Hispanic Fanatic

I’ve been homeschooling my son since March. He is seven years old, and he’s obsessed with dinosaurs and the pyramids of Egypt. So most of our curriculum revolves around velociraptors, King Tut, or a combination of both. And yes, King Tut fighting velociraptors would be an awesome Bruckheimer movie.

However — and this may shock you — I cannot replace a trained teacher who actually knows what he or she is doing. So just a few months ago, I was hopeful that our local schools would at least partially open, and my son could continue his proper education and socialize with his friends.

In retrospect, that idea seems so naïve that perhaps I should be the person in my house who is heading off to second grade soon.

Although to be fair, I did not believe at the time that my fellow Americans would be so foolish, so reckless, so gobsmackingly selfishthat their insane actions would cause the pandemic to not only linger at lethal levels, but soar to deadly new heights. Even at my most cynical (and I can be crazy cynical), I still thought we had a chance at joining the civilized world by cobbling together some kind of semi-organized, barely coherent plan for self-preservation.

No thank you. We would all rather die.

Despite the clear statistical and anecdotal evidence that it is idiotic to open schools now (when the situation is actually worse than when we closed them in the first place), our rejected Veep character of a leader is insisting — even demanding — that we flood kids back into their classrooms and hope for the best. Of course, in this scenario, hoping for the best means “only a hundred kids die and maybe a couple thousand teachers, tops.” Hey, we can’t let the science get in the way.

The president apparently believes that reopening schools and further spreading the virus will boost his chances of reelection. No, I don’t understand the logic either. But keep in mind that this is the same guy who thought sending in federal troops to rough up protesters would somehow make suburban moms vote for him. So who knows what the hell he’s thinking.

In any case, Trump’s bellicose stance on schools is one of his least popular positions (and the guy has lots of opinions that people just hate). In fact, a majority of Americans oppose the administration’s demands for schools to reopen, with an overwhelming 65% against “cutting funds to schools that do not physically reopen, as Trump had threatened.” And of course, school districts from LA to Chicago have ignored the president’s whining and made plans for virtual learning instead.

Yes, even some of Trump’s hardcore supporters draw the line at sacrificing their own children just so he has a better shot at winning North Carolina. Sure, they’ll happily sacrifice other people’s children, but not their own, so maybe there is an upper limit to the cult’s power.

Now, this whole scheme — to call it a “plan” is absurd — is yet another example of the Trump Administration’s general incompetence. After all, there is no national strategy for reopening the schools, no real guidelines on how to do it safely, and no ideas for how to deal with a viral outbreak in the classroom. Call it the return of Republican magical thinking or “no exit strategy, part two.” Either way, it illustrates how conservatives cannot think even one step ahead, no matter how predictable, logical, or necessary that step might be.

But wait — it gets worse.

Because in addition to the haphazard flailing from the White House that we’ve seen so many times before, this debacle in the making is fresh proof of the administration’s complete indifference and/or active contempt for the well-being of Americans.

It also reinforces the conservative disdain for education in general, and for public education in particular. Republicans are always freaking out that their children are being “indoctrinated” by teachers who point out that climate change has a scientific basis and that the Tulsa Massacre actually happened. More specifically, this administration has not been shy about its goal of making sure that only rich kids going to private religious schools actually get instruction. 

Speaking of instructors, I’m still trying to figure out how, according to the GOP, teachers are lazy morons and a scourge to America, but they also should be trusted with firearms (you know, to defend against all those school shootings that are the price of freedom). And in today’s world, teachers should be happy to die of coronavirus if it means kids can get out of their parents’ hair for a few hours.

And speaking of kids, conservatives have made it clear that they really don’t care about educational excellence (that’s something those socialist losers in Finland inexplicably prioritize). To the GOP, school is just glorified daycare, which allows parents to work, which keeps the economy going, which is the most important thing in the universe. And since we should all be willing to die for the sake of the stock market, opening schools is a natural extension of the Republican death cult.

As a final insult, we hear that we cannot possibly take even minimal efforts to safeguard classrooms because it would cost too much. This argument is never — as in never, never, never — made when we are talking about, say, a new aircraft carrier or a pile of bombsthat can blow up a continent or invading a foreign land. For those items, we have infinite cash. Also, we can always cut taxes for millionaires, but hand sanitizer is a fucking handout.

As a not-so-wise man once said, “It is what it is.”

Yes, it’s a unique issue for ethnic minorities. Questions about authenticity hound, pester, poke, and prod us.

You see, many of us constantly face accusations of whether we are Latino enough, or black enough, or truly Asian, or a real Native American. I’m pretty sure nobody ever asks if someone is white enough… unless of course, there is an Aryan Nations initiation rite going on.

For nerdy ethnic minorities, the problem can be even more pressing. After all, we know full well that African American students who academically excel are ostracized for “acting white” — right?

Well, it turns out that we don’t know that.

A recent study has debunked this myth, showing “there’s no research that explicitly supports a relationship between race, beliefs about ‘acting white,’ social stigma, and academic outcomes.”

In fact, “studies suggest that the highest-achieving black students are actually more popular than the lowest-achieving ones” and that “black students have more positive attitudes about education than white students.”

Well, that’s a plot twist.

Now, the study didn’t examine whether Latino students are mocked for “acting white” if they get good grades. However, from my personal experience, I can answer this question.

And the answer is…

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When my cousins from El Salvador first came to America, they didn’t speak English. Of course, they were kids, so they rapidly learned it. Today, everyone in my family, except for my abuela, embraces English as their primary mode of communication. My cousins’ children (and mine) will have to make an effort to be bilingual and not leave Spanish in my family’s past.

But other families don’t face the dilemma of losing the mother tongue. In fact, about 5 million children in the United States don’t speak English as their primary language. This constitutes 9% of all US public school students. Now, that number includes a lot of kids who speak Tagalong or Russian or Mandarin or something else that most of us don’t recognize.

But it’s fair to say that many of the children who speak English as a second language (ESL) communicate only in Spanish.

Because we’re hearing more Spanish than ever in the country’s schools, the Obama administration recently issued the nation’s first set of federal guidelines on the rights of ESL students. The guidelines remind school districts across the country of their obligations under the law.

Among other things, all schools must identify ESL students in a timely manner, offer them language assistance and provide qualified staff and resources to help them learn English. In essence, ESL students have the same rights to a quality education as students who speak English, and schools must avoid segregating English learners from other students.

I know this is a shocker to the nativist crowd, but you can’t just yell, “Speak English, damn it!” at perplexed kids.

The decision makes clear that students who speak Spanish, or other languages, are becoming more common, and the American educational system has to meet their needs. The Obama guidelines are a welcome indicator of that fact.

Of course, it’s a little sad that anyone has to be reminded of this in the first place.

I recently saw the movie Whiplash, which was a gripping look at the price of greatness. For those who haven’t seen the flick, it’s about a teenager jazz drummer obsessed with becoming a legendary artist.

Now, most of us are not willing to practice an instrument until our hands literally bleed, as the Whiplash protagonist does. But the good news is that you may not have to.

You see, a recent study showed that taking music lessons — just basic chord progressions, strumming skills and the like — greatly improves people’s language and reading skills.

Even more interesting is that the research was conducted on at-risk, low-income children, most of them Latino.

The researchers believe that the experience of making music creates a more efficient brain that helps a person learn and communicate better. But the study implies that at least two years of lessons are required before improvements kick in.

So what does this mean for Hispanic kids, who often live in disadvantaged areas? Well, it implies that investing in music education may help Latino children improve their learning skills and close the educational gap between Hispanics and other ethnic groups. The results also imply that for low-income students, music lessons can be as important as traditional classes in math and reading.

Because music is a key part of Latino culture, programs that offer music education will find a receptive audience in Hispanic kids. After all, I could not have been the only Latino kid who grew up on a steady diet of Santana and Julio Jaramillo. And that’s not even getting into all the salsa, rock, hip hop, and stray bits of classic country that finds its way into Latino homes.

Basically, we like to listen to a lot of music, so it should be a natural extension to get Hispanic kids to learn how to play it.

This research aligns with another recent study, which found that bilingual kids have more flexible brains and better cognitive abilities. Keep in mind that most of the demand for Spanish-language immersion schools is coming from white families who want their kids to master another language and gain exposure to diversity.

So it might not be long before you peek into a classroom and see a bunch of multiethnic kids speaking Spanish and jamming on blues standards.

Rock on.