Persuasive Speech On Chicanos And Chicanas Education

TITLE: Chicanos and Chicanas Education
GENERAL PURPOSE: To persuade by convincing.
SPECIFIC PURPOSE: I want my audience to believe that mentoring will truly help Chicana and Chicano students to advance in education.

INTRODUCTION

I. Benjamin Franklin once said, “Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.”
A. This quote by Benjamin Franklin talks about how important it is for someone to actually be involved and not just told to do something to actually learn.
B. Involving is exactly what mentors do. They do not just simply tell or teach; they involve the students

II. After additional research, I have decided to talk more about the topic of Chicano and Chicana education.
A. I have looked through and based

most of my speech on the book called “Chicanas and Chicanos in School: Racial Profiling, Identity Battles, and Empowerment.” by Marcos Pizarro.
B. After my previous speech about the Mexican American’s history of educational neglect, I decided to talk more about the issues that persist today.

III. Today, I want to continue on from my last speech and talk about the continuing issues of Chicano and Chicana students’ education, and how these issues can be resolved.

IV. Chicano and Chicana students will have a higher chance of advancing in and achieving higher education if they seek help from a mentor. (Proposition of Fact)

BODY

I.

Chicana and Chicano students had low academic achievement compared to other ethnic groups, and did not have someone reliable to get advice from.
A. The students had low academic achievement.
1. According to Pizarro, “Chicanas and Chicanos face the highest dropout rates of any major ethnic group in the United States- as many as half of a given cohort of Chicana and Chicano students does not complete high school- and their relative educational outcomes have been stable or have worsened over time.” (Pizarro, 1).
2. “Mexican Americans as a group fail to achieve well on standard tests of academic achievement, and they do not do as well as their Anglo counterparts in the more subjective evaluations of achievement.” (Carter, 17).

B. The students barely had anyone who could advise them concerning their education.
1. Chicanas and Chicanos were often marginalized, which lowered their social sense of self. (Pizarro, 53).
2. Even advisors at school did not provide proper advising. An advisor, after seeing a Chicana’s 3.9 GPA, told her that she couldn’t get into the university with such poor grades. “‘You know, I don’t think you’re going to get into the university.’” (Pizarro, 53). The advisor did not provide the student with any reasons why her grades were considered

“poor”.

II. The lack of parental influence and instructors’ guidance discouraged the students.

A. Parental support played a huge role in Chicano and Chicana students’ success in education.
1. According to Pizarro, “most parents provided encouragement by emphasizing the importance of school, but their encouragement did not go further than that. (The parents did not monitor and facilitate completion of schoolwork, they did not become involved in the school, and they did not actively plan the student’s future).” (Pizarro, 63).
2. Although “some parents provided strong support and encouragement for their children’s educational success, and the children of those parents tended to be successful”, most parents, due to “their limited and often negative experiences in school, provided only a moderate level of encouragement, leaving the bulk of the support to their children’s teachers and peers.” (Pizarro, 95).

B. Some Anglo teachers and administrators did not treat Chicana and Chicano students equally due to their racial and socioeconomic difference.
1. Pizarro’s interview with a Chicano student, Ernesto, is about the “system of differential treatment where Chicanas and Chicanos faced harsher treatment than their white peers for the same behaviors.” (Pizarro, 67). In one of Ernesto’s high school years, his teacher for architecture class, who had a great reputation among the white and Asian American students, told him, “I’ll never ever listen to you or call on you if you raise your hand.” (Pizarro, 68).
2. Many interviews of Chicano and Chicana students in Pizarro’s book were marginalized due to their ethnicity. An example would be about Santiago, a Chicano student who was told by his teacher that “All you guys do is just hang around, smoke drugs, sell drugs.” (Pizarro, 76).
3. Although there are many great instructors who were passionate about teaching, I feel that due to a few of them who were not such a great teacher, the students were reluctant in reaching out to them for help.

III. To help Chicano and Chicana students succeed in education and develop a strong racial identity, the students should seek for a reliable mentor.
A. Family, teachers, or student organizations are all great mentors that can lead the students to success.
1. Pizarro states that “Family was the most important aspect of life for these students. Their families gave meaning to who they were, to what they wanted to be, and to how they viewed school.” (Pizarro 198).
2. According to Pizarro, “the students understood their abilities and possibilities through positive interactions with the teachers. Although some students had positive experiences with teachers, the majority of students did not have positive interactions or support from teachers. These negative interactions were often debilitating to students and led them to tune our or even drop out of school.” (Pizarro, 198). This shows just how much effect the teachers can have on students.
3. But if both parents and teachers are not reliable sources, the students can turn to student organizations. A well-known student organization, MEChA, acronym for “Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán”, is a student organization that promotes higher education, culture, and history for Chicano and Chicana students. (nationalmecha). Many students, interviewed by Pizarro, have benefitted from this organization by giving “them the opportunity to create a shared vision of their importance as Chicanas who were pursuing higher education.” (Pizarro, 224). This organization helped the students in various ways by supporting academics and developing a strong racial identity as well as leadership skills. (Pizarro, 212).

B. Having a mentor who can lead the students in the right way is very beneficial.

1. According to Pizarro, mentorship is “the key to success for Chicana and Chicano students” (Pizarro, 199).
2. Pizarro states that there are multiple reasons why the students need mentors. “The students need mentors to help them develop confidence in their potential and abilities. They need someone who can help them deal with the obstacles they encounter during their school lives. Most of all, the students need someone who can help the students understand what was and is happening.” (Pizarro, 199-200).

CONCLUSION

I. “Early on in their school lives, many of the students saw that they were devalued in the schools through their through school policies that were directed at them, through the informal exclusion of their parents from their own schooling, through their own isolation, and through direct conflicts with authority figures.” (Pizarro, 199).

A. The Chicana and Chicano students’ low academic achievement is not their fault.
1. From the late 1930’s, this ethnic group has suffered from the never ending segregation. Although segregation of students to another school, away from Anglos, has long been changed, some authorities’ minds have not. They constantly marginalize Mexican American students.

B. Mentoring is essential to the Mexican American students’ success in education. Many Chicanos and Chicanas want to succeed, and go on to higher levels of education. According to Pizarro, those who have received strong mentoring were the most successful. (Pizarro, 188).

II. The Chicano and Chicana students who struggle to find a reliable mentor must be guided towards one. Without a mentor who can help these students develop confidence in their ethnicity and endure school life, the students often get lost. There is a quote by Paulo Coelho that is very relevant to these students: “What is a teacher? I'll tell you: it isn't someone who teaches something, but someone who inspires the student to give of her best in order to discover what she already knows.”