Latinos and the Culture of Anti-Intellectualism

By Luis R. Guevara.

The 2010 Census this year will likely establish the continuing growth of the Hispanic population in America.  Hispanics are the largest and youngest minority in the country at 16 percent of the total population; one in five school age children and one in four newborn are Hispanics.

And while the media outlets and liberal advocates are trumpeting such developments in a positive light, I question such assumptions.  Though it is true that an increase in population means more government representation and services, Hispanics also face intractable problems that government can do little to address.

Being the largest minority will not in itself guarantee high living standards or well paid jobs.  One of the most problematic issues in the community is education. According to a recent report by the Pew Hispanic Center, Latinos have the highest high school dropout rate (17 %), the highest teen pregnancy rate (26%) and , as a result, some of the lowest university educational attainment than any other group.   In the Pew survey nearly half of Latino youths said that they did not plan to get a college degree.

Those statistics should be sounding alarming bells to all segments of the Hispanic community.  It is well known that children who are raised in families where education is not a priority do not see education as important.  Consequently, they are destined to have menial jobs that do not pay well enough to raise families of their own and contribute little to the overall economic well being of the country.

According to the Pew Study: “The reason most often given by Latino youths who cut off their education before college is financial pressure to support a family”. It should come to no surprise that immigrant families, interested primarily in economic survival and helping kin back home, put a bigger premium on work than in education. But we also have to face the ugly truth that a certain degree of anti-intellectualism is prevalent in the community.  In the study, about 4 in 10 of the Latino youth cited a dislike of school for not continuing on to college. I would venture out to say that if young Hispanics do not like school it is because parents do not talk about the value and therefore do not inculcate the importance of education to their children. This is not just a family but also a community phenomenon. One only needs to browse Spanish channels and magazines (people en español is the highest selling magazine) to realize that the Spanish media is only interested in feeding people gossip and telenovelas rather than promoting interest in learning.  Needless to say, that needs to change drastically if Latinos are to benefit from the opportunities that this country offers.

In our globalized world where countries like China and India are on the rise, the US needs to remain competitive in order to maintain its position as a superpower. Nothing will give this country the edge more than producing educated people like scientists and mathematicians. The reason why Asian Americans are so professionally successful and economically wealthier than other ethnic groups has to do with the premium they put on education from childhood.  For Hispanics, being the largest ethnic group has very little value if we continue to be the least educated. If not addressed quickly and systematically the problem of education will not only result in economic hardships to future generations of Latinos but also in the potential decline of the country technologically and economically. To solve the problem, however, it is imperative that we change our current cultural mind set of anti-intellectualism and replace it with a culture of learning.

Luis R. Guevara holds a M.A. in International Affairs from American University and a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Maryland at College Park. He was born in El Salvador and raised in Washington, DC.

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