Working in the fields can be a dangerous environment for adults, but especially for child farmworkers. Among the frequent dangers faced on the job, a leading health problem is pesticides. Toxic chemicals sprayed on crops can cause severe skin irritation and breathing difficulties in young workers. According to the article, “Young Migrant Workers Toil in U.S. Fields”, Karen Fanning asserts that child farmworker’s, “small, undeveloped bodies are especially vulnerable to the harmful effects of pesticides” (Fanning). Because of these chemicals, over 300,000 farmworkers suffer pesticide poisoning each year (Romano, 2010). Child farmworkers also have a higher rate of chronic disease at 10.9% in comparison to 3% of chronic disease for the general …show more content…
Child farmworkers face the prospect of falling behind in school and become discouraged to attend year after year. This can be seen in The Harvest/La Cosecha where all three child farmworkers felt discouraged and left behind in school. Even though these children have dreams and hopes for their future, the facts show that in reality, many of them do not move ahead in life. The sad truth is that the same poverty that keeps their parents from moving ahead in life will most likely keep them from prospering. Poverty is pushing generation after generation to remain at work in the fields, yet we often here about a Latino threat and how the American people are being threatened with their jobs being taken …show more content…
When child migrant farm workers become discouraged, they feel hopeless and stop attending school altogether. They do not see the point in attending school, when the odds are that their hard work will be worth nothing because they will most likely not graduate high school, attend college, or stop working in the fields with their families. Migrant children drop out of school at 4 times the national rate because they cannot think of a reason to stay with their education since it is worthless as long as they stay in the fields (Romano, 2010). Child migrant farmworkers are tired, worn out, and have so many things stacked up against them, including the Latino
In Subtractive Schooling: US-Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring, Angela Valenzuela investigates immigrant and Mexican American experiences in education. Valenzuela mentions differences in high schools between U.S born youth and immigrants such as how immigrants she interviewed seemed to achieve in school as they feel privileged to achieve secondary education. However, she found that her study provided evidence of student failure due to schools subtracting resources from these youths. Both are plagued by stereotypes of lacking intellectual and linguistic traits along with the fear of losing their culture. As a Mexican American with many family members who immigrated to the U.S to pursue a higher education, I have experience with Valenzuela’s
The authors mention Miguel Fernandez, a fresh graduate from a small high school who has had struggles that have affected his opportunities to go off to college. These struggles include financial hardships and also that Miguel “was undocumented and in the country illegally” (Noguera and Kundu par.8). Though Miguel
In Lives in Limbo, Roberto G. Gonzales dissects the disastrous effects of US immigration policy on young Latina/os struggling in the often untouched, unnoticed, uncared for, American underbelly. Through a striking ethnography, Gonzalez examines 150 illuminating case-studies of young undocumented Latina/os, shedding light on their shared experience in the struggle for legitimacy in the United States - their lives, effectively, in limbo. He develops two major groups with which to classify the struggling youth: the college-goers, like Cesar, who received strong marks in high school and was able to land himself a spot within the UC system, and the early-exiters, like Silvia, who was unable to attend college, resigned to a paranoid life plagued
Even if these students have achieved the highest honors and have the brains of an engineer, they aren’t able to reach their greatest potential because they simply do not have documents. Those who are undocumented are doomed to working backbreaking jobs that pay substantially below minimum wage. Spare Parts has challenged and shown me that it takes an immigrant double, or even triple the amount of toil to achieve anything in life. These boys endeavoured through adversities that many of us will never encounter. Luis luckily had a green card, but Lorenzo, Oscar, and Cristian were all living under the fear of deportation. They all wanted more after graduating from Carl Hayden but their dreams quickly vanished because the reality was that they’re illegal immigrants. When we hear the word “immigration”, we automatically think “illegal”, but what we don’t see is that these illegal immigrants are trying to reach their own American Dreams by coming to America. As the author includes Patrick J. Buchanan’s perspective on immigrants, “...families came to the United States to leech off government services.” (35), it shows us how immigrants are perceived.
Imagine seeing 10,000 of your classmates walking out of your school because they wanted a better education - a better way of life. In the 1960s’ Chicano students were being “pushed out”(Esparza) of school or being pushed towards vocational programs. East L.A was home to schools were “one out of every four Chicano’s completed high school”(Esparza). Instructors and the school board alike did not have an interest in helping Chicanos finish school to become someone other than a laborer and was expected of them to keep being a laborer. In “Taking Back the Schools”, Sal Castro a high school counselor claims, “I think the bottom line is the lack of concern of the teachers towards the kids and whether the kids were really getting an education or not...the reality set in that the teachers weren’t really concern for the kids.”(Esparza).
Whether you're white, African-American, or Hispanic, poverty for today's youth has many recurring themes. A recent article by Duncan and Brooks for The Education Digest points out some very discerning facts that face today's poor youth. "Low Income is linked with a variety of poor outcomes for children, from low birth weight and poor nutrition in infancy to increased chances of academic failure, emotional distress, and unwed childbirth in adolescence." (Duncan& Brooks, pg. 1). They also claim that low-income preschoolers show poorer cognitive and verbal skills because they are exposed to fewer toys, books, and other brain-stimulating items at home than their higher-income classmates.
Secondary education is a highly debated subject. Many critics of secondary education say that inner-city high schools and students are not receiving the same attention as students from non inner-city high schools. Two of the biggest concerns are the lack of school funding that inner-city high schools are receive and the low success rate in sending inner-city high schools graduates to college. Critics say that while inner-city high schools struggle to pay its teachers and educate its student’s non inner-city high schools don’t have to deal with the lack of school funding. Also students from non inner-city high school are not being given the opportunity to attend colleges once the students graduate. But opponents of these critics blame an entirely different issue; and that is illegal immigrant students over crowding and attending high school at the expense of taxpayers. It cost millions of dollars a year for illegal immigrant students to attend high school and this is the main reason why schools are experiencing budget problems. Teaching illegal immigrant students creates a difficult learning environment and that is why students in inner-city high schools are not moving on to a higher education. This paper will explore the controversy and issues of secondary education; it will expose the hidden truths and prove that illegal immigrants are taking a toll on the education system.
Having the opportunity of staying in school is very important to illegal immigrants because that means they can realize the American Dream. It is something that every immigrant that comes to the U.S wants to achieve. By applying to the dream act illegal immigrants from the age of sixteen through thirty five can go to school. They are eligible to stay in school and or go to college if they have not done so. For example some of the immigrant students have immense talents that can be used for America’s assistance, but not being able to stay in school they can not succeed. “Thousands of young people have worked hard. But they are being denied that chance to build a better future for themselves and to contribute their skills, talents, and creativity to the country” (Duncan). By having the choice of staying in school, as well as the help it is more exciting to those students that want to become someone in life. Some of the illegal aliens possess some amazing talent...
Throughout time children have worked myriad hours in hazardous workplaces in order to make a few cents to a few dollars. This is known as child labor, where children are risking their lives daily for money. Today child labor continues to exist all over the world and even in the United States where children pick fruits and vegetables in difficult conditions. According to the article, “What is Child Labor”; it states that roughly 215 million children around the world are working between the ages of 5 and 17 in harmful workplaces. Child labor continues to exist because many families live in poverty and with more working hands there is an increase in income. Other families take their children to work in the fields because they have no access to childcare and extra money is beneficial to buy basic needs. Although there are laws and regulations that protect children from child labor, stronger enforcement is required because child labor not only exploits children but also has detrimental effects on a child’s health, education, and the people of the nation.
As people immigrated to the United States, legally and illegally, particularly Hispanic workers, they began to look for jobs to provide for their families. They took jobs that Americans did not want: they accepted the low-paying, physically-demanding, and temporal agriculture jobs. Since many did not speak English and were uneducated, some even illiterate, they were easy targets for farm owners to exploit. Immigrant workers were often not paid, had low wages, and because of such conditions, some even died. In addition, they also lived and worked in appalling conditions, some workplaces did not even have suitab...
Latino immigrants in the U.S. tend to have the highest dropout rates within the school system. Though, the aggregate statistics goes beyond students’ poor performance, there are many factors that can influence students to make the choice to quit school; for this essay, I will use Critical Race Theory and labeling theory to help me deconstruct the reasons behind this phenomenon, using example 1 of section I.
Not only was this issue was highlighted several times in our class discussions, it was also a main theme in the presentation by Leticia Saucedo. The movie affirmed my belief that there should be policy reforms in employment law that extends protection to vulnerable migrants in the workplace. Likewise, I found another issue with how the system creates vulnerability and uncertainty for innocent children who migrated with their parents. For example, one girl had great academic achievements in high school, but she could not apply to college because she did not have a social security number. Similarly, another person migrated with his parents from Mexico, proceeded to enroll in school, and even received a driver license without any issues. I think this represents an important problem with current policies, in which the children of undocumented migrants often do not know their legal status until it is too late. Therefore, I believe the government should take steps in the early process of education and grant some form of status to children who migrated unknowingly with their
Without an education Americans are unable to fully prosper and compete with the competitive career pathways, which is the same for any country. In order to grow and expand an individual needs the education and knowledge of the area of expertise they wish to achieve. However, in poorer countries the availability and opportunities to fulfill an education is far slimmer than in the United States. In fact such low education levels have contributed to the issue of child labor, an increasing epidemic in Honduras. Due to “rapid population growth and limited school budgets […] the school day in Honduras has been cut to half a day” (Groves 172). This downsizing has left children with the ability to work for the rest of the day. However once they begin work most tend to quit school believing that it is not worth investing in their education, since working alone provides them with the necessary valuable skills (Groves 172). This perception has led to “between 69 and 75 percent of children working in construction, agriculture, and the service sector” no longer attending school (Groves 172). However this believed perception is far from the truth. From the blue-collar
56.6 million Hispanics currently reside in the United States. Subsequently, Most obtain minimum wage and degrading occupations. On one hand, some Hispanics operate in the fields, while others are employed as maids or servants. Nevertheless, the inability of achieving a higher education and acquiring a diploma from the lack of support the United State’s education system affects the desired American lifestyle Hispanics demand to achieve. The US system, uses segregation in education and maintains low wages for immigrants in order to maintain people of color in poverty.
A young child dies from exhaustion, their limp body has been pushed to the very limit and they finally give in to death and another child has just become a statistic. This child was not even eleven years old. They had just completed their twenty hour day and then stumbled home 6 miles from where they were working. They saw their house in the distance which gave them hope to keep on walking. They dragged their feet towards the corner where they slept; their eyes are drooping not just from physical tiredness but from the pain of living this way. The last thing this little child saw was darkness, the last thing this weak child felt was coldness and the last thing this unfortunate child could do, was give up. At last this child is able to rest. This child was a victim of child labour. So, I ask you; is child labour morally right? I will argue that the exploitation of children is always wrong but that sometimes child labour is a necessary evil. I will also distinguish between child labour and child work.