Escalante honored for achievement that long-ago withered away

Perhaps it is the power of cinema – its ability to preserve an image that sticks in our mind forevermore, regardless of what really happens in later years.



Cinematic Escalante, and ...

Christopher Reeve will always be Superman. That wheelchair? It must be some sort of cover-up for all those superhuman feats of strength that he is capable of.

AND JAIME ESCALANTE? The Latino (Bolivian-American, if you prefer to be exact) educator who inspired inner-city Latino youths to study calculus got played in a cinematic version of his life by actor Edward James Olmos, which is how most of us remember him.

That image created by Olmos in the 1988 film “Stand and Deliver” is the reason that Escalante received an award earlier this week for his work at an East Los Angeles high school. Of course, Escalante hasn’t worked there since 1991.

In fact, Escalante died earlier this year (and is now buried in Whittier, Calif., the hometown of the college attended by former President Richard M. Nixon).

But it was the image of Olmos as Escalante that lives on, as he will forevermore be teaching Latino teens that they too can do more with their lives than serve fast food or sweep up a hotel room’s floor. Which is why he was among the eight people honored by the Hispanic Heritage Foundation when they had festivities Wednesday at the Kennedy Center in Washington.

ESCALANTE’S IMAGE WAS up there with America Ferrera (who played the lead role in the now-defunct television series “Ugly Betty”), and Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., who I’m sure will boast about being honored for being one of the few politicians willing to talk about immigration reform. El Gallito has a Chicago mayoral campaign to promote in next spring’s elections.

... the real Escalante

Now it’s not that Escalante is no longer with us on Planet Earth that makes his honor stick out in my mind. Many groups are willing to give someone posthumous honors, while usually making some sort of statement about how it would have been much better if the award could have been presented while the honoree was still living.

But Escalante got his share of awards during his lifetime for his 1980s stint at Garfield High School, which became the focus of the film starring Olmos, that told the story of the initial year of an Advanced Placement Calculus program in an inner-city high school where most students previously had trouble passing basic mathematics classes.

I even remember the film’s final image – one of Olmos-as-Escalante walking down the hall, while a graphic is superimposed over the screen informing us of how in future years, the number of students who took Escalante’s classes and passed the AP calculus exam steadily rose.

UP AND UP and up. I have known many Latino people who consider this particular film to be a favorite because they like the image not so much of Latinos succeeding, but specifically inner-city Latinos who supposedly have all the strikes lined up against them.

It almost serves as a “drop dead” from Latinos to every nativist nitwit who spews rhetoric that implies Latinos don’t belong in this society, and who are only capable of dragging it down.

It is that spirit that was honored by the foundation this week,

The problem with that is that it gives the very strong impression that this particular success was long-lasting, if not permanent. In this particular case, it wasn’t.

FOR THE REAL story of Garfield High School was of how Escalante himself was an inspiring character who got individuals to work harder and take themselves more seriously – rather than fall into the trap of assuming that the nativist-nitwit talk was somehow correct, and that their options truly were limited.

The reality is that after Escalante left the real-life Garfield High in 1991 (three years after the film about his work was released), his successors couldn’t maintain his achievement. By the mid-1990s, the number of students at the high school who were passing the AP tests (which aren’t easy for even the most dedicated of students) had dropped by more than 80 percent.

The modern-day Garfield High doesn’t even dream of such an accomplishment. The Escalante era is ancient history. It is almost like it never happened.

Which is a shame.

IT ALSO IS a reality that we must take into account whenever we engage in high-minded rhetoric about improving various aspects of our society.

Anybody can talk, and some people can make improvements. But there has to be a lasting quality to the improvements, and that means we need to have people who are capable of maintaining improvement. Because we are no better off  if all we can achieve is a short-term boost that withers away.

Which means for Escalante it is a good thing he has Olmos’ film to perpetuate that image of him as a revolutionary educator. Otherwise, we literally would have to look at the modern-day Garfield results and wonder what the big deal truly was.

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