Pat Welsh shines a bright light on education and immigrant families

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This past Sunday, one of my former high school English teachers published an Op-Ed in the Washington Post discussing the disparity between the black kids in his class. Specifically, the comparison was made between those whose families had long American geneologies and those who were the children of African immigrants (or were immigrants themselves). His conclusion was such that kids who were the product of immigrating parents tended to work much harder than their “all-American” counterparts, partly because the children of immigrants often times tend to feel more of the burden of providing their family with a sense of success and achievement.

As the sole child of two Ethiopian immigrants I couldn’t agree more with this notion, but I don’t think it ends there. The reason Mr. Welsh sees the discrepancy in performance between his students is mainly because immigrants (and I only have the right to speak for African immigrants) make their children understand that education is worth great sacrifice. They selflessly left their homelands and the promise of living a life of familiarity for the sake of providing their children with a basic opportunity. Having their children educated in America meant the world to them, and it was worth all the hardship and condescension typically relegated by nativist assholes.

When my parents arrived in this country, they basically came with nothing more than their brothers and sisters and the shirts they had on their backs. Several of my cousins were of schooling age, and had to go through the awkward process of trying to assimilate with others at a school completely unknown to them, while us younger ones started from scratch in nearby pre-school programs. My parents, along with my aunts and uncles, worked menial jobs to provide a basic level of modest income for the family. No matter how destitute our condition, or how difficult things may have seemed, the one constant mantra reiterated to us as children over and over again was that things would get better if we did well in school, and we all took that to heart. We may have been kids, but we weren’t stupid; we knew that the way we lived was hard and that it was no way to live forever, so we got our shit together and busted our asses working on the only way out we knew.

Contrary to the bullshit school systems feed to parents and students, nobody in my family was considered “talented and gifted” or worthy of any sort of advanced placement.

We were simply the products of a system that, to this day, I feel is fool-proof. The first step in this system is to practically eliminate television, when I was in elementary school I probably watched about 2 hours worth a week. This minimized the role of unknown influences and forced me to spend my time playing with others (in real life) outside, or at home with my family. My parents made it a point to know who all my friends were, just so they could be assured I wasn’t falling in with the wrong crowd. As far as schoolwork, my parents/aunts/uncles basically felt there was a definitive right and wrong way to be a student. The right way was to pay attention in class and do your homework the second you got home, because you weren’t leaving your room until it was done and without flaw. The wrong way was pretty much any way that deviated from the right one, and would result in harsh and severe punishment 100% of the time. You weren’t going to do well in school because you went to day-camp in the summers or got some expensive tutor to help you with math, if you wanted to be smart all you had to do was not cut any corners.

As an adult, I see proof of that such a system works. Despite having aunts and uncles who, at best, have an 8th grade education, every single one of my 10 cousins is a college graduate. Some have graduate degrees all the way up to the doctoral level, and many of us are either engineers or pharmacists by training. Aside from us, there are countless other examples of children of immigrants who have gone on to be exemplary American citizens (see right).

While I feel Mr. Welsh’s observations and conclusions are spot on, it isn’t like immigrant families have some sort of magic formula for getting their kids to give a shit about school. What seems to separate children of immigrants from the others isn’t just a stern effort on the part of the parents coupled with a genuine concern for a child’s education, it’s the fact that immigrant parents tend to reinforce the importance of education by the developing good study habits that will last their kids the rest of their lives. And while I wouldn’t trade my life experiences growing up for any other, I certainly believe that it’s possible for any family to value education regardless of socioeconomic status and regardless of where they come from.

[WAPO link]

udothedishes…