In the United States, schooling has been traditionally viewed as the primary mechanism by which individuals are socially and politically prepared to function as active citizens. Through educational support of what has been termed “civic inclusion,” peripheral members of society, i.e., minorities and the poor, are purportedly given access to mainstream society.
This article examines the fallacy of civic inclusion for Latino students in U S. schools and demonstrates how schools actually promote an educational and civic exclusion. Discussed are the language, culture, and community-related strategies students utilize to confront exclusion and the new forms of inclusion which this discourse engenders.
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