Chicanos/as: Education According to their Economic Status.
This research will study whether the socioeconomic status of Chicanos affect their development in school. Nine grade students will be ask to fill out a survey every six months during the lapse of five years. The survey will have questions related to the economic status of the participants. The answers obtained from the survey will be compared with the grades of the students and eventually among students from low, middle, and high socioeconomic status. The findings will determine if Chicanos do worse in school because of their economic disadvantage.
Introduction to the problem
It is not new to know that
Chicanos are one of the most disadvantaged ethnicities in the United
States. What I mean by disadvantaged is
that they have fewer opportunities to succeed.
One of the most important things that are needed in order to succeed is
education. But what happens when there
are no opportunities, resources, or information to get an education?
Many assumptions have been made about Chicanos as a minority group and about their small contributions on the development of the country. It is also say that they do not succeed because they do not assimilate to the culture, drink alcohol, have lots of children, are lazy, criminals, machos, and lack of ambitions. I could go on and on but it will be redundant because the idea would be the same; they do not take advantages of the opportunities given by the government. What all these thing say is that if all Chicanos or at least most of them have these characteristics on common is because their problem is on their culture.
The articles that I found related to my topic are the following. First, Chicano Students and the Academy: The Opportunities Missed. This journal talks about how Chicanos do in school like the struggles they face to get an education. A financial difficulty is one of them but not the only one. The journal makes a big reference about how Chicanos do not take advantage of opportunities in the education field. Second, Voices from the Barrio: Chicano/a Gangs, Families, and Community, and the main focus of this journal is on violence activities in this case gangs and how this affects the future of not only the members of the gang but also the future of the community and family members. Third, Beyond High School: An examination of Hispanic Educational Attainments, this journal discusses what Hispanics do after high school like going to college or not. Fourth, Finally, Stories of Access and “Luck”: Chicanos, and the Politics of Incorporations, in this one, the main theme is Chicanos that really made it. The journal says that Chicanos that succeed are lucky because the way higher education schools run are excluding Chicanos.
The books that I thought were interesting and related to my theme are Education and Income in the Southwest, The Chicano Experience: An Alternative Perspective, and The Other Struggle for Equal Schools: Mexican-Americans during the Civil Rights Era. The first book deals directly to my research question. It agrees that income is a big thing when pursuing an education and unfortunately, Chicanos do not have enough to obtain a fair education. The last two books are related to each other because they are about segregation: de facto and de jure. Both of them affect Chicanos and there is not an easy solution to the problem.
A big correlation can be made between economic status and traditional cultural views. The majority of Chicano families are situated in the lower socioeconomic class, three reasons being that most Chicanos (especially adults) do not speak English, work in the labor, and are discriminated and consequently segregated from the rest of the society. Due to their economic status they are forced to live in barrios inadequate for proper development and are forced to attend the schools where pedagogy is the poorest and the least cared for. This vision and all the stereotypes that I mentioned above, have brainwashed the Chicano to believe that this are his standards of living. Therefore, it becomes a psychological part of their culture. This situation causes them to believe that they are not capable of going to four-year institution and obtaining a degree.
My research question is, do the economic difficulties that Chicanos face affect their development in school? My hypothesis is that Chicanos are oppressed by a dominant group in the society which creates all the laws to exclude minority groups from resources being money as well as education the ones that affect Chicanos the most. If you don’t have the money to send your kids to the best schools, to buy them a computer, get them all the books they need, or to have a car to take them to school, your kids are going to be in great disadvantage from the kids who have all these resources. Also thing like having the time and the knowledge to help kids with their homework and speaking English are things that fall under socioeconomic status and that affect the development of these Chicano kids.
The study is very high in validity and reliability. First, it will be dealing with the socioeconomic status and with education. All the questions on the survey will be dealing with the socioeconomic issue while the check of the report cards will be dealing with the educational issue. The study will also be high in reliability because it is obvious that there’s something wrong with Chicanos in education. For what I read, there is a big correlation between education achievement and socioeconomic status. I am sure that whatever information we get will be reliable and most of the books about this issue, no matter how old they are, show similar results.
The method I will be using for this research is survey. There are a couple of steps that I will to do in order to make my research. The first one is to find a high school with a high rate of Chicanos and I will use an ethnicity cluster. After that, I will go to the principal of the school and ask him if he would let me do my project on her/his school. I will offer him/her an incentive and it could be to work on something or to make a proposal to get more money for the school. Assuming that he accepted my proposal, I will randomly select half of the ninth grade classes and give them a note for their parents where I will explain them my proposal. I will also mention the importance of it because it will show what these kids need and try to find a remedy for the problem. In order for kids to participate, their parents will have to sign the paper and return it. To increase the interest of the kids to participate and to convince their parents to do so too, I will have to give them an incentive like tickets to go to the movies, a concert, game, or a free meal at McDonalds.
There will not be bias on this project because all students would have the same opportunity to participate. I will be focus more on Chicanos with low socioeconomic status because they are the unit of analysis of this research but I will need people and even Chicanos with other characteristics in order to make the comparison.
The survey will directed to the parents and will consist of very short and relatively easy questions. The main focus on the questionnaire will be the salary, if they own a computer, having transportation, exposure to violence, if they (both parents and kids) speak English. This project will turn into a case study during five years (high school and first year of college). The survey will be administrated every six moths and the grades of the kids will be check too. During all this time, a comparison will be made with students with a higher socioeconomic status to find similarities and differences among them.
There are a lot of ethics involved in this study because minors are involved but it would not be a problem. First, kids will be the mediators between their parents and the researcher. They will not be required to answer any of the questions on the survey. Plus the questions that will be given to their parents will be very simple. They will not cause any psychological harm or effect on the participants. Second, if their parents do not their kids to be studied or they don’t want to participate, they will not be force by any mean. That is why they will be required to sign a consent form. There will be some incentives but for the kids but if their parents don’t want to participate, or if they quit, the incentives will not be taken away from the kids. (If the kids turn eighteen while the study is still on process, their parents’s consents will not be considered any more and they will have to decide for themselves if they want to keep participating on the study or no. Their decision will be respected.)
By no mean the identities of the
participant (nor the name of the school) will be given to anyone or in
anything. Only the researcher conducting
this study will have access to the name but nobody else. The participants will be informed about this
to increase the possibilities of participation and security.