In this article, Catherine Walsh presents and analyzes the colonial "push-and-pull" of education in a White-run, northeastern school system 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 condition and experience of Puerto Rican students in these schools, making central the present-day manifestations of colonialism in the workings of schools and highlighting the opposition that emerges in response. This opposition includes racially/ethnically positioned tensions that shape administrative policy- and decisionmaking. Walsh suggests that students, parents, and others working for the improvement of conditions for Puerto Ricans must come to better understand the push-and-pull of colonial relations in the schools, make connections between the need and strategies for educational change and for change in other social institutional contexts, and establish alliances across groups, contexts, and other boundaries.
“Puerto Rico Can Teach So Much”: The Hemispheric and Imperial Origins of the Educational War on Poverty