The Grammar School as the Basic Acculturating Influence for Native New Mexicans

TjoHE function of a grammar school is generally conceptualized by the public as providing sufficient basic training in the "fundamentals" to enable individuals to compete with their neighbors in the community. Secondarily, the school, whether we approve or not, acts as the background of daily environment in which students divide themselves into association-groups, largely on the basis of the class system(sometimes complicated by semi-caste considerations) by which their parents are divided socially in community life.' In broad consideration of the school system in relation to minority groups within this country, we usually place a third function foremost: the socalled process of "Americanization," a concept referring to acquisition of the culture symbols characteristic of the majority group rather than to citizenship per se. On the basis of these functions, the schools of New Mexico may be criticized for not having adequately equipped the Spanish American pupils for competition with Anglo neighbors and for having been very backward in providing rural pupils, especially, with Anglo culture symbols. These two situations, combined, have augmented the tendency toward ethnic group separation within the broad class system of the State as a whole. To present this last proposition in other words: the Manito,2 having grown up in this country and presumably being equipped with the standard training received by any other American child, still is discovered by Anglo pupils and adults, alike, to be "different." Usually he is less advanced in comprehension of formal school subjects and ill at ease in urban Anglo life, if, indeed, he attempts such participation at all. Nevertheless, the tendency of individuals and of families to accept or to reject what training and broadening of experience is provided by the State schools probably is the most important avenue by which class status may be raised and is determined to a large extent by the original class category of the family within the local social system. This brings us back to the point of the extreme importance of the school system to this minority group of American citizens. Before proposing improvement, however, one should understand the history of the bi-ethnic social organization of New Mexico.3 The Manitos are made up of the descendants of the original conquerors of New Mexico, with some admixture of later Spanish immigrants, of other outside blood, and of an occasional newcomer from old Mexico.4 New Mexico has been their home since the early 1600's and the majority, having been more concerned with distinct loyalty to their territory than to distant powers, readily accepted the offer of American citizenship in 1848.3 But as Anglos moved into New Mexico, the personal posessions of the native owners immediately began to decrease. The rural Manitos were not accustomed to dealing with a monetary system and their ideas of land values were vague. The Anglos were devoted to the principles of competition in business enterprise and the quick accumulation of frontier fortunes. This resulted in considerable loss to the Manitos and consequent gain to the Anglos, a situation made increasingly difficult by the progressive division of the remaining Manito-