Presentations 3/8

I found the workshop presentation from this past Tuesday on social concerns of Hispanic Americans to be very informative. It was interesting and disturbing to note how many of the issues which plague Native Americans- high unemployment and poverty rates, low rates of teens graduating from high school, high rates of uninsured individuals- seem to plague Hispanic Americans as well. The specific ethnicity of a minority group appears to have very little effect on social success and well-being; the mere fact that an ethnicity is a minority group makes all the difference. This presents a chicken-or-the-egg sort of dilemma. Are such groups underprivileged because they are in minority numbers or are they represented in minority numbers because they are underprivileged?

I also found the statistic about how 2.5% of teachers in the United States who currently teach English as a Second Language actually have a degree to do so, to be apalling. Marked social change would occur if more aspiring teachers in areas with significant amounts of Hispanic Americans were required to obtain a degree for ESL studies. These qualified teachers would be better able to relate to Hispanic students, and a more accepting culture would be facilitated in classrooms. Understanding the breakdown of tragic social concerns for Hispanic Americans allowed me to more sympathetically view Urrea's points in his short stories, even the ones which discussed Mexican characters. Urrea told a story which had previously not been told with the detail and passion with which he regarded his subject matter.