TRANSFORMING EDUCATION FOR PUERTO RICANS

According to a 1990 National Council of La Raza report, Latinos continue to be the most undereducated segment of the U.S. population. The report finds that Latinos, as compared to Whites and Blacks, are less likely to complete high school and go on to college. Dropout rates of over 50 percent and unacceptable achievement levels are well documented. At present 90 percent of Latinos attend inner city schools which tend to provide low-quality education and do not be gin to meet the particular needs of Latinos. Catherine Walsh, in Pedagogy and the Struggle for Voice, analyzes the education of Puerto Ricans in the United States from the perspective of a "critical pedagogy." This book, the latest in the Critical Studies in Education Series, edited by Henry A. Giroux and Paulo Freire, is a welcome contribution to the tradition of Freire's "pedagogy of the oppressed." Pedagogy and the Struggle for Voice focuses on the connection between language and power, and the impact of this dynamic on the educational life of Puerto Rican students. Walsh emphasizes the importance of understanding the educational process from the perspective of the students. She argues that educators must acknowledge the students' expertise concerning their own experience, and use it to encourage the active participation of the student in the educational process. The book begins with a history of the Puerto Rican people from 1898, the year that the United States invaded and colonized Puerto Rico. As Walsh points out, knowing the history of Puerto Rico's colonization is crucial for understanding the situation of Puerto Ricans in the United States today. The U.S. government, like all colonizers, understood the importance of language in controlling subjugated peoples. One of their first acts was to mandate English as the language of instruction in the Puerto Rican schools. The lack of respect for the culture and language of the Puerto Rican people and indeed the blatant racism, manifest from the earliest contacts on, are clear from government and official ed ucation documents. They describe Puerto Ricans as "passive," "plastic," and "easy to mold"; they label the language as a "patois" and "unintelligible." Initially U.S. officials denied Puerto Ricans a voice in determining the course of the island's educational institutions. Later, Puerto Rican supporters of American policies became the mouthpiece of the U.S. government. After a period of heavy-handed attempts to "Americanize" the Puerto Rican people, the colonizers re sorted to more subtle, insidious strategies of "deculturalization"?a process that sought to grad ually replace Puerto Rican cultural norms and traditions with North American ideals. In the schools, for example, they imposed an academic calendar, showing only North American holi days to be celebrated. They introduced pro-U.S. government groups like the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, which seek to inculcate U.S. ideology from an early age. Throughout the book, Walsh emphasizes that Puerto Ricans are not simply passive victims but, rather, resisters who have continually fought against colonial domination through unions, political parties, and pro