The Education of Mestizo Children.
By Felix Alvarado
When I started writing, I asked myself this question “How do you put Dumpty Dumpty back together again?”
I recall my personal experience getting educated in Texas as a young boy. I was one of those little brown boys that was relegated to picking cotton. I was six years old when I was picking cotton. School appeared on the horizon. We always beat the sun to the cottonfield. The mornings were always cool and pleasant. The afternoons became unbearably hot. Clouds were a welcome sight.
In the mornings I would see a yellow bus taking kids to school. In the afternoon the bus would return loaded with kids bringing them home. Always on the horizon. When the field was done and I had nothing to do it was time for me to go to school. I would get ready in the morning, grab my taco, and wait for the bus to come pick me up and take me to school. I checked myself in every time that I went to school. I also checked myself out.
Neely Ward in Morton. the most memorable school that I attended. It was a one room schoolhouse one teacher with several grades to teach. The school was out in the cotton fields. Most of the times I was the only non-White person that attended school. I never had any problems at all with any student.
The first fully functional school that I attended was Edgewood. There was a complete staff, a teacher for every subject and a cafeteria, basketball, football, band and real rest rooms. I tried all three but the only one that I was good at was band. I joined the band and played trombone. I volunteered to work the cafeteria serving line and I got to eat free.
cv the means of mobility in all three branches of the military whether it's enlisted or officer education matters. Education determines what job you qualify for and how well prepared you are for promotion. When you first interview to join the military, you take a series of tests that determine what career field you will be placed in. How well you do in these placement tests is a testament about your school and you.
The barrio is not the American Dream. There is a vast inequality between a wealthy school district and a district in the barrio. Adjusting to a White Anglo Saxon Protestant (WASP) environment has its challenges to any child from the barrio. The quality of education depends on where you live. Areas with a high White population perform better than areas with a high Mestizo population. Mestizo children are mixed Spanish and Indian.
There are historical factors that have contributed to the dismal performance of Mestizo children in school. The education of Mestizo children has historically and tragically been neglected since Spanish Colonial times.
Factors that affect the education of Mestizo children are:
1. Parents that do not, read, write or speak English.
2. In Colonial Spain skin color affected access to the education of Mestizo children.
3. Mestizo children suffered the same shortcoming in Spanish Colonial Texas, Republic of Texas and the State of Texas.
4. When Whites settled North Texas, they brought their prejudices with them. Almost all small towns have monuments dedicated to the military service of Confederate soldiers. Southerners considered non-White people to be the same as the N-word.
5. Although classified as White, Mestizo children suffered from segregation.
After the Mexican American War of 1848, North Texas was wide open for settlement. Whites were lured to North Texas by the railroad and the State . The railroad and the State were giving away tracts of land to anyone willing to settle in Texas.
As you drive around North Texas you will see reminders of the early education of White children. Small, single-room schoolhouses accommodated limited class sizes.
Families that came to Texas were small. The one book they carried was the Bible. Elementary schools were a necessity for young families. Schools provided babysitting while both parents worked. Education continued through high school and college. There was an abundance of education opportunities for Whites. In contrast, Tejano children attended mostly up to a third grade.
Not all the children suffered from education malnutrition. The children of well to do Mestizo parents could attend parochial schools and some could even go to public schools.
When we look at education we have to look at South Texas and North Texas as being separate entities. Education in South Texas has been stagnant. South Texas was the land of the Tejano. Education was always there but there was never a necessity or urgency to provide education to children. South Texas had a lot of time to get education house in order.
Child labor was not a problem. There were no jobs for children in South Texas. Although it is hard to attend school when you do not wear shoes or wear ragtag pants.
There was a piecemeal settlement of North Texas. Whites were looking for land. Confederates were fleeing the ravages of the civil war. Work on the railroad brought Mexicans to North Texas. The railroad found out very quickly that workers with their families were more productive and stayed longer. They brought their family and provided them a home. After the railroad came the coal mines. There was a large demand for experienced coal miners. Coal miners were recruited from Mexico and other countries. Incentives were higher pay, medical care and schools for children. Coal mines opened first at Bridgeport followed by Thurber. Coal miners we're also located at Lyra, Strawn, and Rock Creek. Most of the Mexicans were uneducated and could not read or write.
Birth of schools:
Pre-1848. Education was mostly for the upper class.
Post-1848. North Texas ruled by Native Americans. Eventually Whites overwhelmed Native Americans.
1880. Coal Miner Era. Almost all miners were immigrants. Education was available. Used by some. Mestizo children attended mostly to the third grade. Some became coal miners. Discovery of oil ended the need for coalminers.
When coal mining ended miners scattered North, East, surrounding counties and to the metroplex. Jobs were available in Cement City (Dallas) and meatpacking plants in Fort Worth.
1910. Disaster for South Texas. The ravages of the Mexican Revolution caused hundreds of thousands of Mexicans to cross the border back into the United States and South Texas. They were mostly low skilled and uneducated. They found work in agriculture mostly cotton. The demand for cotton pickers was so great that “braceros” were imported from Mexico.
Children were exempt from school so they could pick cotton. Picking cotton was more important than school. Every day I heard the same chant repeatedly “you do not need an education to pick cotton.” It was the mental conditioning that school was not important that was dangerous. The mental conditioning that was passed from generation to generation.
1954. Lack of foresight and planning doomed hundreds of thousands of children into ignorance.
I was little brown boy that at six years was picking cotton, I only attended school in between cotton fields. My high school transcript has a notation that I attended 24 public schools in five years.
Other children my age were not as fortunate as I was to pursue an education regardless of obstacles. If I had not pursued that education, then I too would have been ignorant. I would not have been able to help my children get their education. And my children would not have been able to help their children get an education.
Literacy is the future. In 1954 Those picking cotton could never have predicted the onset of the cotton-picking machine. No one was prepared. Scientists are working on new technology. How do we prepare the future when we don't know what the future looks like. o
That is a problem with education in Texas it was ignored for too many years and now we are paying the price. People in Cuba get a better education than we do.
In the past the wealthiest school districts have been reluctant to give up their money and the State has been reluctant to take the money also. All I can say is that there is an election coming up and this issue can only be settled in the ballot box.
We cannot go back and relive any part of the past. We cannot allow our children to relive atrocities that were committed upon us that relegated us to third world living. We Are no longer picking cotton.
This is my personal experience. I went to my very first meeting at the school where was going to teach, I sat down, and waited for the meeting to begin. A teacher comes in hurls some papers to someone and says, “I quit I'm not going to teach 9th graders.” and walks out. The next teacher comes in and says “sometimes I feel like throwing a piece of raw meat into the classroom before I go in.”
This is where I pause.
Written by Felix Alvarado who is solely responsible for all content