Community as Resistance: Reconceptualizing Historical Instances of Community within Latin@ Education

ABSTRACT

The term “community” is drawn upon within critical educational literature that seeks to address inequity experienced by students of color in schools, yet little explicit discussion of its meaning and history is presented. In this article, I offer one way of thinking about community. I propose that it has existed as resistance within the context of Latin@ education between the turn of the twentieth century through the latter part. Using a critical human geography lens, I argue that this history holds importance because spaces are (re)productions of past spaces. This offers possibilities for informing and inspiring present-day critical pedagogies.

KEYWORDS:

• Activism
• critical pedagogy
• Latino/a children and families
• Lat Crit
• parent and community
• pedagogy

Notes

¹ Because the scholars I draw from use a variety of terms to describe the people to which they refer, and because the scholars’ work covers multiple geographic locations, I use the term “Latin@,” not to dismiss other significant terminology (e.g., Chican@), but rather to be inclusive of all.