An Educational Challenge
A week ago an article in the New York Times featured a local high school in Prince William County and its “solution” to the education of immigrants with minimal English skills. Last night I saw “The Class”, a French film which is almost like a documentary as it depicts the difficulties in a high school class filled with immigrants. Neither story is a happy one.
Hylton High has made a conscious choice to segregate the immigrant students for most of their classes. Theirs is a school within a school -- separate classes, separate field trips, separate clubs. There is little attempt at assimilation. They ultimately take the same standardized tests, but their preparation must include the definition of the terms in the questions in some cases. A much lower percentage of these students go on to college, with many joining the ranks of their parents in doing menial labor. The long-standing debate is whether these students would profit more or less from being thrust into classrooms where they would have little advantage and whether the other students would suffer as the immigrants were pulled along. It’s a hard call, but for some recent immigrants it has closed doors they came here to enter.
The Class (or “Entre les Murs” in French) takes place in the 20th arondissement of Paris, known for a high immigrant population. The teacher, Francois Marin, is actually an educator who wrote the book on which the movie is based. He recruited students at a local high school, gave them some acting lessons, and cast them in the movie. The result couldn’t be a more authentic depiction of the challenges posed by such a class. There is Wey, the quiet Chinese boy who excels at math and video games, and whose mother is deported because she is in France illegally; Carl, the angry transfer student from the Caribbean; Souleymane, the tough guy from Mali; and Esmeralda, the Arab girl who seems to have it in for the teacher but who we learn has read “The Republic,” quite a difficult book. The saddest is the girl who at the end of the year confesses that she has learned nothing and fears she will be sent to vocational school.
The teacher is far from perfect, making some egregious errors by labeling students with terms like “limited” and “skank”. But he seems to survive the year, whereas Souleymane gets expelled and perhaps sent back to Mali by his angry father.
Both the local high school story and the movie made me more conscious of the plight of immigrants, especially those who come here during their formative years when their hormones are raging. In many cases they simply need someone to believe in them, and instead they get a system that seems to cut them off at every critical junction.
So do we simply throw up our hands and hope for better luck for the next generation, or is there a better way to approach this dilemma?
posted by Barbara at 10:50 AM
20 Comments:
Hello Barbara!
You raise some interesting questions here, when thinking about immigrants and education. One of the biggest questions is "Is it the school's job to assimilate children into the dominant culture of the state?"
Picture taking your child to a school in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Would it be your aim to have your child learn the Koran, learn the segregation of women, learn the pride of their country at the expensive of your homeland?
Assimilation is a tricky proposition, because by saying that something (the way the dominant culture does things) is good, often implies that the way that subcultures do things is bad.
Picture your child going to school in the bible belt of this country (Even Central California will do) and she comes home and says, "You and Stephanie (the other mommy) are going to burn in hell." This is the thought of the dominant culture. You might say this is not the job of the school, then. Some parents do not want assimilation.
Just my 2 cents,
Kelly
Kelly -- You are always spot on because you see things from the perspective of an educator.
I think it's a Catch-22 for immigrant families: They often want to maintain their own cultures while giving their children all the advantages of their new culture. Sometimes this is an impossibility.
I can't imagine raising my children in a place where almost everyone was a white ultra-conservative Christian, any more than I can imagine raising them in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
As for assimilation, it's almost too bad the child can't choose because I'm sure they run the gamut in their degree of wanting to merge with the new society. At the same time, it would be so difficult for someone who missed out on say their first 13 years of life here to make that leap.
Schools must often make a "one size fits all" decision that works perhaps to a degree, but is still fraught with problems.
Thanks as always for your informed comments. You are so SMART!
Kelly raises some interesting, thought-provoking counterpoints. Living in a culture (here, the bible belt) where the dominant thinking (right wing Republicanism) isn't one's own is challenging, to say the least.
Those ARE good points.
I suspect that what makes school policies like the ones in Virginia possible is this country's rather virulent anti-immigrant sentiment. I have relatives whose children attend school in northern Virginia and they gripe about the immigrants all the time -- saying their own children are ostracized by the immigrant groups and their educations risk derailment as the school struggles to work with the immigrants. (I'm sure the ostracism cuts both ways.)
Personally, I think ostracism is wrong. Regardless of which culture you choose to maintain at home, we all need exposure to each other. Otherwise how will we ever learn?
I really want to see this movie but I'm not sure if I'll have any more answers when I have.
Tut-tut -- I can identify with the climate you described because I grew up in a similar one. At the time I was in school, the schools were just beginning to embrace integration (3 African Americans in my graduating class of 500). We had virtually no recent immigrant population.
Steve -- The approach in the PW high school is partly to appease relatives like yours who want nothing to do with the immigrants, lest they hold their own children back.
Kristin -- See the movie!
Germany has become an immigration country, too, and in the big cities like Berlin and Hamburg we face the same problems, mostly with Turks and Arabs. At home they speak Turkish and Arabian, live their Muslim life, and at school they don`t want to listen to female teachers or the girls aren`t allowed to take swimming lessons. It IS a difficult situation, and what Kellyann said is very true. What if you refuse to assimilate (which would be the easiest and most obvious way, considering your family MOVED to this country)? What Germany decided now was that every child (and preferably their mothers) must at least take a German course! If they don`t understand the language, how can they even TRY to get along? And so there is no segregation,at least not planned, but when there are only two German kids in class, and twelve different nations represented, each one speaking poor German and defending a violent attitude towards their peers, then many German parents send their own kids to private schools. Not a good solution, either. Our grandson is in a kindergarten with many different nationalities (one nanny is Polish and one Turkish, both speaking excellent German), and he profits very much from this. His best friends are a Turkish and an American Indian boy. Oh, am I rambling? Great subject!
Angela -- Maybe we in the US need to take some lessons from Germany. But it's not an easy job in any country to provide an education appropriate to every student. It is indeed a challenge.
It sounds like a really interesting film. The lot of immigrants everywhere just cannot be an easy one.. thanks for the thought provoking topic..
This may be ignorant and/or unsympathetic, but it seems to me that if people choose to move to a particular country they should be grateful for the opportunity to learn the new language of the country they've worked so hard to become a part of. If they came looking for a better or easier way of life, learning the language is the first step in that process. There are valuable lessons that can be learned from the experiences of the early immigrants to this country. They faced many of the same prejudices.
I think institutional segregation is wrong and if people think it is worthwhile to keep their children segregated from other cultures they should just send them to private schools. It's a free country, right?
What I just wrote sounds awfully snarky and judgemental. But it is a complicated issue that I suspect is made even more complicated by the selfish attitudes of various cultures, including my own.
Hi barbara!
what a thought provoking topic. i err on the side of the immigrants and their plight. i've been involved with two separate classes that were comprised of immigrant populations.
my first experience was as a tutor and self-volunteered 'room mom' for two classes at a lower income middle school. these classes actually served to 'teach' the children english so that they could be placed in ESL classes the next year. I had to give props to the school district for AT THE VERY LEAST paying teachers to teach these classes.
The 'No Child Left Behind Act' legislation requires that ALL students be mainstreamed eventually; treated the same; be given equal academic instruction; and take those same DARN tests.
I think it is an act of mercy to prepare altered tests to help these students be successful - taste success. Does it happen? No. And more's the pity. Because these poor kids often have no choice about crossing the border. Or they have been separated from their family of origins for a year, even years before making it to the US.
My second experience was observing an ESL class in my Language Arts department this past fall. I was disturbed at the level of work given to the students. The teacher did have to group the students according to ability and that put extra stress on her. She is the ONLY ESL teacher in the department which has 24 teachers.
AND she is responsible for making sure these students pass those tests - in a very high standard academic community.
Our local school district is phasing in a mandatory ESL certification for all teachers in its employ. Hopefully, we'll see more students placed based upon their academic abilities rather than on their ethnicity in the future.
xxx
rdm
ps. I found, after living in Guatemala for four years, that assimilation was best for me. My children went to an 'American School' that was dominated by the children of wealthy Guatemalan families. So the segregation there was economic. All classes were taught in both Spanish and English.
I myself went to school to learn how to speak Spanish. Later I hired a private tutor who helped me move forward in reading and writing Spanish. From her I learned much about the local history and culture.
The more confident I became in my language and knowledge base, the more freely I moved about in the Guatemalan culture and the more accepted I was - even in the English speaking circles. It revealed a level of respect on my part for their country and culture.
Did I lose myself, my own beliefs, my own culture, history etc. ?? No. And having been the only 'gringa' (yes, that is what i was named) in my ex husband's family for 20 years, keeping my 'American' identity was something I fiercely believed in - especially in the face of the double standard that exists between males and females of his culture.
Now I am having to work twice as hard to teach the same independence of thought to my daughter. I have to teach her to respect her father's culture but not be subjected to it. A tricky balance to be certain.
I am a FIRM believer in the power of education. Without it, immigrants have absolutely little to no chance at pursuing a better way of life in their countries or here, in America!
xxx
rdm
Karen -- Education is just one of many challenges facing immigrants. For many of them, the fear of deportation looms much larger than any aspect of education.
Cyndy -- I'm not even sure what most immigrants would choose if the choice were left up for them as to whether to be taught in an ESL environment or whether to be dumped in with everyone else. The Prince William school has made that decision for them, probably hoping to appease the rabble-rousers who don't want them there in the first place.
RDM -- You have such insight on this issue! You obviously went about learning Spanish the right way, but you also had the means to hire a tutor when you needed one and you were probably not having to work 2 jobs just to survive financially while in Guatemala.
I absolutely agree that everyone's life would be a lot better if these newcomers could quickly master English. But their lives are so difficult for quite a few years after they arrive here, and language skills often take a backseat to survival.
I agree with you that additional ESL certification will go a long way toward helping with the education of these newcomers.
In response:
While yes, I did have the means and luxury to hire a personal tutor, the best and most lasting way I learned the language was by immersion. Short of parallel language learning mastered in early childhood, practicing my fumbling Spanish with locals (with amusing results) resulted me in a much more fluent and permanent speaking ability.
Just look at our foreign language education in secondary schools: rarely does it leave a lasting mastery of a second language with its students.
Case in point: I studied french for two years in high school and two years in college. To date, not having heard nor needed to use my french, I have forgotten all but the most common phrases.
However, 8 years living here, stateside, after Guatemala, and I can still speak with understanding; hear with the ability to translate rapidly. My reading skills have lessened. My writing skills? almost non-existent without aid of a dictionary.
So I believe that immersing themselves in our local culture / language (rather than create enclaves of native speaking only groups) is the most beneficial way to master English to those who are not able to take advantage of our public educational system. It is a form of 'self-education' and not 'above' the tough experiences of making a life here. Best of all: immersion is free. Not discrimination free, but easily accessed.
The actual study of Spanish afforded me the ability to read, write and conjugate verbs, acquire vocabulary. Immersion and study work hand in hand. But if I had to choose one over the other, immersion wins every time.
xxx
rdm
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Barbara,
I just happened upon this post while looking at your blog today. Great one! I'm sending my students over to read it. I've been teaching a class entitled Social Justice in Popular Culture Films. One of the films was Bread and Roses, which portrays the experience of many immigrants (legal and otherwise) from Mexico and Latin America. Another film was Le Placard, a light French comedy I used to prompt a discussion of gay rights.
I hadn't heard of this film you mention - I'll be checking it out shortly. Thanks.
You're warmly welcomed to check out my teaching blog - it lists the films and has a lot of other material you might enjoy.
FF -- I will have to check out the film you mentioned. Your Blog looks quite informative. I'm glad you stopped by. Come back again!
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