Latino children's strong social skills erode with schooling
New America Media, Question & Answer, Vivian Po
May 27, 2010
The American Psychological Association recently published a special
section highlighting research on Latino children and educational
performance in the journal Developmental Psychology. It found that
Latino children, despite growing up in poverty, started kindergarten
with strong social and classroom skills. These skills make children
better learners. However, those good qualities tended to erode during
their middle school years. Bruce Fuller, professor of Education and
Public Policy at UC Berkeley, who co-edited the section, shared the
findings with New America Media. Fuller said steps can be taken to
prevent the loss of social skills, particularly through culturally
sensitive teachers and strong parental advocacy.
What is the most important aspect of your findings?
It defeats the myth that poor parents raise poorly-prepared kids for
schools. We discovered Latino children began school with lots of
enthusiasm and social agility inside the classrooms, even though some of
them showed weaker cognitive and language skills. Enthusiasm helps
children learn at a rapid rate. In fact, social skills contribute to
cognitive learning. Lots of Latino kids accelerate in mathematics even
in kindergarten learning.
What accounts for Latino kid's strong social skills?
In general, Latino kids grow up in very warm and supportive
households. The vast majority of Latino homes, especially immigrant
households, is headed by two parents and there are often grandparents
around [who] help raise young children. Kids are taught to respect other
family members and there is a very strong sense of cooperation to
advance the interest of the family, which gives young kids strong
cooperative skills in terms of how they play with siblings and how they
contribute to housework. These are all useful social skills that
translate to doing well in classrooms and being able to work with fellow
kindergarteners.
What causes these good qualities in Latino children to erode?
It seems to be a combination of negative peer pressure and teachers
who have low expectations on kids of color. For those Latino families
who cannot afford to leave poor neighborhoods, there are negative peer
influences as soon as middle school, such as young gangs emerging and
friends whose parents do not value education. Secondly, in some poor
neighbors, we often have a concentration of uninspiring teachers or
teachers who think brown kids are not going to college anyways, so they
do not have high expectations on their performance in the classroom.
How can we prevent it from happening?
I think the heated debates over school reform are important because
we need to get inspiring teachers into the poorest communities. It will
have direct impacts on whether Latino kids continue to be engaged in
schools. Under the seniority rules, the most experienced teachers often
go to whiter suburban schools. Moreover, we need teachers that are
culturally sensitive to Latino children and their families. You still
hear teachers saying, “Maria is so quiet, I don’t know what she is
thinking”, or “Jose never speaks up and never asks questions.”
These might be cultural norms that kids are learning in homes, and
they do not necessarily fit in middle-class classrooms. Teachers need to
be more knowledgeable in these cultural variations as they form
relationships with these kids in the classrooms. From a policy
standpoint, we need to recruit more bilingual teachers and sustain
teachers that have cross-cultural interests and sensitivity.
Also, Latino parents need to become strong advocates for their own
kids. In Mexico and other countries, parents see teachers as wise and
all knowing professionals. When they come to the U.S., they do not
really stand up or challenge teachers who are deadheads or uninspiring.
It is important for parents to become much stronger advocates for their
youngsters. We need to enrich the teaching force, as well as organizing
our parents to be more vocal.
Does income level make a difference in children's classroom
skills?
The Latino community is a widely diverse community in the United
States, just like Asian Americans or others. Overall, Latino children
start school with social skills comparable to white middle-class kids,
but we also find Latino kids coming from very poor households. Those
[living] below the poverty line show weaker social skills and language
development. So, at the bottom end of the Latino community in terms of
family income, we find that income and social class pull down social
skills and the cognitive development of their kids. For example, kids
from Puerto Rican heritage households tend to show more development
risks that are quite similar to African American kids. It may be because
more Puerto Rican kids are raised in single parent households or raised
by mothers with lower education level, but we do see certain Latino
subgroups resemble very poor black households.
Should there be more resources channeled to middle school to
prevent those losses?
We have to figure out how middle school years can be more motivating
for kids of color. Some research shows that those years are when kids
look around the American society and see whites getting ahead but not
kids of color. They start to make judgments about whether the society is
being fair to kids that look like them. I think we have to provide
middle school youth with positive role models to make them feel that
they can get ahead.
There are studies that found kids from South American countries tend
to do better in school than kids with a Puerto Rican background. I
suspect that has something to do with the Puerto Rican experience in
America. Lots of Puerto Rican families are trapped in poverty generation
after generation, while other subgroups like South Americans, even lots
of Mexican heritage kids, see their uncles getting ahead or aunts
becoming school teachers, which translated to them as “if I stay engaged
in school, I also can get ahead.”
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