The Intellectual Presence of the Deficit View of Spanish-Speaking Children in the Educational Literature During the 20th Century

By tracing the educational research literature from a historical perspective (Flores, 1982), we will see how Spanish-speaking children have been depicted from a cultural and linguistic deficit view and how these “deficiencies” purportedly have been the culprits of “these” children’s educational failure during the 20th century. Early in the 20th century, Latino/a children came to be considered a “problem” to educators, particularly in the Southwest. Historically, Latino/a students’ underachievement in school has been explained from an intrinsic cause-andeffect point of view. Usually, it has been attributed to their cultural or linguistic background or both.