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Status of the Historiography of Chicano Education: A Preliminary Analysis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Guadalupe San Miguel Jr.
Guadalupe San Miguel Jr.*
Affiliation:
University of California, Santa Barbara
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Extract

In the last two decades the field of social history, including the study of ethnic minorities and education, has undergone a renaissance. Historical studies, for example, have expanded traditional notions of the concept “education” to include all institutions that “educate,” have provided critical interpretations of the public school's evolution and function in an advanced capitalist society, and have shed new light on continuing issues in American education. Historical studies on ethnic minority groups, and especially Chicanos, have also been done, many of them by minority group members themselves. These new published works have increased our understanding of the process of immigration, illuminated the nature of conflict—racial, cultural, social, economic—in the Chicano community, and provided data on the origins and development of Chicano barrios throughout the Southwest. Despite the renaissance in the historical studies of both minorities and public education in the United States, little has been written on the educational past of Chicanos. As late as 1985, for example, not one single book providing an interpretation of their experiences in the schools had been published.

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 26 , Issue 4 , Winter 1986 , pp. 523 - 536
Copyright
Copyright © 1986 by the History of Education Society 

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References

1. Examples of major revisionist studies are Katz, Michael B., The Irony of Early School Reform: Educational Innovation in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Massachusetts (Cambridge, Mass., 1968); Karier, Clarence, Shaping the American Educational State: 1900 to the Present (New York, 1975); Tyack, David B., The One Best System: A History of American Urban Education (Cambridge, Mass., 1974); Bowles, Samuel and Gintis, Herbert, Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life (New York, 1976). A critique of the revisionist position can be found in Ravitch, Diane, The Revisionists Revised: A Critique of the Radical Attack on the Schools (New York, 1978).Google Scholar

2. For a discussion of the state of these studies see Arroyo, Luis L., “The State of Chicano Labor History, 1970–1980,” 1–8, and Camarillo, Albert M., “The ‘New’ Chicano History: Historiography of Chicanos in the 1970s,” 9–18, in Chicanos and the Social Sciences: A Decade of Research and Development (1970–1980), ed. Ortiz, Isidro (Santa Barbara, Calif., 1983). See also Garcia, Mario T. and Garcia, Richard A., “History,” in Sourcebook of Hispanic Culture in the United States, ed. Foster, David William (Chicago, 1982), 3–33.Google Scholar

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21. De León, Arnoldo, “Blowout 1910 Style: A Chicano School Boycott in West Texas,” Texana 12 (Nov. 1974): 124–40, quote taken from 135.Google Scholar

22. Miguel, Guadalupe San Jr., “The Struggle against Separate and Unequal Schools,” History of Education Quarterly 23 (Fall 1983): 343–59; Allsup, Carl, “Education Is Our Freedom: The American G.I. Forum and the Mexican American School Segregation in Texas, 1948–1957,” Aztlan 8 (Spring, Summer, Fall 1977): 27–50.Google Scholar

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24. For several studies on the emergence of segregated schools see footnote 10 above.Google Scholar

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26. Miguel, Guadalupe San Jr., “Mexican American Organizations and the Changing Politics of School Desegregation in Texas, 1945–1980,” Social Science Quarterly 63 (Dec. 1982): 701–15. See also Allsup, , “Education Is Our Freedom.”Google Scholar

27. Miguel, San Jr., Let All of Them Take Heed, ch. 3: Aroused from Our Slumber.Google Scholar

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29. Miguel, San Jr., Let All of Them Take Heed, ch. 4: On the Home Front.Google Scholar

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37. See, for example, Fogartie, Ruth Ann, Texas-born Spanish-name Students in Texas Colleges and Universities (1936–1948), Inter-American Education Occasional Papers (Austin, Tex., 1948).Google Scholar

38. Carter, and Segura, , Mexican Americans in School, 17.Google Scholar