August 8, 2005
Valenzuela, Angela. Subtractive Schooling: U.S.-Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999.
This groundbreaking book reports the findings of Valenzuela’s three year ethnographic study of immigrant Mexican and Mexican-American students at Juan Seguín High School (a pseudonym) in Houston, Texas. According to Valenzuela, the much-studied achievement gap between first generation Mexican immigrants (who tend to have a pro-school attitude and perform well) and second or third generation immigrants (who typically have an antischool attitude and perform poorly) can be traced directly back to the schools themselves. Valenzuela argues that, “For the majority of Seguín High School’s regular (non college-bound) track, schooling is a subtractive process. It divests these youth of important social and cultural resources, leaving them progressively vulnerable to academic failure” (3).
Valenzuela’s work is deeply influenced by John Ogbu’s oppositional theory, in which he argues that students from non-voluntary immigrant communities (communities who arrived in the U.S. as a result of colonization or slavery) fail in school because they take an oppositional stance towards the dominant culture. However, Valenzuela adds her own spin to this theory, arguing that oppositionality originates in and is nurtured by schools themselves. Like Seguín High, she argues, many schools are overcrowded, bureaucratic institutions in which Mexican culture is shunned rather than embraced and where students’ cultural identities are systematically erased. Furthermore, Valenzuela points out that Mexican-Americans complicate Ogbu’s theory because they are located historically somewhere between the “voluntary” and “involuntary” immigrant categories.
Valenzuela combines a quantitative approach (questionnaires and an analysis of school district records) with a qualitative approach (interviews and observation). Her central observation is that there were two very different, culturally influenced concepts of “caring” at Seguín High:
1) The predominately non-Latino teachers and administrators wanted students to “care about” their education. This is an object-based, aesthetic concept of caring.
2) The predominantly Mexican and Mexican-American student body wanted to be “cared for” by their teachers. Students had a more holistic and personal concept of education, borrowed from Mexican culture. This form of caring/educating (or educación) is described by Valenzuela as authentic and relationship- rather than object-oriented.
Valenzuela concludes that this enormous gap in concepts of caring between teachers and students creates animosity between schools and students and leads to high drop-out rates and lower academic expectations. Many Mexican-American students adopt an antischool attitude because they feel that teachers “don’t care about” them while many teachers give up on students because they feel students don’t “care about” school. Writes Valenzuela, “Seguín students clearly state that the school does not sufficiently provide relations premised on authentic caring…Far from affirming their worth as culturally Mexican beings, Seguín subtracts these identifications. An unfortunate by-product of this subtraction is the compromising of students’ potential for healthy peer interactions across the generational divide that exists between immigrants and non-immigrants. Additionally compromised is students’ folk model of education embedded in the concept of educación. In other terms, students come to school with much less than who they are at the same time that the school expects them to shed their perennial ‘visitor’s’ status and assume a sense of ownership and belonging” (258).
Valenzuela proposes that improved communication between school and home, an increased number of Latino/a teachers, more personal and authentic interactions between teachers and students and an effort to educate teachers about the cultural history and values of the Mexican-American community could all help to dismantle “subtractive schooling” practices.
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This is the first analysis of Race/Education I’ve read/head (not that it’s written/spoken enough in mainstream media enough anyway…but I digress…)in a very long time that is impervious to my skeptic scrutiny. Valenzuela seems to have struck gold here. My personal experiences with Latin culture have shown it to one that truly does value the ‘personal’ belonging effect of community, especially with regard to heirarchy. It is completely understandible that this culture would expect the teachers to show more personal caring for the students. Valenzuela is absolutely correct. The predominant American culture values objects and status more than people. I’ve spoken with many “voluntary” immigrants that feel particularly alienated by this. I may need to track down this book for Valenzuela’s email. The reference to “involuntary” immigrants is a welcome relief to the “all minorities being “voluntary” immigrants” dogma perpetuated by common culture. If Valenzuela’s other writtings are as perceptively pragmatic….I may need to take a trip to the book store….