Today in EDUC 121, we watched a documentary entitled "Fear and Learning at Hoover Elementary." The film chronicles the effects of California's Proposition 187. The legislation declined education and health care to the children of undocumented immigrants.
Hoover Elementary, the largest elementary school in Los Angeles at the time, was greatly affected by Prop 187 because the vast majority (possibly all the students) are Latino.
Throughout the video, many of the teachers were interviewed and I was surprised by many of their responses. Many of the teachers were either unaware of the situation caused by the new legislation or just too stuck in their ways to care about making a difference. Many of the staff thought that the Latino students should just assimilate into American society and drift away from their own culture.
Luckily, California's Proposition 187 has since been overturned by the courts. Hopefully the overturning of this legislation will be the stepping stone for acquired equality in our nation's schools. As a future teacher, I am certainly hoping that by the time I have my own classroom race and ethnicity in schools will not be as huge of an issue as it currently is today.
Its almost exactly what happened to the Native Americans when they were forced into schools to assimilate into American culture. I wonder wht would happen if we asked American citizens to assimilate a completely foreign culture and see how fast and well the are able to do it, and how happy they'll be with it.
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