Are Latino kids really out of control in the classroom?
by Daniel Cubias
As President Bush once famously asked, “Is our children learning?”
Well, in everybody’s favorite state — Arizona — the answer seems to be a resounding no… assuming, of course, that we’re talking about Latino kids.
Recently, during a legislative debate in Phoenix, a Republican state representative “stirred up gasps and anger” when she read a letter aloud from one of her constituents.
The letter writer, a substitute teacher named Tony Hill, claimed that he taught in a classroom where his students “were almost all Hispanic and a couple of Black children.” Hill wrote that the students boycotted the Pledge of Allegiance, called him a racist, refused to do their assignments, and even tore apart their textbooks.
Hill summarized his experience by writing that “Most of the Hispanic students do not want to be educated but rather be gang members and gangsters. They hate America and are determined to reclaim this area for Mexico.”
No, it’s not exactly Stand and Deliver.
So how truthful was Hill’s letter? Well, the nearest thing to a follow-up investigation, from thePhoenix New Times, implies that Hill is “nothing but a student-hating liar.”
