Chicano Studies

This report emphasizes testimonies of 6 young adults of Latin decent, between the ages of 18 and 20 living in California.

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I will start talking about the term “dropout”

The use of the word “dropout” is presented to describe students who leave school before graduating High School.

The study conducts that the use of the word “dropout” to describe these 6 young adults brought feelings of negativity and frustration. The word dropout shifts disproportionate blame to them. And hides the insight and experiences these youth members contribute to their families, communities and society.

To better understand the feelings of negativity of the word dropout I used the voice of Joaquin.          

 Joaquin states, “I didn’t drop out of school. I still continued all the way. I tried until my senior year”.

Joaquin’s does not approve of the word drop out and does not consider himself a dropout.

Joaquin voice also provides a counter narrative to the perception that people who leave high school without graduating are “disinterested” and “disinvested”.

A lot of the factors that contributed to the 6 young adults leaving high school were beyond their control.  Scholars and advocates have taken up a better phrase to replace the word “dropout” for the word “pushout or pullout” to describe these students who couldn’t continue school due to factors like cultural wealth.

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Cultural wealth is defined as challenges between family, Community and the institutional. Challenges such as struggles within the school system, abuse (such as sexual,emotional,physical etc), the juvenile justice system or teen parenthood. Cultural wealth allows us to take an in-depth look into how we can better the community and well-being of others.

There are six forms of cultural Wealth: Social, Resistant, Linguistic, Familial and Aspirational Capital.

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I will begin talking about Social capital