Latinx Children Learn At School

The purpose of this study was to examine the cultural practices and ideologies Latinx children learn at school and how they were negotiated within family and community contexts. The study specifically focuses on analytical parallels between schools’ deficit framing of parents and their language and cultures and children's deficit framing of parents.

The study took place in a Latinx immigrant community, referred to as La Fuente, located in a low-income and densely populated part of the Los Angeles Metropolitan area. The local public elementary school was predominantly Latinx (98%), with 100% of students on free or reduced lunch. Of over 1,700 students, all but six were classified as English Language Learners. Although the school offered bilingual
The eight immigrant families included a total of 26 youngsters. The eight families were immigrants from Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador. All children, except one, were either born in the United States or were legal residents. The one youth who was undocumented joined her family in the United States midway through the first year of the study. Three families were transnational. Seven of the families included both a mother and father. One parent was a single mother. Of the 15 parents, eight were legal residents and seven were undocumented. Of these seven, four gained legal residence during the course of the study. Most parents’ education levels ranged between having completed 5th grade and having had no formal schooling. The researcher did not indicate how the participants were selected. I can only conclude that researchers’ subjectivities impacted the selection of the 5th grade class and their
As a scholar I recognize that I view the world through a critical lens. I recognize oppressive structures are designed to facilitate a deficit mindset. The findings in the study caused me to reflect on how the system of schooling I worked in propagated internalized oppression. In these schools, the students either consciously or subconsciously believed that their community was broken and inferior based on historical factions of poverty, racism, and oppression, existing in urban communities. Student failure was a faction of their own deficit thinking or blamed on their parents’ lack of engagement in their child’s education and not providing the academic and cultural support for student success. As a system, the schools in these communities took no ownership of these issues to mitigate student achievement but instead continued to “colonialize intellect” of their “own people” to support oppressive structures. It makes sense that the structures of internalized oppression serve the purpose of putting us against each other in fear of class and race consciousness that could lead to uprisings. The Black Lives Movement is an example of race consciousness which is working for a world where Black lives are no longer systematically and intentionally targeted for demise but affirm the contributions of African Americans to this society, to humanity, and resilience in the face of deadly oppression.
I am convinced that collaboration