet John Donne.
Cavazos was the first of three
distinguished speakers in a panel
discussion, titled “The Hispanic
Dropout in Our Society, ” sponsored
by the Committee for the Cultural
Awareness of Mexican Americans.
Cavazos spoke on the importance
of the family unit in forming a child’s
cultural esteem which, he said, is
essential in a child’s achievement
expectations.
The second speaker, Dr. Luis
Cano, a former teacher, school
principal and professor of education
who founded the George I. Sanchez
Junior-Senior High School for
dropouts, agreed that the family is an
intricate part of instilling children’s
values. However, he stressed the role
the school system takes.
The third speaker, Dr. Tatcho
Mindiola, director of Mexican
American studies and associate
professor at the University of
Houston, addressed the problem from
a sociological perpective, refuting the
ideas that the family or schools are at
fault. He said both of these institutions
are victims, but not the cause of the
problem. The cause, he said, is the
basic societal system in which
minorities live.
Cavazos said the family is important
in helping the drop-out student
because a dropout mainly needs
someone to care.
“We are all interdependent, ” he
said. “To help the dropout, we need
to try and understand them, listen to
them, sit with them, and talk to them. ”
Currently, 17 percent of Anglos in
Texas are not finishing high school, he
said. Twenty-eight percent of blacks
will not finish, followed by a “dismal”
45 percent of Hispanics, he said.
“When you think about this, it has
enormous social, political and
economic consequences, ” he said.
“Americans need people who can
think through serious problems and
arrive at logical solutions.
“With this drop-out rate — many,
many Hispanics will be at a serious
disadvantage in the future. ”
In the United States, 16 percent of
those 25 years old or older have
completed only eight years of
education, he said. That number rises
to 41 percent for Hispanics, Cavazos
said.
“If you think that the problem is
difficult now, ” he said, “it will become
dreadful if we don’t address it
immediately and turn it around. ”
Cavazos said the fundamental
solution to this problem is in the hearts
and the minds of the Hispanic family
and the Hispanics themselves.
“People concerned about this issue
need to raise awareness, ” he said.
“Until you raise the awareness level,
people will not be able to come to
solutions.”
By the turn of the century, Cavazos
said, the people we call “minorities”
will be the majority in our school
systems in this state.
And if the minorities are dropping
out of school and not getting an
education, Cavazos said this will also
have serious political consequences.
“It goes back to our very basis of
democracy, ” he said. “We need an
informed electorate — people who
can reason, who can think. ”
To illustrate this, Cavazos quoted
Thomas Jefferson saying: “Were it left
to be decided if we were to have a
government without newspapers or
newspapers without a government —I
should not hesitate a moment to
prefer the latter. But I should mean
that every man who receives these
papers should be able to read. ”
Cavazos said that America has had
tremendous immigration in the last
five years, probably as great as the
European immigration of the 19th
century.
“But there is a great difference
here. The Europeans saw education
as a way out,” he said. “Unfortunatly,
I sometimes wonder if Hispanics have
kept that as an imperative. ”
The Hispanic family is responsible
for the loss of this cultural value
system, he said. However, Cavazos
said he believes Hispanics only need
to “resurrect” these values.
In earlier days, many Spaniards
founded universities here before
Harvard ever opened its doors,
Cavazos said. ,
Cavazos said the cause of the high
drop-out rate is also economic.
“I have sat with youngsters in the
fifth and sixth grades who ask me
‘What do I tell my parents when they
tell me it’s time to go to work?’ ” he
said.
“That’s the kind of world those
children live in — a very dismal
world.”
Cavazos said he worries most about
the loss of human potential when a
Hispanic drops out of school.
“In the numbers of dropouts,
maybe one individual could have
come up with a cure for cancer, ” he
said. “One individual may have
brought peace to this world or
alleviated hunger. ”
Cavazos said the change he would
make is an architectural one.
“I want to put a symbolic school
bell on every steeple in America
today. A bell that rings. It would say
something important is about to
happen — and that’s the education of
a child. And it’s that bell that tolls for
us.”
Cano, the second speaker, agreed
that the family is an intricate part of
instilling children’s values, but stressed
the school system as being at fault for
the drop-out rate.
He said he was speaking mostly
from experience because of the his
drop-out studies he did in the high-
stress, inner city of Houston. He said it
is important to emphasize that the
problems associated with dropouts
may vary when the population studied
is a rural group.
The George I. Sanchez school was
set up because of the failure of school
districts to recognize the drop-out
problem, especially with Hispanics,
Cano said.
“The school was set up to eliminate
the myth that dropouts don’t want to
go to school, ” he said. “Kids that drop
out do want to go to school.
“When we opened the George I.
Sanchez school in 1973, we recruited
the first semester. After that, we have
never recruited again. We have had to
turn students away. ”
These are kids that want to go to
school, but they need a support
system, he said. They have lost the
family support and so they need it in
the schools.
From the Sanchez experiment,
Cano said he has learned of ways to
help dropouts.
He said the first thing school
officials or anyone wanting to start a
program for dropouts can do is work
hard to improve the students’ reading
and mathmatical skills.
Improving the child’s self-concept
— who they are and where they come
from — is also important, Cano said.
The problem is that these kids have
lost their cultural heritage, he said.
And most important, Cano said,
there must be programmed successes
in the school.
“Many of the dropouts that I’ve
worked with have had too many
failures,” he said. “We need to
program successes in the school
setting so these students can say,
‘Hey, I can succeed.’
Another aspect Cano mentioned is
the role the parents should take.
“When a student’s attendance is
poor, and parents are taken to court
for truancy, that parent should be
required to attend a parent-training
program,” he said.
“I got a ticket the other day and I
have to go to a driving safety course
for 8 hours. Well, if they are that
concerned about my driving, certainly
we should be concerned about a
child’s truancy.
“Typically, if a parent goes to court
for this, they are fined — and that isn’t
working. ”
Cano said he is firmly behind the
idea that the family is the root cause
but said the solution is to turn to the
schools.
Mindiola said the problem is a
societal one which stems neither from
the schools nor the Hispanic family
unit
“I disagree about heavy emphasis
being placed on the family as being
the culprit in the drop-out issue, ” he
said.
“That is engaging in blaming the
victim. If the source of the drop-out
issue is found within our family or
within the minds of our students, then
we are absolving the broader society
of any responsibility.
“We are overlooking institutional
discrimination and we are overlooking
attitudes of predjudice in that system. ”
Mindiola started his speech with an
anecdote to show where the problem
begins: Ronald Reagan, immediately
after getting elected for his first
presidential term, flew around the
country attending military balls,
Mindiola said.
There was one held at Texas A&M
in his honor. According to the story,
the president was staying at President
Vandiver’s home. Reagan was sitting
in the living room with Nancy, when
his daughter Maureen came in. She
said she wanted to go to the ball but
she didn’t have an escort.
Reagan said, “Honey don’t worry
about it. ” Mindiola said that Reagan
called the Sergeant of the Corps of
Cadets and asked if they would
provide a military escort for his
daughter for the ball.
“Let me make myself perfectly
clear, ” Mindiola said that Reagan
stated. “Do not send a Mexican. ”
So that night, there was a knock at
the door, and when Reagan opened
it, there stood before him a sharply
dressed black Lieutenant.
The Lieutenant saluted and said,
“I’m here to escort your daughter to
the ball.”
The President took a step back and
said, “I’m sorry there must be some
misunderstanding. ”
The lieutenant saluted again and
said, “No, sir! Sgt. Garcia never
makes a mistake. ”
But the issue before us is not
exactly one of predjudice, it is the
drop-out rate, which is a consequence
of society, Mindiola said.
Mindiola addressed the problem
from a sociological perspective.
“The drop-out problem is a serious
problem affecting schools in general,”
he said, “affecting white students,
black students, Mexican American
students — all of them primarily from
the working class.
“When dealing with the Mexican
American population, it is a difference
of rates. The Mexican American drop
out rate is higher.
“In order to fully understand the
problem, we have to look at the
history of the Mexican American in
this country. The battle of the Alamo,
the war of 1848, and the institutional
subordination of which was a
consequence of these.
“The Mexican people were seen as
an inferior people and the institutions
in societies structure were set up
accordingly to insure that they were
indeed at a disadvantage. ”
Once we understand this history,
he said, it is easy to understand that
this drop-out rate is not a new
problem.