Education, is it a choice?

When I was a child, attending college was a given. There was no doubt in my mind that I was attending college. I had big dreams, but what kid doesn't. I planned on going to Stanford to study medical and become a pediatric surgeon. Even though everything didn't go quite according to plan, I made sure one thing didn't leave my sights, attending college. Nearly nine-tenths of latin students say that college is an important role in success and a degree should be attained, but yet only about half of those students plan on getting a degree, according to the Pew Research Center. I'm sure that most all of these students who said that college was an important role in success would attend college, but they must do what is most logical at the time being. Providing for family in time of need is always going to be #1 on the to-do list, and attending college, especially a university, is going to put most students, especially hispanics, in a financially draining situation. Also, while attending college time is a factor, and instead of getting paid for your time, you are paying to give your time. Now don't get me wrong, college is an extremely important part of success and the game of life, but when your family is in need, your going to do anything you can to help them. about three-fourths of hispanic's that finished highschool or cut their highschool career short said they did so in order to provide for their family.

     All aspects of latino life must be looked at. When you are raised speaking spanish, and then you are thrown into an american school where speaking english is the norm, you are not going to excel. Imagine being thrown into a Chinese school right now(assuming you do not speak chinese) and your told in order to succeed, you must excel in class. You are not going to do well because you cannot understand the content of whats being taught. This is a large factor that plays when discussing latino education.

     Foreign born latino's that migrate to the United States at a young age are also more obligated to put providing for family before education. They must do this in order to survive. They have no choice. The lack of success in schools for latino's is not due to the fact that latino children dont work as hard, it's that their parenting requires them to put other things first, or to the fact that there is a language barrier. My parents raised me to put education over everything. Nothing gets in the way of education, and if it did, I would have to drop it. I was also native born and I didn't have to provide for my family. Most latino students believe education is extremely important, they just feel incapable of achieving success due to many factors. There is always going to be kids, whether they be latino, black, white, or asian, that do not succeed in school because they don't want to or believe it is important. I feel the number of students that don't do well or succeed in school because of pure choice is pretty even throughout the races. This is not the reason why hispanics don't succeed in education, hispanics have more obstacles preventing them from succeeding in school.

     As you can see, according to my opinion and Pew Research Center, hispanics cannot be blamed for their low education success levels. Hispanics must overcome more barriers than most races, and, especially foreign born hispanics, are brought up by their parents to help provide for their family. Hispanics feel strongly about education and realize the importance of it, they must prioritize their obligations and unfortunately education sometimes doesn't come first.


http://www.pewhispanic.org/2009/10/07/latinos-and-education-explaining-the-attainment-gap/