Gaudalupe San Miguel Jr., "Chicana/o Struggles for Education: Activism in the Community" (Texas AM Press, 2013)

Summary

Guadalupe San Miguel Jr. is the author of Chicana/o Struggles for Education: Activism in the Community(Texas AM Press 2013). He is professor of history at the University of Houston and previously published three books by Texas AM Press on education and Mexican Americans.

This book focuses on the period of 1960 to 2010, a period when Mexican Americans were challenging the largely segregated public education system in many part of the country. Social movements worked to elect Chicano candidates to school boards and which began to choose new school leaders.

Despite progress, Mexican Americans students continued to face great segregation which led to legal challenges in cases like Cisneros, Serrano, and Rodriguez. Overtime, strategy shifted from de-segregation to bilingual education and later support for school choice.

The book ends with a series of lessons that scholars, policy makers, and activists can learn from this history. A lot can be learned from this book about social movement politics, education policy, and the struggle to assert local control over the education of Mexican American children.

Your Host

Heath Brown

View Profile