Streets and Schools: How Educators Can Help Chicano Marginalized Gang Youth

Abstract

The relationship between streets and schools for Chicano gang youth is at the heart of this article. Author Diego Vigil argues that understanding how streets and schools intersect in ways that interfere with the learning and school performance of Chicano gang youth may be the key to offering them a more positive schooling experience. Using his multiple marginality framework, Vigil examines how gangs socialize Chicano youth to be gang members. He also examines how home and school are complicit in that socialization. Typically, street children exhibit behaviors in classrooms that interfere with their academic learning. In turn, educators are not well enough informed about gang culture to foster behaviors that result in successful academic performance. Vigil issues a call to parents and teachers to actively participate in the prevention, intervention, and suppression of gang activity. The author presents three Los Angeles–based programs as examples of how schools can successfully serve gang children. While Vigil argues that schools have exacerbated the problem, he remains convinced that schools — working in a concerted and respectful effort with the home and the community — present the best hope for countering street socialization.