In summer school, the gap between what I want to do and what I have time to do yawns particularly wide. I’m lecturing five hours a day four days a week, and that doesn’t count prep time. I’m not complaining, mind, just sayin’ that it makes it hard to get the blogging in that I would like. I’m trying to work up a longer post on feminist Christian sexual ethics, but that’s going to be delayed for a while.
Just a quick link to an interesting Times story this morning: Trying to Bridge the Grade Divide in L.A. Schools. Hector Becerra’s Column One offering explores the wide (and, some say, rapidly widening) success differential between Latino and Asian students in California high schools. Becerra visits Lincoln High School in East Los Angeles, a famous institution with a large percentage of both Asian and Hispanic students, and interviews both teachers and kids about the “achievement gap.” At Lincoln, Asians are 15% of the student body — and 50% of the enrollees in Advanced Placement classes. Virtually all of the students, regardless of race, come from working-class, first-generation immigrant families; socio-economics alone do little to account for the disparity.
Lots of familiar explanations crop up, with differing cultural expectations usually topping the list.
Frank D. Bean, a professor of sociology at UC Irvine’s Center for Research on Immigration, Population and Public Policy, has studied the Mexican work ethic and found that work and education occupy the same pedestal, and in some cases, work is even more valued.
Bean said his research shows that children of Latino immigrants, if they drop out of school, are more likely to be working than most other students who leave school.
“In Latino families, being able to work to provide defines your manhood, your worthiness,” said Min Zhou, a UCLA sociology professor who has studied working-class Korean and Chinese communities.
Gilbert Martinez, who teaches Chicano Studies at Lincoln, reports:
“Let’s say a Latino student is studying and an Asian student is studying,” Martinez said. “The Latino parent will often say, ‘Hey, come help me out real quick, then you can go back to your studying.’ Where the Asian parent will say, ‘Oh, you’re doing your homework. OK, you finish, and then after you’re done, you come help me.’ “
Pasadena City College is, during the regular semesters, about 40% Hispanic/Latino and about 30% Asian, with whites and blacks making up the remaining 30%. In summer school, however, the number of Asian students soars; we don’t have the official demographic report on summer 2008, but one administrator told me that the college estimates 65% of our summer students are Asian. Why does the number of Asian students skyrocket in the summer? It’s not, as both the administrator and the Becerra article make clear, because Asian students come from wealthier families who can afford to send the kids to summer school. It’s that college-age Latinos are frequently expected to make a more significant financial contribution to their families. The administrator told me: “It’s not that we have more Asian students in the summer — it’s that we have so many fewer Latinos. They’re all working full-time. That’s what makes this happen.”
I have no intention of reinforcing the tiresome “model minority” stereotype about Asian students. But given an essentially level economic playing field, the best explanation for both the Lincoln High achivement disparity and the Pasadena City College summer enrollment disparity are widely different beliefs about work, school, and family obligation.
As a privileged outsider who nonetheless cares very much for all my students, it is a fascinating — and often troubling — phenomenon to observe.
It would be interesting to see what percentage of the enrollees in Advanced Placement classes come from two parent households versus the overall percentage of the high school students from two parent households.
I currently work as an English tutor/Instructional Aide at PCC right now, and I can attest that you’re correct. The number of Asian students does indeed go up during intersessions. I am not sure why, either, but it’s something that I’ve noticed too.
And, of course, I look forward to your post on Christian-feminist sexual ethics — that’s something I’m really wrestling with right now.
Fred, it would be interesting to know overall family size as well. More or fewer kids might be an issue in terms of the level of parental attention and pressure placed on each one.
One thing that this article had me thinking about, something I was already wondering in the context of current debates about immigration, is whether, in the talk of “assimilation”, if we aren’t in some senses assimilating immigrants into stratified tiers based on race or culture or country of origin. Assimilation is generally thought to have a positive connotation in discussions of immigration to the US, hearkening back to the melting pot and the immigration of a century ago: everyone who came through Ellis Island would eventually lose their benighted Old World ways and become generically “American”, rising with a good dose of the Protestant work ethic and a can-do attitude. I wonder, whether or not this narrative was ever true, if it means anything today, or if we aren’t in effect pursuing assimilation of a rather less egalitarian sort, streaming immigrants of different origins into an already stratified and unequal structure, such that we could even be lowering the potential aspirations and opportunities of some.
Tom,
I have a half-Irish background (from my Mom’s side) and my wife has a mostly Irish background. When the Irish started immigrating in large numbers to America, they were considered to be unsanitary, spreaders of disease, and prone to violence and alcoholism. I would say that most people now consider Americans of Irish background to be fully assimilated Americans. I would also say that all the other groups that came through Ellis Island are also considered assimilated Americans: Italian, Swede, Pole, German, Greek, etc.
My father’s mother is from Cuba. I would say my relatives that were born in Cuba and live mostly in the Miami area are assimilated Americans, even though they still mostly speak Spanish at home. I have close friends from Costa Rico, Colombia, and Aruba; and would say that they and their extended families are all assimilated Americans.
When I was in college, about 40% of my classmates were of Asian background, they being first or second generation Americans. They never mentioned that society streamed them into taking engineering classes. However, they did say that their parents encourage them to do well in school, to go to college, and to study something that could support a family like science, engineering, or medicine. I also heard, quite a few times, that their parents did not want them to waste their time and money getting a law degree. That alway got a big laugh from a bunch of engineering students.
Why troubling? The differential output is explained by differential choices. If it is “troubling” that people make wrong choices, well, then just come out and say that you think there is a set of optimum choices everyone should make.
Fred, I know that that’s been the experience of many families over the last hundred years in this country, going all lace-curtain after a generation or two, and I can look on both of my grandmothers’ mantles and see old photographs of ancestors with weedy mustaches and ratty Sunday bests fresh off the boat from Ireland or Germany too.
What I’m wondering is if the contemporary experience is different. The experience of the students discussed in the referenced article seems to indicate that they identify academic accomplishment with race (one is “more Asian” for getting good grades, another is “Mexican at heart”). The students certainly seem to expect different treatment.
I went to Cal, which is 40% Asian as well (and half of that Chinese-American). Something certainly explains these differences in outcome. Are different groups of contemporary immigrants facing different opportunity sets as soon as they get here? It’s a question that is worth asking.
Tom,
I lean towards the human capital theory of cultures. Human capital includes the attitudes, skills, discipline, propensity to save, and valuation of education and hard work. Each culture has various strengths and weakness for different economic enviroments (hunter gatherer, agriculturial, industrial, and information age). Cultures, that value education for its own sake, have a huge advantage when entering an information age enviroment where education is rewarded economically. Cultures do change over time, look at the Irish and the Irish-Americans today compared to 19th century.
The reason I mention the two parent family is because two parents usually transfer a culture’s human capital more effectively than a single parent. I have seen this in my own extended family and in my friends’ families. I have also read numerous studies (controlled for socialeconomic, race, and ethnic group) the large difference of children’s outcomes in single and two parent families.
Fred,
I definitely credit something like the “human capital” theory of culture that you describe as having a significant effect on economic outcomes. I wrote my dissertation on the role of social networking among overseas Chinese in microeconomic governance and enterprise formation.
I just happen to think that those cultural trends are highly embedded in a substrate of contemporaneous history, geography, economics, law, and broader cultural and intercultural trends (particularly in a multicultural context, when specific ethnic cultures tend to act, if you will, as subcultures in a broader national or transnational culture). Changes in that substrate and its effects on culture make culture I believe often more malleable and fast-changing than is appreciated. This is particularly possible in an immigration context, when the immigrants themselves are in a state of cultural flux, both as part and parcel of immigrating and often enough in response to changes back home that motivated their emigration, and their children often grow up in a bicultural context (I can’t tell you how many times I’ve done business with Latino immigrant families in Los Angeles in which the children, often no older than ten, serve as translators).
The Irish in America are an excellent case in point. All allowances for the effects of anti-Irish prejudice aside, the first big wave of Irish who came to America in the 19th century were a pretty sorry lot: fleeing the famine, treated like crap by the English, internally divided by regional divisions and prejudices, and poorly educated. (Most of the Irish ancestry in my family comes from Australia, by way of the prison hulks) The considerable accomplishments of Irish before them going back to the dark ages mattered little to their situation. And their low place didn’t stop their descendants from achieving great success in America later.
Tom,
Your thesis, the role of social networking among overseas Chinese in microeconomic governance and enterprise formation, sound likes something that I would enjoy reading. Do you have it posted on the web? If not, I think Hugo would be kind enough to forward it to me if you sent it to him. I have made the mistake of posting my email on blogs in the past and I am still suffering for it with spam.
I enjoy Hugo’s blog because of the topics he brings up and the following discussion. I hope you continue to contribute your thoughts to this blog. I do learn a lot about things that I don’t normally find in newspapers, radio, or TV. I try to keep up with the latest social research by reading several papers a week from the SSRN eLibrary Database, the papers sometimes overlap some of the issues that Hugo brings up.
Sure Fred. Don’t know the best way to handle this. I’ll email Hugo today and see what would work as far as he’s concerned. It actually deals with one specific case that turned into a series of lawsuits, rather than a broad survey of Chinese social and business relations. It’s about 110 pages, just so you know.
Yeah, Hugo is good about bringing up interesting topics and bringing a unique and brave perspective on them.