that: 1) most children needful of such programs were reached; 2) teachers were well prepared in the skills essential to help the kids; and 3) that such efforts were successful. As we know now all three assumptions are false. Yet many of us were lulled into a sense of false hope; we failed to demand a quality or quantity of programs. Educators, in assuming that such programs were panaceas, were tricked by their own enthusiasm and self-generated publicity into doing little to guarantee quality efforts. Excessive enthusiasm and publicity may be a real copout that encourages educators to really do very little, either qualitatively or quantitatively.

Recently I saw some startling unpublished statistics that point up the real gap between what was assumed to be happening and reality. It can be conservatively estimated that 60 percent of Mexican American youngsters could profit from remedial reading instruction, yet only about 10 percent of Mexican Americans in the Southwest were enrolled in such classes a year and a half ago. Yet well over 50 percent of the principals point with real pride to the fact their school offers remedial reading. Similarly, only about 6 percent of all Mexican American children were enrolled in ESL classes. Yet the vast majority of schoolmen I know stress that ESL classes are solving the problem by providing quality language programs to all or most of the children needing them.

The amount of special training for remedial reading and ESL teachers was also found to be appallingly inadequate. What is happening? It must be suggested that the push for given programs leads to financial support, which

unfortunately contributes to selfsatisfaction, which in turn lessens the effort to guarantee either the quality or quantity of essential programs. What must be demanded in the present context is: first, real institutional self-examination and self-study; and, second, comprehensive programs that consider the multitude of variables affecting Mexican American children. In effect demands for massive school reform with on-going quality and quantity control must be given top priority. Too much publicity may lead to educator self-satisfaction and little real school reform. In a sense, the publicity may encourage perpetuation of the educational status quo.

Unfortunately there tends to be a corollary result of excessive publicity in that many minority parents accept the pronouncements of educators that everything possible for their children is being accomplished. Accepting this, the parents may also tend to accept the blame for their children's school failure. Thus arguing that if the school is making such a supreme effort, then indeed it must be that their children are intellectually or culturally inferior.

Sometimes Federal money for programs may hurt instead of help-money often supports only token efforts. It can also discourage a school from making changes on its own. If the idea becomes well established that a certain program costs a large amount of money, based on the knowledge that the Federal Government is willing to spend so much, schools often will not attempt it without Federal money. Yet, often schools have the resources, both human and financial, to implement the program without Federal funds. Probably the most comprehensive

bilingual program in the Southwest was implemented and sustained for a number of years without outside money. A great deal can be done without Federal financial aid; such money can both help and hinder the starting of pro

grams.

In addition to the "dangers" just outlined, I feel we have another set of problems that only we as educational activists can overcome. The presence of some 400 educators at the Bilingual Education Awareness Institute in Phoenix in mid-October 1970 leads me to assume that there is support for bilingual education. But yet I wonder if we know exactly what we want. Only with a relatively clear picture in our minds can we hope to combat the misinformation rampant among other educators, board members, and laymen. It is essential that attention be directed toward reaching some agreement on what in the world we mean by bilingual education. What is the ideal model we demand.

There is nothing new or untrue in the statement that the Southwest is a bicultural and bilingual region. Mexican Americans tend to speak Spanish and tend to socially interact within their own community. Anglos tend to speak English and interact among their own. The principal problem is that the Mexican Americans don't get their fair share of the economic, political, and social pie. The dominant society, and its institutions, function unconsciously to keep the Mexican American down and the Anglo up. I don't think any of us would disagree that what we desire is the maintenance of two languages and two traditions with equal opportunity to progress within society.

We demand what America has never granted its culturally diff. erent or immigrant groups; that is, assimilation, social integration, and equal opportunity without acculturation. The Mexican American minority rightfully desires the "goodies" America offers without sacrificing its language and traditions. To find models of "biculturalism" we must look abroad to such countries as Chile. There, for example, the Germans fully participate in society but remain relatively culturally and linguistically distinct. While such assimilation without acculturation is difficult, it is not impossible to achieve; the battle is going to be long and hard. Ideally, in the new Southwest we envision, Mexican Americans should understand and be able to successfully cope with the Anglo segment of society, and Anglos should have the inverse ability. Understanding for coping implies realistic and objective knowledge of the values, mores, traditions, and history of both groups and ability to speak, read, and write each others language. If these objectives are accepted, a series of questions concerning the appropriate schooling for such a society must be considered.

Can a bicultural southwestern society be encouraged while maintaining segregated schools? The Mexican American is substantially isolated from "sustained equal status interaction" with Anglos and vice versa.

Some 46 percent of Mexican American youngsters in the Southwest attend schools that are 50 or more percent Mexican American; some 22 percent attend "predominantly" Mexican American schools (schools that are 80-100 percent Mexican American). In Texas, where segregation is the most ex

treme, 40 percent attend predominantly Mexican American schools. Isolation of the Mexican American from school contact with Anglos is more extreme at the elementary than the secondary level; 50 percent of the Mexican American students are in elementary schools that are composed of student bodies 50 percent or more of their own ethnic group. Twenty-five percent of the total are in schools having a Mexican American school population of between 80 and 100 percent. Again, Texas segregates the most having a whopping 70 percent of the States' Mexican American elementary student body in schools with a population of 50 percent or more Mexican American. Segregation by ethnic group is widespread; there is little reason to believe it will soon disappear.

While no figures are available, it is obvious that much segregation exists in "mixed" or "desegregated" schools. The Chicano all too often is in the Z or dumb-bell section, the Anglo in the top abil. ity sections, the Mexican American boys in body and fender, girls in cosmetology. The Anglos are in more educationally respectable curriculums. The existing ethnic cleavage is perpetuated and supported by school practices of rigid ability and curricular tracking. With both de facto and in-school segregation and isolation, how can we realistically encourage one ethnic group to learn the language and culture of the other? I know of only one model two-way bilingual organization that has combined both ethnic groups in the same classroom and school; that is the United Consolidated Independent School District in Laredo, Texas. It would be worth the effort

to investigate it as a possible model of the benefits of desegrega

tion and bilingual education. To foster cross-cultural learning, both ethnic groups should be mixed, our schools should be desegregated, and tracking should be eliminated or substantially modified. This is part of what I mean by good bilingual education.

Isn't it true that bilingual organization is best accomplished by desegregation? Yet many of our friends in the "educational establishment" argue the inverse-they are overjoyed that the Mexicans and their friends want bilingual education. To the conservative educational establishment this means Spanish language to Spanish speakers, a Spanish to English bridge program, ESL, or Mexican history and traditions for the "poor Mexican kids". These programs are little more than the traditional compensatory education programs that have been demonstrated to be the wrong approach. Nevertheless, many educators understand bilingual education in these terms and argue that such programs are most successful and best implemented by keeping the Mexican Americans away from the Anglos; by maintaining de facto segregation or its current euphonism, the "neighborhood school".

Parenthetically, one might sug. gest that it is isolation from English speakers that discourages Spanish speakers from learning English in the first place. Remember the good old days when separate "Mexican schools" were maintained so youngsters could "catch up" with Anglos and be taught English, while in reality the best way for them to learn English would have been by the mutual association of Spanish- and Enlish-speaking youngsters.

The message is clear. The conservative elements that control the

schools want segregation and will use whatever arguments available to justify it as being in the best interest of children. Bilingual education should not be used as such a justification. We must think through the problem asking ourselves what kind of society we want and what kinds of schools best encourage it. Two questions must be asked and answered; both are crucial. First, is bilingual education merely another compensatory program for "culturally deprived" Mexican Americans or is it high quality education for all southwestern youngsters? Second, should bilingual schools be ethnically mixed, desegregated schools. The major issue is, can the schools help build a society that offers equal social and economic opportunity by denying equal educational opportunity to children? Can segregated schools build a truly bicultural Southwest?

As educators we are constantly concerned with curriculum; we study curriculum in teachers college. Some of us consider ourselves curriculum specialists. What do we really mean by curriculum? just what are we talking about? what is curriculum? Perhaps the old Latin interpretation comes closest to its present meaning. To the Romans it meant race track or race course. Many school age youngsters would agree with the Romans. But must it be so, must the curriculum be merely something to "race through"? We cannot discuss bilingual education without concerning ourselves with the curriculum-what is taught, when it is taught, and how it is taught.

A bilingual education program at its worse means only that we translate the present bad curriculum into good Spanish. If this is

all that is accomplished, students will only be slightly less turned off, turned off and dropped out, than they presently are. If what we desire is a bilingual as well as a bicultural curriculum, then we must address ourselves both to the content, method, and sequence of the Spanish instructional segment and to those same elements in the English sequence. A bicultural school means its curriculum reflects two cultures.

Curriculum is culture as found in schools. Culture and its carrier language are the basic components of education in whatever society. In "simple" societies culture is passed from generation to generation informally without schools. In most "complex" societies, such as ours, formal social institutions develop to augment the essential function of cultural transmission.

Regardless of the nature of the society the sole ingredient of all education is culture. The patterned behavior and belief system, or culture, appropriate to a given society must be relearned with each succeeding batch of the young. Little formal structuring or arranging of the multitude of cultural items is required in the "school-less" societies. More complex societies convert culture into the instructional content, method, and sequence. Thus the curriculum is culture as distilled, arranged, and presented to the young by the school.

In relatively homogeneous and slowly changing societies, curriculum supplements and adds to the on-going socialization provided by parents and others. When the school deals with culturally diverse groups or cross-culturally,

such as with some Mexican American groups, the curriculum can be drawn from either the culture of the dominant society or from that of the learner's subsociety. Ideally the curriculum should be from both cultures as is the case in true bicultural schools. I believe it should reflect both cultures and that this is what we are proposing and perhaps demanding for the schools of the future Southwest.

The formal curriculum exerts profound influence on the learner in many but poorly-defined ways. However, little negative reaction is encountered if the youngsters are carriers of a culture similar to the curriculum, or in other words if the curriculum is relevant. If the formal curriculum supplements learning outside the school few problems arise. Little conflict is apparent; children want to learn

and do internalize and practice what they are taught in school. However, in the contemporary world schools stress what is important to teach whether children desire to learn it or not. The question for us to resolve is do we wish to continue this lamentable situation or do we want to develop curriculums based on what young. sters desire to know-based on real group experience.

When the school attempts to instill or teach a culture different from that of its students, real and grievous problems are predictable. Culturally and linguistically different children rarely incorporate or practice the culture the school carries in its curriculum. Seeing little need of the items taught, seeing them as irrelevant or in conflict to what the home teaches, the "foreign learner" profits little from the experience. In the process he often rejects the school, the culture it teaches, and the society it represents. The mere use of Spanish in teaching will not automatically make the curriculum relevant nor learning intrinsically rewarding or useful. For example, there is little reason to believe that Mexican American kids are going to be more "turned on" by traditionally taught classes on Cervantes than they are about traditionally taught classes on Shakespeare. Rote and repetitious reading lessons in Spanish are little different than dull ones in English; absolute Mexican moral values may be just as irrelevant to modern living as absolute Puritan

ones.

If we are not thoughtful we can Construct a curriculum carried in Spanish that may be so idealized, unreal, irrelevant, and conflictive that, in the eyes of students, it will be as bad as the one they are ac

FALL 1970

customed to in English. Is the curriculum you envision geared to modify the life-style of Mexican American children or is it geared to supplement and enrich their lives, making them able to cope with social reality? Be careful you don't present a phony Hispanic or American culture to the young of either ethnic group. Do not try to remake this generation into carriers of your brand of Mexican American culture or what you would like it to be. Don't force your myths, values, and mores on the young, rather help them discover truth and make values, thus giving them tools essential to cope with a rapidly changing Southwest, America, and world.

The student generation of all ethnic groups pounds our ears with demands for "curricular relevancy". It must be determined what is relevant to this generation even though you may not be part of it, even though you may not accept what the young believe or the culture they are developing.

The curriculum for our new bicultural school must be relevant to the Mexican American and informative to the Anglo and, naturally, vice versa. When culture conflict is produced in either group, mechanisms must be established to ameliorate it. To neither group can we imply that this is the TRUTH, this is the moral, this is the good or the beautiful. Yet both groups must learn that what is good, true, and beautiful for them. may not be for others. This is no mean task. An implicit objective of bicultural schooling is to foster the concept of cultural relativism, a belief that each cultural group is good and beautiful within itself. Since few of us are cultural relativists, can we ever hope to develop this in children? Can chil

dren be taught to intelligently operate within two cultures and one national society? I think they can, but it's going to take a lot of hard thinking to determine how to accomplish it.

Let's not sell bilingual education short! If it is understood by educators as merely another compensatory program for the "culturally deprived", 10 years from now we and they will look back and say, well it didn't work. If this happens the educational establishment will reaffirm its conviction that Mexican Americans do poorly in school because they are so obviously inferior; they are inferior because they are so obviously Mexican. I challenge you to preclude this copout by forcing schoolmen to change the nature of the curriculum, to change the social climates of their schools, to change the behavior of teachers. I challenge you to demand desegregation as an essential component of the new bicultural school. I challenge you to use bilingual, bicultural organization as a lever to gain a high quality of education for all children.

THOMAS P. CARTER

This article is based on a keynote address given by Thomas P. Carter at the Bilingual Education Awareness Institute in Phoenix, Arizona in mid-October 1970 to some 400 educators. The meeting was sponsored by the Arizona Mexican American Educators Association and the Southwest Cooperative Educational Laboratory. Dr. Carter is the first Scholar in Residence to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. A professor of sociology and education at the University of Texas in El Paso, he is recognized as an authority on problems of Mexican American education and is the author of numerous publications, the most recent, a book entitled "Mexican Americans in School: A History of Educational Neglect".