![]() ![]() Faced with teasing at her new school she tells her mother she doesn’t want to go back. I'm therefore pleased as punch that we've something quite as amazing as Separate is Never Equal to fill in not just my gaps but the gaps of kids all over our nation. With the possible exception of Cesar Chavez, my education was pretty much lacking in any and all experience with Latino heroes in America. ![]() Huge historical significance (there’d be no Brown v. Villains and heroes (her own heroic parents, no less). Why were weeks and weeks of my childhood spent learning about The American Revolution but only a day on the Vietnam War? Why did we all read biographies of Thomas Edison but never about Nicolas Tesla? And why did it take me 36 years before someone mentioned the name of Sylvia Mendez to me? Here we have a girl with a story practically tailor made for a work of children’s nonfiction. It was only in adulthood that I started to understand that the history we know is more a set of decisions made decades and decades ago by educators than anything else. One person better positioned for a biography than another. ![]() One event would be more worthy of coverage than another. If I blame my childhood education for anything I suppose it would be for instilling in me the belief that the history worth learning consisted of a set of universally understood facts. ![]()
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