Latino Educator Leaves Legacy Of Educational Civil Rights

José A. Cárdenas was a longtime educational activist who died last week in San Antonio, Texas. Among his specialties, things he’d been working on since the civil rights era, were bilingual and multicultural education as well as early childhood development. The San Antonio Express-News reported on his death:

“He pioneered the idea that children who are bilingual learned differently,” longtime colleague Rosie Castro said. “It was a novel idea that the education culture had never looked at and was well proven out later. In the ’60s and ’70s, it was very new.”

Cárdenas, who was 80, suffered strokes in the past several years, son Dr. Michael Cardenas said, and never fully recovered…

“We have lost a real champion,” said Al Kauffman, former attorney for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. “He was the leading Latino educator in the history of the United States.”

Cárdenas was also the author of several books about education and founded the Intercultural Development Research Association. For more, read the rest of the story here.