Education Inequality of Latin American Students

Topic: Culture and Education
Words: 562 Pages: 2

For a Latin American student, education serves a significant role in accessing several social inclusion sectors. Further, through education, minority group students, and the entire population, accesses a protective factor against rights violation that accompanies many transit processes from one level in life to another. However, in the U.S., access to services and educational experiences is limited to minority groups (Goyette, 2017). The education universalism concept in the country is reflected only in the lives of Caucasians, with the government placing specific obstacles to minority group students to gain access to the equal right to education for all.

The disparities faced by Latin American students in the U.S. are attributed to several factors, among them family wealth, school choice, government policies, implicit bias towards a student’s ethnicity or race, and parenting style. Additionally, through these factors, the number of challenges a Latin American student faces broadens by considering the availability of resources, income inequality, and an increase in the prison population (Rycroft and Kinsley, 2021). White supremacy within the curriculum continuously ensures the underrepresentation of minority groups within the population. The curriculum has been structured to guarantee what is referred to as a master narrative that reaffirms and advances the dominance of white students against other races (Rycroft and Kinsley, 2021). The curriculum structure is centered on the experiences and achievements of whites while consistently omitting, distorting, and simplifying encounters by Latin and African Americans.

Based on the inequality, the beliefs lives, and opportunities Latinos face in the U.S. are equally unequal. On average, Latin American students have been subject to lower academic skills, receive fewer degrees than their white counterparts, are economically disadvantaged, and experience high school dropouts (Goyette, 2017). Additionally, the college completion rates are low, with a majority of the Latin students having difficulty with teacher-learner communication. Underpinned within the curriculum structure, which values Caucasians’ confrontation and competition, different upbringing becomes a subject of lack of comfort, absence and confusion by the tenets that govern learning in the country.

Changing the lives, beliefs, and opportunities faced by the Latin American student and the entire population means modifying the curriculum structure. One major modification would be to ensure white American values associated with confrontation and competition are altered to include an all-around system that values other students’ upbringing. The outcome of such changes would translate to an all-race inclusion, which minimizes possibility of confusion and the lack of comfort. Moreover, standardized English in the curriculum will also ensure the number of school dropouts among Latin American students decreases. With such a decline, the levels of college completion will increase, translating to more employment opportunities for Latin American learners.

A change in the master narrative will mean the curriculum will eliminate the racial message in school teaching, and students will no longer be lynched based on race or ethnicity. The levels of racial representation within the schools will also be changed, meaning equal opportunities for all students. Moreover, with the change in the master narrative, the syllabus will make learning include cultures of every race, not just the white American and the European. History, as it is known, will be changed by including the accounts, perspectives, and accomplishments of other ethnicities and races within the syllabus. When such considerations are made, the curriculum structure will be centered on white achievements, and no more will other experiences be distorted, omitted, or simplified.

References

Goyette, K. A. (2017). Education in America. Berkeley University of California Press.

Rycroft, R. S., & Kinsley, K. L. (2021). Inequality in America: Causes and consequences. ABC CLIO, LLC.