In commemorating the importance of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision on educational equity in this country, this McFarland Lecture, titled "Mobilizing Culture, Language, and Educational Practices: Fulfilling the Promises of Mendez and Brown," will honor the Mendez v. Westminster case of 1946, which represented the first major and successful challenge to segregated schooling in California.

Like the Brown decision, this case also featured social science research as testimony to the harms of segregation. In summarizing the Mendez case, this lecture will highlight its sociocultural aspects, including the educational conditions of Mexican American children, the changing demographics as a catalyst for action, the collective and intercultural agency of its participants on behalf of all children and the process by which the Méndez family, who were agricultural workers, assumed leadership, at great risk, in bringing this case to fruition.

With the Mendez case as backdrop, this McFarland Lecture will then address contemporary educational issues within the social context produced by major demographic changes. Rather than build on the vibrancy of these dynamic changes, current educational remedies that feature regimes of standardization and testing to control schools and students seem stagnant if not anachronistic. An alternative approach would not only mobilize the social, cultural and linguistic processes of diverse communities as important resources for educational change, but would also study and understand educational practices from various methodological viewpoints. And it is through this mobility of processes, practices and understandings that one can fulfill the promises of change championed by Mendez and Brown.