Word: grade
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...from the Warehouse. Squat, muscular James Riddle Hoffa. 46, once tried to sum up in four short sentences his career after he left school at the end of the seventh grade: "I got a job in a department store-stock boy. Then I got a job at Kroger's. And that's my whole life. Pretty simple life...
...Texas has long since dropped separate schools for Mexican-American students. But this is no full solution. When Tijerina tackled the problem two years ago, he discovered that as many as 200,000 Texas five-year-olds still could not speak English. The inevitable result: the children enter first grade normally at six, make no headway in school, and eventually drop out. Tijerina found that in five Texas counties alone, where the population is 90% Mexican-American, the state spent $3,000,000 a year to support dependent children...
Tijerina pointed the finger squarely at his own people, who refuse to speak English at home: "When a Latin American boy gets to the third grade, after failing the first and second a couple of times, he finds that he's eleven and the other kids are eight. He rationalizes by saying his skin is darker and that's why he's being failed. He doesn't blame Daddy and Mother. He doesn't ask why they didn't teach him English. He quits school and blames you, because your skin is lighter...
...money, Tijerina launched two tuition-free "Little Schools of 400" in the neighboring towns of Ganado and Edna near Houston. Purpose: to teach 400 words of basic English to 42 five-year-olds, all of whom spoke Spanish only. After 3½ months the "graduates" entered first grade in the town's public schools-where more than half the Mexican-American first-graders had failed the year before-and all passed with flying colors...
...appropriations urged by the committee, the only one passed by the frugal state legislature was a $1,300,000 bill to set up Tijerina-style schools throughout Texas. Reason: hundreds of five-year-olds have now had the Tijerina treatment, and less than 5% have flunked the first grade...