Newsletter

As Latino students near a majority in California schools, questions arise

Becker, Andrew

2006

Overview

Ana Karen Manzanares Garcia, 18, a 2006 graduate of Deer Valley High School in Antioch, Calif., believes her alma mater needs to do a better job of educating Latinos. Although a Latino Club exists at the school, she says Latino culture should be taught more. Few teachers speak Spanish in Antioch, she said, unlike the middle school she attended in San Francisco. For years, schools have been majority Latino in much of Southern California and San Jose and predominately Latino in East Bay districts such as West Contra Costa and Pittsburg, Calif. In most other Contra Costa schools, white students remain the vast majority. But this year for the first time the Latino population exceeded whites in Antioch schools, according to the Department of Education. Latinos became the biggest group of students in Alameda County schools in 2004-05. While [Jackie Goldberg] stopped short of calling for the return of bilingual education, she, [Joe Coto] and Latino student advocates want to see the state adopt textbooks suited to meet the change. English and history textbooks and curriculum need to include more Latino and other cultures and be less Eurocentric, some say, and Coto wants textbooks that are less culturally biased. He also believes, as does Goldberg, that lesson plans shouldn't follow a one-size-fits-all approach. Moreover, Latinos are not a monolithic group; they are multigenerational Californios and recent immigrants, both legal and illegal, from across Latin America.

• Publisher: Tribune Content Agency LLC
• Subject: Coto, Joe / Heim, Mary / Mora, Jill Kerper