STAGING ENCOUNTERS - THE EDUCATIONAL DECLINE OF US PUERTO-RICANS IN [POST]-COLONIAL PERSPECTIVE

In this article, Catherine Walsh presents and analyzes the colonial '' push-and-pull'' of education in a White-run, northeastern school syste m where Puerto Rican students are the numerical majority. Using school department data, court reports, interviews, and field notes collected over the last five years, Walsh provides a case study of the conditio n and experience of Puerto Rican students in these schools, making cen tral the present-day manifestations of colonialism in the workings of schools and highlighting the opposition that emerges in response. This of opposition includes racially/ethnically positioned tensions that s hape administrative policy-and decisionmaking. Walsh suggests that stu dents, parents, and others working for the improvement of conditions f or Puerto Ricans must come to better understand the push-and-pull of c olonial relations in the schools, make connections between the need an d strategies for educational change and for change in other social ins titutional contexts, and establish alliances across groups, contexts, and other boundaries.