Unit 4, Lesson 8: What did schools look like in the Bryn Mawr area between the early 1900s and 1943?

Reasons for Segregating Mexican Children

Although the separation of Mexican children was not allowed in California many superintendents and school boards ignored the law. A school board is a group of people who help manage the schools in the area and the superintendent is someone responsible for running all the schools in the area. Superintendents and school boards came up with excuses to segregate. They believed in stereotypes about Mexican American children. People who believed in these stereotypes thought that Mexican Americans were dirty and unintelligent. Educators falsely believed that all Mexican children were artistic and active but poor at math and science. They decided that Mexican Americans should be taught to speak English in separate schools away from other students. These stereotypes were wrong, and segregated schools hurt Mexican American students. 

2.  Read what San Bernardino Superintendent Grace Stanley wrote about Mexican students in 1920. There may be some words that you do not know, but it is ok to skip over them and look for the main idea.

A study of the characteristics of the Mexican children will show that in certain important points they are different from the majority of English-speaking children.  In watching a line of untrained children march to music, the Mexicans more naturally keep step, showing a stronger sense of rhythm. They sing with great enthusiasm and good tone quality. Their drawings are marked by originality in the use of colors, which sometimes of course produces bizarre effects but occasionally rises to really interesting results. They are primarily interested in action and emotion but grow listless under purely mental effort. 

What assumptions does she make? What stereotypes does she believe in? 


 

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