Lack of Ambition?

In a commentary written by Marisa Treviño in USA Today, Treviño adresses the issues of Latinas pursuing higher education by referencing statistical reports that reflect the "pathetic" educational future of these students and they're preformance compared to their peers of different races and Latino counterparts. She then delves into the efforts taken by many organizations such as Hispanas Organized for Political Equality (HOPE) and the National Hispana Leadership Institute that have both helped Latinas better prepare for college by improving their skills and lending financial support as well.

Where it seems that the Latinas are faring well with the added support, Latinos are still lagging far behind when pursuing higher education. As Luis Ponjuan stated, this comes from the lack of societal involvement with these young men's educational career and credits the interest in Latinas education to a long-running societal neglect that is now being acted upon.

I, as a Latino pursuing higher education, find this commentary as a major wake up call and I feel that there should be more involvement with Latino students to ensure the success of my people (pardon the heavy expression.) However, at the same time I feel that the involvement should not be heavily placed on outside organizations but an active involvement from within the household, and while there are many Latino parents that strongly encourage the need for education many that are immigrants from their home country spend a large majority of their time working to keep up with the bills of the house and leave alot of their children to take care of themselves and each other. I believe it goes without saying that children raising children will never fare the same results as each child having the chance to looked after by their actual parents, and if many of these children were enrolled in extra-curricular activities it would prevent them from watching t.v., playing video games, or even getting pregnant and spend more time and attention on their school work where it truly deserves to be.

Is it really worth not doing?

Sex, it's something most of us, if not all of us, have experienced by this time in our life, and is one of the most controversial topics in society today. In the editorial "It's just addition by subtraction" written in the Austin-American Statesman it is stated that there are 1.3 billion dollars spent nationwide focused on sex education centered exclusively around abstinence. The author then goes on to state that the majority of this money is being wasted or misused as is seen in the high teen pregnancy rate in our state and nationwide as well. I for one agree with this article and believe that teenagers ARE in fact going to continue to have sex either out of general curiousity of "what all the ruckus is about," peer pressure, or just simply relieve physical tension (as I'm sure more than a few of us have done as well).

One of the main points the author is trying to make here is that teaching teenagers sex education based soley on abstinence is in a sense leading us down a path of self destruction because if and when these kids choose to have sex they will be ill prepared, uneducated, and ignorant to the proper use of contraceptives to help prevent not only unwanted pregnancy but STDs as well. It is when the author makes this statement when I find myself coming to a slight disagreement with what is written. I can say that from personal experience there can be people that are fully aware of proper contraceptive options and still choose to have unprotected sex either because they feel that "pulling-out" is a safe alternative to using a condom or any other contraceptive, which it really isn't, or that one of partners doesn't want to use a condom due to lack of sensation. It is usually these couples that run a risk of getting pregnant because they choose not to wear a condom or sometimes can't talk to their parents about other forms of birth control such as the pill to avoid being chastized or even emberassed for engaging in sexual activity.

Overall I believe the author does indeed make a valid point in their editorial and I for one truly believe that sex education should most definitely include information on various forms of contraception including abstinence, but believing that all teenagers can practice abstinence is an idea that I think has been long gone for decades.