PART FOUR: Questions for the Hispanic Family

There is a long list of positive Hispanic attributes which presumably find their way into the qualitative measure of family happiness. Nonetheless, if one is dispassionately examining the impact on the future college student of the prototypical Hispanic family—with the emphasis here being the family relatively new to the subject of American colleges—many topics need to be addressed within the community, even with the evidence of increased high school completion and college graduation rates.

For example, shunning any attempt to put the questions below in an opinionated order of importance, it seems to me that without answers, there is a danger that much of the discussion about the education landscape may be moot.

• How does a high schooler argue the opposite view to that of a relative who espouses “simply” working hard, not college, as the appropriate path? After all, that is how he got his house and car.
• How and when does the college message get to the noisy, less than totally organized dining room table? Constant communication within the family is not the same as a consistent message about a particular topic.
• How does the outsider argue against the father who owns a successful restaurant—albeit with only a dozen tables—and basically says, “what was good enough for me (high school graduation at best) is good enough for my children,” and therefore does not want them to attend college?
• What about the parents who are adamant about the family incurring no debt if a child does go to college, because both here and in their home country, they have only known cash transactions, perhaps with the exception of an informal installment payment deal on an old car?
• In reverse fashion, how does one react to the desire of many Latino students to quickly “give back” to their parents, with the giving meaning money for household bills or getting mom out of that lousy factory job or cleaning office buildings at midnight? The contrast of immediate incoming cash from the student having a job, perhaps in the underground economy, and the large outlay of funds needed for college can be a deal-breaker for the latter.
• What if nobody talks about the impact of single-parent families or the absence of independent reading—which could be stimulated by the child seeing his or her parents reading—or the possibility that non-school socioeconomics are not really the dominant issue but rather it is the abysmal urban school system in which many Hispanic kids are trapped? The connection of in-home attention to education—with a heavy dose of reading—to better performance at school may be interpreted as partially a comment about the need for change at the schools themselves.
• How many parents would swallow hard as their child goes off to college and agree that “a person accepts true responsibility for his/her behavior when the behavior is chosen in the absence of strong outside pressure?”
• How does a young Latina react when her mother says she can start as an undereducated secretary and work her way up? Or when her father pushes her to the local two-year college so that he can “protect her.”
• The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University reports that the more young people eat dinner with their families, the less likely they are to smoke, drink, or do drugs. Does the advantage here go to Hispanics? Not if the television is the “conversation” centerpiece for the meal.
• Do parents react with dismay when their young person wants to change high schools, to be in a better educational environment even if it means consorting with mostly gringos?
• How many people of any ethnicity would whisper in their child’s ear, “do not listen to, for example, Uncle Jose or Aunt Maria—they are not good role models.”
• Will the Hispanic family pay increased attention to nutrition and fitness, each of which is tied to basic health and energy, which in turn can be important to aspiration. One in six Hispanic children is considered obese.
• Besides what may be minimal financial assistance from Mom and Dad, will the Latino student be restricted in his selection of a four-year college by a short bungee cord—how far away will be acceptable to the parents?
• What happens when upon graduation—which has a sharply higher chance of happening if the family is supportive of their child’s decision-making on the utilization of time, energy, and money—the student, now an independent person by most measures, is offered a nice job at a far-off company? Will family tightness argue against taking it?
• Is there a pride factor which causes resistance to adopting cultural and educational approaches that do not come from within the community?
• Will bickering within the Hispanic community, as its constituents not only self-identify by home country but shun political collaboration because of long-held nationalist grudges, nullify its overall demographic advantage, leaving political power concentrated in the hands of those who are unified?

Correct, it is not fair to raise questions without providing a few “answers.” Continue to Part Five.

PART FIVE: A few Suggestions for the Hispanic Family

I believe it is important for the warm, inclusive, tight-knit, communicative Hispanic family to consider a few alterations in the way parents think about their children and their higher education aspirations:

• They should be more expansive in their geographical acceptance, i.e. recognize it is better for the kids to “go away” to the college that fits their career passion than to stay close and always be wondering about how it would have been if they had enrolled at the college of their choice.
• They must be understanding if and when students have to beg off some family interaction in order to study or write a lengthy paper.
• The entire family circle, which typically includes aunts and uncles and cousins, must be emotionally supportive, with both parents in particular being on the same page even if one of them has to fake it a little. Without support, success can happen, but it will be random, not systematic—the result of an exceptional student moving ahead, not a process which is applicable to every aspiring child in the family.
• I love kids, but everybody needs to ease up on the pressure for babies.
• They cannot fear independent political/cultural thinking by their children.
• They should not equate individual, proactive decision-making with selling-out to American values.

I know some readers are getting twitchy, saying I do not adequately understand the culture or that I have not connected these comments with the problem of proper documentation. There is undoubtedly a bit of truth in the former reaction, but assuredly I know how critical “status” is in thinking about both cultural norms and academic aspiration in America.

The above suggestions for Hispanic families stand on their own merits—they are good changes, regardless of status. The hope in my various writings is that Latino students can find the right mix of hard data and soft inputs to assist them in making decisions, in finding a place in the higher education or marketable skill world that is attractive to them, understandable to their parents, and affordable.

Of course, there is always a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. See Part Six.

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