A few social media comments on the Santa Barbara News-Press Instagram account this weekend caught my eye.
I don’t normally read the social media comments on most stories because they are often filled with racist, sexist, rude or bullying remarks. Many comment solely based on the headline without actually reading the stories that the posts are linked to. A lot of the commenters are able to hide behind private accounts, making them effectively anonymous.
A recent story about test scores by News-Press reporter Julianna Lozada sparked many Instagram comments claiming Latinos don’t work hard or lack appropriate parental involvement in order to explain why they trail white students in standardized test scores. These public comments have already received hundreds of “heart” likes.
These kinds of comments are at best ignorant and at worst racist. Either way, they are wrong.
Although we’ll never be able to completely stop people from saying bigoted things on the internet, our culture must continue working to eliminate these harmful — and untrue — stereotypes.
Many factors exist as to why there is a gap in public school standardized test scores between whites and Latinos. None has to do with a cultural inability to work hard.
On this, I would like to provide some past and current perspective.
I am Mexican-American and Apache mostly, the son of a Mexican immigrant. My parents were not good communicators. I grew up in apartments. My family moved every year. When the rent went up, we moved. I didn’t always have my own bed, much less a bedroom. I slept on the couch, the floor, and sometimes a bed.
This kind of instability has a profound impact on a child.
We didn’t have a lot of money, even though both of my parents worked multiple jobs. I used to get teased in elementary school and junior high for the clothes I wore. A bully once asked me where I bought my clothes because it looked like I was wearing “a paper bag.”
My parents usually bought my clothes at K-Mart and Sears. Getting teased for what you wear at school can cause ongoing anxiety in a child trying to fit in. Not exactly conducive to learning.
At home, my mom and dad didn’t have an office. I didn’t have a separate learning space. I did my homework on the floor, in the closet, in the car, or wherever I could find a clear spot to work. I did all this while carrying the burden of worrying about my parents making money or paying rent.
Some of the places I lived in as a child weren’t even in residential neighborhoods, where other people lived. They were in industrial areas in Old Town Goleta, next to auto body shops, mechanic garages and tire shops.
I can’t overstate how a lack of money, space, grass, a backyard, and so many other small things can affect a young child’s learning. There’s an unspoken trauma that develops from watching your family struggle financially day after day. It creates a feeling of unsafety.
As a student, there were things I just didn’t have — notebooks, binders, pencils, those fancy Texas Instruments calculators you need starting in junior high. I was always behind, always chasing the others, always struggling to catch up.
And guess what happens to kids who are behind, who doubt themselves, who have little money or resources, and who have instability and trauma at home? They miss school. They become afraid of being judged by the other kids and their teachers. They fall even more behind.
While I had mostly nice teachers, I never got called on in class. I was painfully introverted.
And guess what happens to introverted kids, already far behind, who lack the ability to advocate for themselves? They get labeled as dumb.
To this day I believe that calling a child dumb is among the most despicable things one can do. It’s something that diminishes the light inside a child.
I was always a “good student.” I tried really hard. Working hard was never an issue for me. I would argue that I worked harder than most kids. But working hard isn’t always enough when you aren’t starting on the same playing field for learning.
Today, as an adult with two children, I can say that conditions have improved for students. There is so much more of a focus on social-emotional learning and teachers are much more aware of the complex personal dynamics a student might be bringing into the classroom.
In raising our two children, my wife and I have worked hard to break cycles of trauma we ourselves experienced growing up. While my kids have still experienced implicit bias in schools, their experiences have been far better than my own were, and I have nothing but admiration for nearly all of their teachers.
Even so, systemic problems still exist. Teachers are overworked and underpaid. Implicit biases are real. A quiet kid may still be all-too-quickly labeled as dumb.
A few years ago, I wrote a story about how Latinos are three times more likely to be diagnosed with a learning disability. Educators have made improvements in identifying the causes and equitable responses to this reality, but it remains a problem throughout the state and country.
Some students come from monolingual Spanish-speaking homes, so their home language is Spanish and their school language is English. That is exactly the type of barrier that can show up in standardized test scores.
I have been a college educator for the past 17 years, teaching students who come from all over California and the world. Many can recount an experience of systemic inequity through their time in K-12 education.
None of this has anything to do with an ability to work hard or willingness to study.
There are, of course, exceptions within every system. We all have stories of students overcoming the barriers of their circumstance to beat the odds. Those stories should be celebrated. But we still have systemic problems. We don’t all start at the same place. And that matters.
These barriers to learning are not caused by failure to “work hard,” or lack of parental involvement. In reality, they are pre-existing barriers which require extra effort to overcome.
In my mind, parents who work multiple jobs to break negative cycles for their children are the definition of hardworking.
The educational achievement gap is complex. I encourage those in the News-Press social media comment section to say what they want, but I wish they would not go to the unfair, bigoted place of blaming parents, teachers, or — most harmfully — students, for systemic barriers. These students should be celebrated, not blamed for a flawed system they did not create.
