Subtractive Schooling: U.S. - Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring

Front Cover
SUNY Press, Oct 21, 1999 - Education - 328 pages
Subtractive Schooling provides a framework for understanding the patterns of immigrant achievement and U.S.-born underachievement frequently noted in the literature and observed by the author in her ethnographic account of regular-track youth attending a comprehensive, virtually all-Mexican, inner-city high school in Houston. Valenzuela argues that schools subtract resources from youth in two major ways: firstly by dismissing their definition of education and secondly, through assimilationist policies and practices that minimize their culture and language. A key consequence is the erosion of students social capital evident in the absence of academically oriented networks among acculturated, U.S.-born youth.
 

Contents

Introduction
3
The Study
6
Mexican Immigrant and Mexican American Achievement
10
The Subtractive Elements of Caring and Cultural Assimilation
20
Unmasking Barriers to Progress
30
Seguin High School in Historical Perspective Mexican Americans Struggle for Equal Educational Opportunity in Houston
33
The Early Years
34
Changing Demographics and the Mexicanization of the East End and Seguin High
36
The Experience of Schooling for Mexican Immigrant Youth
118
Immigrant Youth and the Question of Empeno
140
CrossGenerational Gender and Social Capital
143
Social Capital amount USBorn Youth
152
Conclusion
158
Subtractive Schooling and Divisions among Youth
161
Relationships and the Politics of Difference
163
Subtractive Schooling
172

Ross v Eckels and the Struggle for Just Integration
44
The Seguin School Walkout
50
Conclusion
58
TeacherStudent Relations and the Politics of Caring
61
Teacher Caring
63
The Uncaring Student Prototype
75
Americanized Immigrant Youth
84
Not Caring as Student Resistance
94
Caring and Pedagogy
99
When Teachers Do Not Initiate Relation
104
Contributions and Limitations of the Caring and Education Literature
108
Love is One Taquito Away
111
Everyday Experiences in the Lives of Immigrant and USBorn Youth
115
Divisions among Youth
181
Conclusion
224
Unity in Resistance to Schooling
227
Mutiny in Mr Chilcoates Classroom
230
Cinco de Mayo 1993
238
The Talent Show
246
Conclusion
255
Some Final Thoughts
269
Research Methodology
273
Notes
291
References
307
Index
321
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (1999)

Angela Valenzuela is Professor in Curriculum and Instruction and Center for Mexican American Studies at the University of Texas, Austin.

Bibliographic information