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L110 Reese, L., Balzano, S., Gallimore, R., & Goldenberg, C. (1995). The Concept of Educación: Latino family values and American schooling. International Journal of Educational Research, 23, 1, 57-81.
The parents in our longitudinal sample rely on a cultural schema of child development and management that is an adaptation of one brought from their native lands--a strategy described in earlier reports (Reese, et al., 1995; Goldenberg & Gallimore, 1995). The term that glosses this cultural model of child rearing is educación. For the parents, knowing right from wrong, respect for parents and others, and correct behavior, is the base upon which academic competence is built. When they talked of children's futures, of the pathways to adulthood, many repeatedly reference the metaphor of "el camino de la vida" (the path of life). We followed these reports up by showing about parents a picture of a forked road described as "el camino de la vida" and asked to state what the two paths might represent in their children's lives, where the child was now, at what age the child would reach the fork, and what the characteristics of the paths in life might be. In interviews completed prior to our contacts with the children, the paths formed by the fork were consistently labeled the "good path" and the "bad path." The good path is characterized by being a "persona de bien," one who respects others and is in turn respected by them. Staying in school, having a career, and in general making something of oneself in life are also part of the good path. In contrast, the bad path is seen as that of dropping out of school, falling in with bad influences, becoming involved in gangs and drugs, and in general making nothing of oneself. Parents tend to be clear about their aspirations or hopes for their children: they hope that their children will stay on the good path in life. In discussing their responsibilities with regard to the upbringing of their children, parents state that their most important task is to orient the child along the good path in life. Their aspirations are most often expressed, not in specific levels of education, for example university or high school level, but in more general terms. Parents hope that their children will do well ("superarse"), that they will become somebody ("ser alguien"), that they will be able to function well in life ("desenvolverse en la sociedad"), and that they will have a career ("agarrar una carrera"). The actions which they report taking, often in the moral realm, are motivated by these desires. These values correspond to what LeVine and White (1986) term an "agrarian model," as opposed to an "academic occupational model," of educational development.
However, our results suggest many of the values embedded in the agrarian model lead to actions that in fact support school achievement. As they come into contact with American institutions and adapt to ecocultural forces in the urban American niche. they are constructing cultural patterns that fuse elements of the agrarian and the academic occupational models. At the same time, parents are not leaving behind (at least not at this point in their stay in the U.S.) the values of the agrarian model. Most are proud to say that they are raising their children with the same values with which they were raised. Blending the old ways with new ones was most evident in our examination of family values, schooling, and children's academic performance. The emerging third way rests on a foundation of the traditional values of educación, which blends values and activities that foster academic success. In other words, despite their differences, U.S. schools and immigrant Latino families may have more in common regarding long-term children's academic achievement than either might realize. Rather than creating irreconcilable differences, their respective values provide opportunities for cooperation and collaboration--for the benefit of the children, the families and the teachers.
Since the 1960s, discontinuities between home and school cultures have been common explanations of the disproportionate underachievement of some groups in American schools. Although few deny that such discontinuities occur or question their potential impact, some issues continue to be debated. One criticism has been the presumption that individuals with a common ethnic identity or social address experience the same discontinuity in the same way, when, in fact, within-group variability may be quite common. A second critique suggests one source of within-group variations may be parents' and children's need, willingness, and ability to adjust to new circumstances. At least some adaptive changes, perhaps taken for non-academic reasons, may diminish or enhance home-school discontinuities. In either case, the possibility of changes in home-school discontinuities would be expectable and could have implications for educational policy and programming. To examine these issues, this paper employs data from a 12-year longitudinal study of immigrant Latino families and their children. Previous work with this sample suggested the hypothesis that parents' use of textual material with their children at home was guided by widely shared, implicit notions&emdash;cultural schema or models--about how and under what conditions literacy develops (Reese, Goldenberg, Loucky & Gallimore 1995). This paper reports a follow-up study of the cultural model hypothesis and has two general aims: (1) to describe immigrant Latinos' cultural model of literacy, its origin, and changes in the model associated with immigration and experiences with U. S. schools; and (2) to present a more nuanced perspective on home-school discontinuities that allows for within-group variation and dynamic change across time. Evidence is presented that suggests the immigrant Latino parents in our samples share a common view of literacy development that affects their structuring of everyday activities for children. Influenced by shared experiences in their native societies, the parents conceive of reading as something that is learned, through repeated practice, after a child begins school or formal instruction. This model is stable and enduring, and over the 10+ years of contact with parents it was a predictable, ubiquitous refrain expressed in many interviews and conversations. The origin of this cultural model appears to be a common heritage, namely the experience of the grandparent generation most of whom were born and reared in small rural ranchos, in which little formal schooling, grinding poverty, and few occupational opportunities outside of agriculture were the norm. Like other cultural schema, the literacy development model, rooted in the past and brought by these immigrants to the host country, is a continuous source of meaning and guidance.
Despite an enduring, shared model of early literacy development which we heard expressed so often, variability and nuance were also evident. Though manifestly proud of their cultural heritage, parents did not seem to regard it as a static system, but rather as one flexible enough to not only survive but adapt to novel circumstances. The beliefs and practices encoded in the parents' literacy development model had begun to change both before they left their natal societies and after they arrived in the U.S. In this view, families are powerful agents of adaptation, not merely transmitters of a uniform, homogenous cultural pattern. One of tools of their agency is stable yet flexible cultural models.
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