The need for an innovative secondary education that addresses the needs of older adults who possess skills and rich life experiences is essential. Without a high school diploma families are consigned to cycles of low paying, health threatening work or unemployment. The subsequent continued impoverishment is visited upon their children, thus reproducing cycles of social exclusion.
Older Latinos seek education with a concrete interest in improving their English speaking, reading and writing skills, Math skills, and a newly sparked interest in Social Studies. Finally, they are interested in a history of the United States that includes Latino contributions.
Historical Precedent
A community based high school completion program works!
Until 2003, there was only one adult high school completion program in Chicago --St. Leonard's Adult High School for former inmates. St. Leonard's, whose diploma is awarded through Regina Dominican High School, has graduated several classes in the last five years.
A similarly successful high school, St. Mary's Community Adult High School, existed 30 years ago to serve older high school dropouts in the Lawndale community. The program received diploma granting capacity from St. Mary's Center for Learning and grew to matriculate 1500 people within four years. The success of the program was a result of a curriculum and process that began with the strengths of the participants and honored their cultural and personal experience, particularly the mothers on welfare who were willing to attend night classes for four hours Monday through Thursday to obtain a high school diploma.
About Sister Dorothy Stang
The school, formerly known as San Bonifacio High School, was renamed after a Sister of Notre Dame de Namur, Dorothy Stang, who struggled for ecological and social justice in Brazil alongside those whose voices are rarely heard.
In spite of death threats, Dorothy stood with peasants struggling to keep lands that the big ranchers and loggers wanted for their profits. In collaboration with poor farmers, Dorothy confronted the deforestation of the rain forest and the land grab of the big owners. With the people, she developed many sustainable projects and was working on having a protected federal reserve on which they could live peacefully until her brutal assassination in 2005.
Her name was chosen in order to develop a school that utilizes Brazilian peasants’ methods of popular education, which allowed them not only to learn to read and write, but also to critically examine: the connections between their suffering and a global system of profit; the connections between global warming and deforestation; and the capacity of people united to challenge injustice.