ABSTRACT
I am a Hispanic-North American, a new-breed Hispanic. My ethnic roots are Ecuadorian in my father's lineage, and Dutch and German from Pennsylvania in my mother's lineage. Given the fact that persons from German lineage in Pennsylvania are called Pennsylvania Dutch, my three-and-a-half-year-old daughter names this strand of our family heritage from my mother's roots "Double Dutch." It is an appropriate naming because double dutch is also the term for a rope game played with two jump ropes which are turned in tandem. My active daughter, Rebekah, observes and practices this rope game, which requires a unique combination of jumping and coordination to balance one's position successfully between two ropes rotating in opposite directions and converging on the person whose turn it is to jump. This image of jumping double dutch is appropriate for considering the status of minority persons in public and religious education in the United States within a dominant Anglo middle-class ethos.
