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Chicana/o education and service learning.

Article Excerpt
Abstract

This paper provides a compelling starting point for extending the nature of service learning to disempowered Chicana/o students. Authors discuss educational benefits to students of discovering linkages between theory and practice in the development of personal identity and civic responsibility through authentic reconnection with their communities.

Introduction

Needled by the poor educational attainment of Chicanas/os one of the authors sought to isolate methods to aid them in grasping complexities and schemas involved in acquiring academic knowledge. Understanding historical-social and educational injustices divests students of the belief that a level playing field exists in the United States.

A review of service learning literature reveals scant information on minority students as service providers even though minority students participate in service learning throughout the United States. Specifically, no information was found showing Chicana/o students learning Chicana/o issues through service learning. For a number of years California State University Fullerton's Chicana/o Studies Department has provided students opportunities to acquire precisely this kind of service learning through their introductory course. "Introduction to Chicana/o Studies" enables students to experience in a realistic setting the nature of such issues as immigration, language, economic, educational and social discrimination. James A. Ferg-Cadina's (2004) treatise on Chicana/o historical education deprivation in Black, White and Brown: Latino School Desegregation Efforts in the Pre- and Post Brown v. Board of Education Era provides a historical framework for students' critical thinking about their experiences and subsequent societal outcomes. Points made by the author underscore students' need for innovative opportunities to engage in critical thinking about the Mexican American experience and subsequent societal outcomes.

Chicanas/os form a sizable part of the population in the United States. Of the nation's 280 million population, 38.8 million or 13.4 percent are Hispanics as of 2002, 67 percent or 26 million are of Mexican descent. On the national level statistics indicate few Chicano students ever get a postsecondary education, with only 11% of Hispanic population, 25 years old and over, ever completing a Bachelors degree and a paltry 6.4% with masters or doctorate degree (U.S. Census, 2003). California statistics indicate the high potential for Hispanic students' educational participation. California is home to 11.9 million Hispanics, or 34 percent of the population in scholastic year 2002-2003. Highly impacted K-9 schools enrolled 2,819,504 students who were Hispanic or 42.2 percent of its total enrollment. (California Dept. of Education, 2004)

Will the importance for addressing Hispanic educational needs diminish? The National Center for Education Statistics population projections indicate that by 2050 Hispanics will reach 98 million in number, thus representing about one-fourth of the total U.S. population (NCES, April 2003). If these population growth trends continue the implications for educational institutions are enormous; it...

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