Title: Young Latino Males : an American Dilemma -Machismo: a Cultural Barrier to Learning
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Content: And in the U.S. educational system, those defined gender roles are being played out but not in the way one might expect. Male pride is losing out while Hispanic females are increasingly succeeding. The data present a stark contrast between male and female educational success among Hispanics in the U.S.: 61 percent of all Latino college students are women. There's an almost 60 percent difference in bachelor degree attainment between the Latino sexes in the last 30 years. By the time children finish the third grade, they will have developed the pattern of learning that will shape the rest of their lives. Regardless of how you measure it, Latino boys are falling behind. And increasingly researchers are saying the time-honored machismo culture may be one reason for that stark discrepancy. At the Young Latino Male Symposium in Phoenix in October, scholars Luis Ponjuan of the University of Florida and Victor Saenz of the University of Texas said machismo is one of many sociocultural problems that present themselves in the early years of school, which, if unaddressed, "lead to many problems that will debilitate the Latino for the rest of his life." " [Machismo culture] includes the set of behaviors and rules of conduct that are inculcated into boys by our society as being strong, tough and independent, showing no emotion," Saenz said. "