Gonzalez: ‘Education is the great equalizer in a democratic society’

'Education is the great equalizer in a democratic society, and if people are not given access to a quality education, then what we are doing is creating an underclass of people who will ultimately challenge our very way of life.'

Gerardo Gonzalez

Home Pages also suggests a session commemorating Hispanic Heritage Month, Sept. 15-Oct. 15, might be of interest to readers. Hispanics in Central Indiana, Perceptions and Realities is scheduled at 2 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 11, at University College on the IUPUI campus. The roundtable discussion will feature Ken Barger, IUPUI Department of Anthropology; Michelle Gutierrez, Hispanic Law Project of Indiana Legal Services; Monica Medina, IU School of Education; and Maria Quiroz-Southwood, Wishard Health Services.)

Gerardo Gonzalez, university dean of the School of Education, once stepped off a plane at Indianapolis and headed for the baggage claim area. There he noticed a woman who had also been a passenger on his plane and he asked her if they were at the right place to pick up their bags.

“No hablo Ingles,” she replied.

It was yet another reminder for Gonzalez that America’s population is not the same as it used to be.

“Even here in Indiana, we are seeing the demographic changes that are taking place all over the country. The population of America – the 2000 census – has shown, more rapidly than expected, that the Hispanic population has now become the largest minority group in the United States,” Gonzalez said.

He believes that the changes we have been talking about for some time are no longer hypothetical.

"Education is the great equalizer in a democratic society, and if people are not given access to a quality education, then what we are doing is creating an underclass of people who will ultimately challenge our very way of life," said the dean.

“I think the civil rights question of our nation today is that of access to a quality education,” he said. “The lower class – many of whom are people of color – are disproportionally represented among drop-outs and persons with sexually-transmitted diseases, drug abuse and

other social pathologies. The means by which those populations can have a chance to be successful and address some of their problems is through education. So we are talking about ensuring access to a quality education for all children.”

Gonzalez knows whereof he speaks, because he was born in Cuba and came to America with his family. His family was stripped of everything by the Cuban authorities except the clothes they were wearing, a watch, ring, $5, two bottles of liquor and a few personal possessions.

“And so in Florida, I went into a school. The schools at that time were overwhelmed with a growing number of Cuban immigrants. The first thing they did was put us into a transitional program. They tried to teach us in Spanish, but also give us some English instruction in the hope that after a while we had enough English.”

Gonzalez said that the school was not working very well, because there weren’t many teachers who spoke Spanish, and at the time the schools were not prepared for the change.

And so the decision was made to segregate Spanish-speaking children into classes of their own.

Then all of the teachers were Spanish speaking.

“I ended up in one of those schools, and if you’ve ever seen a group of Latinos together, you will see they get noisy, they ‘re very active, they speak with their hands,” Gonzalez explained.

He got in trouble one day for asking another student to translate something an administrator was saying. He was yanked out of the classroom and taken down to the principal’s office for speaking out of turn. When he got home, he was severely punished by his parents.

“So I learned an important lesson that day. I learned to keep my mouth shut, and for years I went through school without asking questions, without participating. I was simply trying to be a good listener,” he said.

As a result, the system didn’t pay much attention to him, and he was tracked into a vocational program, learning woodworking.

“Never mind that I still can’t put a nail in straight. Came time to graduate, and I was not prepared for college,” said Gonzalez.

Fortunately, he had a friend who suggested that he try going to a community college that had an open door policy, and he enrolled at Miami Dade Community College. There he fell in love with learning and education.

Later he transferred to the University of Florida, where he earned bachelor of arts and doctor of philosophy degrees.

Gonzalez said that there are thousands of children who don’t have that opportunity. The differences in the education system available to poor and minority children often create educational failure. Ask him what he thinks of bilingual education and he replied: “Don’t think one size fits all. Some children may need bilingual education and some can be successful in an immersion program. But the teachers have to be qualified and able to communicate effectively with bilingual and bicultural children.”

Gonzalez believes that schools of education need to do continual research and overall ensure that every teacher is highly qualified.

“The biggest challenge of education is to ensure that there is a qualified, competent and caring teacher in every classroom. At the IU School of Education, anyone we recommend for a teaching license must meet the highest standards of teacher preparation,” he added.

http://education.indiana.edu/dean.html