Education: Challenges & Perspectives – General Session II

Hiroko Karan:

Good morning. Welcome to General Session II of the Asian American Education Conference. My name is Hiroko Karan, and I am Professor of Chemistry and Dean of the School of Science and Technology at Medgar Evers College, CUNY. Today we have distinguished speakers and panelists.  Each speaker will speak for about 20 minutes I believe, and each panelist will address ten minutes. We have two lights here: yellow is a warning, and red means pretty much time is up.

On that note, first, I would to introduce today’s speaker, Ms. Virginia Kee. Ms. Virginia Kee has been a New York City junior high school teacher for over three decades, and she is a respected leader of the Chinese American community. She is the founder, co-chair and honorary board member of the Chinese American Planning Council, the largest and most comprehensive non-profit organization serving needy and poor Asian Americans in New York City.

Ms. Kee has served on many important commissions. After the Abner Louima incident, she was appointed to the Taskforce on Police and Community Relations.  She has served on the New York City Council on Daycare Funding, and the New York City Human Rights Commission. An advocate for children and education, she was instrumental in bringing the first [inaudible] Program to Chinatown in 1965. She has received numerous awards for outstanding community services, including proclamation from the City Council of New York for lifetime outstanding service and accomplishment. She has been elected into her alma mater, Hunter College Hall of Fame, and she has been recognized by the National Conference of Christians and Jews as one of the 50 Extraordinary Women in building understanding among people of different ethnic backgrounds. Without further a due, Ms. Kee.

Virginia Kee:

Thank you so much, it is just wonderful to be here. Thank you, Dr. Tam. What have we learned? Before the war in Iraq, education made it to the front pages of the news. Much of the news had been the changes in New York City’s system of education, the Department of Education replaced the board of education, the Chancellor’s new plan of turning the school districts down to ten regional zones. The struggles of the past, the tremendous battle in the 60’s for control of the suits, these [central relations], the funding report, and all the studies of the past, end at the doors of City Hall. The buck stops there.

What have we learned? What we know is that learning should take place in the classroom, or what are students for? All we know is that the home and schools are intricately joined. Parents and teachers are crucial, the code which finds them adjoined by that kid sitting in front of me. What we know is that the community is within the school; there is no space which separates us from the outside.  What is outside in the streets and beyond are within the lives of your students.

Do not underestimate yourselves, or your powers as a [teacher] inside of the classroom. To turn a kid around, to make change, the power of a kind word, a reassuring pat on the back, the power of a disciplinary action which teaches an important life lesson. When we take on the role of teacher, of someone who cares, we make an impact on the minds of our students. You may or may not see the results immediately of your work; I assure you it is there.

Let me share with you some of my own personal history. I’ve been a teacher in junior high school for about 34 years. It was not my first job, so in some ways I was not the typical young graduate who went straight into teaching. After high school my parents could not afford to send me to college. I worked full time at an importing office, nine to five. At night, I went to Hunter College, six to ten. Eight years later, having earned a BA in Philosophy and English, I decided to venture into teaching. I thought of it as a [lofty] profession, similar to medicine. I continued and eight years became twelve years. I got a masters in secondary education.

When I started teaching at Woodside Junior High School, it was a time of the Kennedy years, the Martin Luther King years. It was also the years that the Board of Education announced its open enrollment. It told an all-white school to open its doors to Afro American students from Long Island City, Corona, St. Albans. As a new teacher I was given a challenging program, two gifted classes, one white, one black; an average class of 40 students. A slow class, and an adjustment class similar to a special ed class, and also the GO. What is a GO? A student council.

I stumbled through the first few weeks without textbooks, because the school did not provide me with any. The administrator told me, “if you are a good teacher, use the world around you, you don’t need textbooks.” Well, the parents come to batter for me. And in a few weeks, textbook, new textbooks, were found, and students were given the textbooks.

By the end of my first year of teaching, we were able to elect [name inaudible], the first Afro-American president of the student council at Junior High School 125. Years later, he became a Director of a YMCA in Queens. On that occasion I was able to meet other students from those years from Woodside Junior High School.  [One Stephanie] became an attorney; Pearle Tam, a physician. After three years in Queens, I was signed as a teacher to a special service school in Manhattan, Junior High School 65 on Forsyth Street, a school which I attended as a student. I recalled those foggy early junior high school years, when there was total chaos in the classrooms and I was the quiet, lonely, and only Chinese girl in class.

In 1965 I came back as a teacher, seeing my first class of immigrant Chinese youngsters. I was shocked to find that they were loud, they were very tough. I think I expected them to be like me—quiet, diligent, respectful of my teachers. Of course not. It was the time of White Eagles, Black Eagles, Flying Dragons, and practically all my students were [inaudible] kids, all with their own problems. Of course, as an eighth grade social studies teacher, I was supposed to teach American history.

As teachers we must first face the need of our students. For them, the whole world has changed. I felt it encouraging to teach them survival skills. My teaching strategy included not only basic English, the neighborhood, the subway system, but also strategies for survival. Yes, I taught them how to walk down the streets of New York City on the lower east side—head high, shoulders back, with peripheral vision, aware of your surroundings, sensing danger; and when you see a threatening group change your direction, you take a safe route.

I taught my students to get to know their Puerto Rican neighbors, to come out of the ghettos of their homes and to relate to their neighbors, to get to know the local merchants, to establish safety areas and landing zones incase they were being followed. I even taught them to have their keys ready, to check their back before entering the tenements. After William’s mother died waiting for an ambulance, I said to myself, “Oh my God, my students don’t know what to say when they called 911.” We tell them to call 911. So, they still don’t know what to say.

I discovered this for myself when making an emergency call for an old man who had collapsed on a Chinatown street. After calling and waiting 20 plus minutes, I called again. “Officer, I called 20 minutes ago, no one came”.

“ What seems to be the problem?”

“ I don’t know, this could be a heart attack!”

“Well, why didn’t you say so?”

Two minutes later, a police car came. I studied the covert words, and taught them to my students. In case of emergency, call 911, practice this, “ Heart attack”. “Asthma.” That works too, asthma. Robbery, no.

As teachers, we need to provide our students with the ego strength to face the challenges of adjusting to a new country, a strange city, and a different culture. Sometimes we are so focused on what we must accomplish in a 40-minute period, so much so that we ignore the emotional factors in learning.

I was listening to a teacher who complained about having her class interrupted. She said she really gets upset when in the midst of a lesson a new student is brought into her class. It throws her whole lesson plan off schedule. I said, “Imagine yourself, a new immigrant, coming to a new school, facing, serving new faces in a new class. Scared and upset. Wouldn’t it be helpful if you welcomed the newcomer with a smile? Introduce him or her to the class. Ask a specific friendly student in class to help this newcomer find his way around the school. Wouldn’t it make a difference for this student?” Yes it would.

In order for young people to learn they must feel that  they are capable of succeeding. If our students perceive that we think they are failures, this will be a self-fulfilling prophecy. We must be encouraging, even as they make mistakes. In education, we learn from our mistakes. I call parents. I keep in close contact with parents and families. They are the support system to help the young people. In the course of teaching American history, I included these strategies for succeeding in school, how to study, how to take notes in class, how to take notes when given a reading assignment, how to outline main ideas, supporting data. These are study tools which we know, and students must learn.

How to figure out what teachers are going to test you on? After years of studying I learned the strategy of pre-testing myself. As a student I was able to write 80% of the questions of the exam. I taught my students this excellent method of review. Figure out what will be the essay questions. Formulate the questions and see if you can answer them correctly under test conditions at home. As a teacher, I would call for a notebook check. The first notebook check is announced. My students understood that I check their notebooks at a moment’s notice, any time. Good study habits are the basis of a good foundation for making academic challenge.

No teaching and learning is achieved unless we as teachers are competent in classroom management. The class discipline. Much of this has to do with the rapport; teamwork amongst the students and with the students. Yet there must be firmness and consistency. I observed my students carefully while they are in the lunch room, in the hallways, and even when I see them on the streets, who they are with, and what they are doing. If I see potential trouble with another student or another ethnic group, I quickly work to resolve this conflict.

Immigrant students are often isolated within the school. In the past, my Cuban Chinese students were very helpful to be able to bridge to other ethnic groups for the Asian American students. I strategize on how to bond with my students. I noticed relationships in class. Who are the class leaders? Also, how I relate to the leaders? It is helpful when class leadership develops rapport with the teacher. I mentored [MeiMei] who was charismatic, intelligent, and charming. She was the most popular amongst her peers. She brought to me support from some very rebellious teenagers and very disruptive boys. These young people and I became very close.

As teachers we are challenged to be able to control a classroom of individuals, all of whom have their own meanings and difficulties. I also felt I had to build their confidence within themselves, a sense of belonging, so my classroom resounded with certain slogans and certain themes. “I was not born from one corner; the whole world is my native land.”

I pushed the idea of deferred gratification. What does that mean? To defer gratification means you are willing to put off fun, good times, hanging out, in order to achieve your goals. I can do it. I urge my students to convince themselves that they can succeed. I always encourage my students to do more for others. I would say to them, “You may be intelligent, you may get good grades, but what good is it if you, as a person, will not help another person?” I think it important to teach our students to care about people, to respect each other. I always try to build a team spirit in the classroom, so all of them together can move ahead.

Today, many of my former students are leader. Perhaps it was the organizing activities my classes were involved in. We badgered Mayor Ed Koch and fought for a new school. We succeeded, and JHS 65 was replaced by the Dr. Sun Yet Sien IS 131. During construction, when our schools were housed in temporary facilities, we got the New York City Parks Department to open up their neighborhood gyms. We rallied for Kaity Tong when the station did not want to renew her contract. We marched against opening up a jail in Chinatown. All these protests and rallies taught us to take a stand, and in so doing all of us, students and teachers, became leaders.

Today, Jenny Lo, vice president at JP Morgan Chase, is a democratic district leader.  Angelica O Tang is the Regional Representative for the United States Secretary of Labor Elaine Chow. [Denny Chu], who was student president in junior high school now is with the Brooklyn DA’s office. And Joan Seto is the Executive Director of the Democratic Party in all of New York State.

As a teacher, I saw the need for the immigrant community in the faces of my students—if the families where unemployed, whether the parents were frail and sick. I saw the lack of resources in our Chinatown community. The problems of our community showed in the faces of my students—low menial wages, long working hours, unemployment, lack of parental presence.

My students changed me as much as I changed them. They asked more of me and made me more than I am. As a person, I became a community activist. With teenagers from my class in 1965, we gave rise to the first youth program in Chinatown. It was in a borrowed space above a bar, not in a bar. In the summer of 1967, we received federal funding from the War on Poverty. The Chinatown Planning Council, now known as the Chinese-American Planning Council, was launched.

Today, CPC is the largest and more important social service non-profit organization for Asian Americans in the United States. CPC is in three boroughs, Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn, providing services for all the needy and poor in the Asian American community. CPC provides daycare, early childhood education, youth services, adult education, job training, and economic development. CPC has built low-income housing for the elderly, Hong Ming and Chong Pak.

After 9/11, our Center has provided help for thousands of displaced workers. The young people I have mentored continue as activists. Josephine Ho, who was a youth worker in the 60’s, is now, today, a board member of CPC and chairs the Program Committee.

As a teacher in partnership with parents, working with young people, together we have built a stronger community. I change. My students change. Together, we change Chinatown. What did we learn from all the struggles? We have learned it was all worthwhile. Thank you.

Hiroko Karan:

Thank you, Ms. Kee, for a very important and very enlightening report. In the interest of time, I think I will move on to our next speaker, Ms. Incha Kim. Ms. Kim is the president of the Korean American Education Association. She holds a Master of Art in sociology from Queens College, and she is the recipient of numerous awards and recognitions, including a Women’s Leadership Award from Queens Women’s Center. Mrs. Kim.

Incha Kim:

Good morning, my name is Incha Kim. I am a [inaudible] English learner and I decided [inaudible] in America I [inaudible] speaking English. I am here because I understand what our children face at school without going [inaudible]. While I was serving as a community school board member of District 26, many [inaudible] leaders convinced me that many Asian students were achieving academic success. However, from what [inaudible] in a society. That’s why I focus on cutting school violence from District 26 and maybe extend on how we can prevent these problems.

District 26, we have 20 private and public schools with the population of 70,000 students. Among them, 49% are Asian, so maybe now over 50% are Asian students; 11% are Hispanic, 9% are black, 30% are Caucasian and the rest are others, American Indians. District 26 superintendent suspensions decreased from 22 cases in 1998-1999 to 18 cases in 1999-2000, and decreased to 13 students last year. The principal suspensions decreased from 380 students in 1998-99 to 279 in 1999-2000, and barely increased the next year to 296 students, and last year decreased to 166 students. From September last year to the end of April, superintendent suspend 12 students, among them three students are Asian. So three students is like 25%. Superintendent suspended 140 students, among them 46 students are Asian, so roughly 33% of Asian students are suspended.

Asian students who receive a superintendent suspension mostly engaged in [inaudible], fighting that caused injury, possession of weapons, or distributing drugs. Students who received principal suspension also most of them engage in fighting, damaging school property, and [inaudible] requiring the authority of school personnel, carrying weapons like toy gun, or [verbal and physical] [inaudible]. So sometimes are due to cultural differences. Some children were suspended because they brought pencil knives, pencil sharpeners.   A couple of year ago it happened in kindergarten when one Chinese kindergartener or Korean kindergartener because they brought pencil sharpeners. So luckily, District 26 has very few cases of [inaudible] or sexual harassment, or instances involving physical violence.

However, many studies have shown that violence is increasing. A quarter of the violent crimes are committed by those younger than 18 years of age. In 1991, the Department of Justice issued the research of a six-month study conducted in [1988-1999], showing that two percent of students during the ages of 12-19 years old were victims of a violent crime. So we hear all kinds of school violence, and there are so many [different stories]. The studies found that public school students were more likely to be victims than students in private schools, that we know. And 9th grade students were victimized more than students of higher grades.

Another statistics show that 40% of [our nation’s] 8th graders have been threatened with violence. Almost one in five has been injured in school. In New York City a couple ago, a 19-year-old female student was struck in the head with a bottle of soda. Also, a 17-year-old boy tried to rape a 15-year-old girl in a classroom after school.

All of us hope that we will never been a victim. Violence is universal. It is not based on race or religion. It is fostered by our environment. As long as [inaudible] there will be people who are jealous, hate, greedy, conceited, and resentful. People here are [inaudible] to injury each other, hurting each other emotionally or physically. Our children have the same problems. School environment is the same. Violence [inaudible] students academic [inaudible]. Parents, teachers, students all face school violence.

We have to be aware that our children are living in a dangerous environment, where they can obtain alcohol, drugs, sometimes a weapon. It is easy to get these things. I have many 6th and 7th graders. They are not afraid to sell drugs, because they make big money, and they are tempting for them. For those children, it is a good way to be protected by gang brothers and to get a feeling of belonging. [inaudible] sometimes exciting for them.

Then, how can we stop this kind of violence? We really have to protect our children from those problems. First of all, parents should learn how to be better parents. Many of the problems begin at home. I believe parent training should be mandatory. We need to teach parents how to discipline their children and how to provide their developmental needs. This is especially true for immigrant parents who have so much stress due to their significant life change. However, our children have more difficulties, making new enemies, making new friends, adjusting to new customs. We have to help in their adjusting process.

Secondly, school should provide a safe and sound environment, and a strong leadership of administrators and staff members that will discipline students. Teachers should have high expectation for every child and encourage active involvement among the [parents]. This would create a good learning environment. The [inaudible] detectors and police protection can also keep our children from danger. So many high school students try to hide weapons, knives, etc. to school.

Another critical factor is the quality of education. High achieving students are less likely to use drugs, join gangs, or commit violent acts. Sometimes it’s natural that… like the chancellor told that you can never underestimate a high achieving students. Students have to learn academic, [physical] and emotional factors including peaceful social relationships with their teachers and peer groups, and how to control or manage conflict and anger.

Students, then, have to establish positive identity so they can accept personal differences and have [non-hostile students in] our peer groups. Through extracurricular activities, multicultural education and peer mediation, students can have opportunities to establish mutual relationship. Okay, so I have to stop because. Thank you.

Hiroko Karan:

Thank you. Violence in the city is one thing; violence in the school is something [significant].  I think it also has to do with the Asian [inaudible] violence involving children in school. Hopefully we have some time for you to ask questions.  But if not, hopefully all the speakers will stay at lunchtime and you can approach them for questions.

Next speaker is Professor Gary Okihiro.  He is Professor of International and Public Affairs and the Director of the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race at Columbia University. He has authored several books on U.S. and African history; most recently the Columbia Guide to Asian American History, and Common Ground: Re-imagining American History. He is a recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Studies Association, and is the past president of the Association for Asian American Studies. Professor Okihiro…

Gary Okihiro:

Thank you very much. Because I love the color of these lights, I’m going to speak as long as I can to watch them come on. I’m greatly honored to be here with you today. I was asked to comment on Virginia Kee’s address, a very fine address. Because I just heard it now, I was much relieved to learn that many of the themes that she touched on, I was thinking of touching on anyway. I love her final statement, “My students changed, I changed, together, we changed Chinatown”. That I think is the essence of Asian American studies, ethnic studies, and although she spoke about the K-12 years, I’d like to speak about the higher education part of Asian Americans in education.

She also spoke about the JFK and Martin Luther King years, civil rights movements, desegregation of schools, and the excitement of participating in a struggle to democratize America. Asian American studies, ethnic studies began also within that context of liberating the mind and body, of enlightening ourselves and our communities, of service to our field of study, but also to the people who we studied.

The excitement of those years prompted students on the West Coast principally, but also on the East Coast, to organize themselves to take charge of their education; to believe that they can learn as well as teach. So, they began a movement that swept across the country beginning in 1968 in San Francisco, at San Francisco State College. And it became a model for many other places of higher education.

The idea was that education needed to be relevant to their lives. Mrs. Kee spoke about that, about educating students, about their environment, about their surroundings, about survival, about dignity. That’s what Asian American ethnic studies was all about. It was about these students demanding that the university serve their needs, address their perspectives, serve the needs of their communities like Chinatowns, Manilatowns, Japantowns, and so forth, to educating ourselves and transforming higher education and thereby transforming society itself.

So it began as a critique of education and its exclusions because higher education excluded the perspectives of those people, those racialized minorities, and it included the perspectives of the dominant group, the majority. Those inclusions and exclusions, the students maintained, was not without purpose, without function—it served to boost the self-esteem of those in the majority culture and it served to depress the self-esteem of those that were in the minority cultures. So they sought to liberate higher education and thus began these various programs that swept the country.

Asian American studies began as a very small group of schools and institutions that maintained programs and centers, mainly on the West Coast. But it quickly spread across the United States mainly from coast to coast. Actually one of the pioneers here on the East Coast is Betty Lee Sung who is in our audience, who began the first Asian / Asian American studies program on the East Coast at City College. Gradually, it began to fill in into the interior of the United States, along with the southwest and now to the south in unlikely places like Georgia, Florida, and Texas.

In any case, I remember very early on the Association for Asian American Studies comprising of very, very few people. We had a membership of, I remember, 53 when Don Takanishi was president at the time and I was the secretary.  We sat down and said, “How are we going to build this association.” The Association has grown in leaps and bounds such that next week’s conference in San Francisco, over 800 people are expected to participate in that conference.

Books have exploded in term of intellectual production. The decade of 1960 doubled the production of books on Asian Americans since 1850. Nearly over 100 years of scholarly productions were doubled within one decade. Since then, every decade 1970, 1980, 1990, it has doubled. You could see the geometric explosion in terms of the field of study. So the field has prospered and it has gained great prominence. For example, one could hardly imagine that my institution, Columbia University, would have Asian American studies. But that was before Asian American students along with African American and Latino students sat in and demanded a Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race. In 1999 I was hired to direct that unit. So Columbia has that now.

Mrs. Kee spoke about pedagogies, and pedagogy was a very important component of Asian American studies because we sought to liberate not only our communities but also our classrooms. That meant various things. Not only should the subject matter change, but also the idea of the banking concept where students are seen as empty vessels and all we do is pour information into them, and they will gain from that experience.  We sought more an interactive, critical pedagogy, what [Paulo Freire] criticized as the banking concept.

Anyway, the idea then was to be interactive. I can remember, actually very peculiarly, going to the classroom and said to the students, “Look, I’m going to be relevant in this course of study, so why don’t we sit down together and construct our curriculum.” Well the students were really just nonplussed because they had no expectation of that. You’re the professor, you should know the subject matter; we’re the students, we’re here to learn, and so forth. After some struggle we managed to decipher some of the main points of interest. As you can expect, many of the students are interested in identity about their histories, about their communities and some of the needs and problems in their communities. The general introductory courses contain all of that—histories, identities, communities, social formations.

We also sought to connect the classroom with the outside communities. Mrs. Kee mentioned very importantly that the classroom comprises a community and we understand that. But we also want to connect their lives with the communities outside. And we do that in various ways by bringing community members into the classroom and by bringing the classroom out into the community. Those are variously manifested in research papers, in internships that students served, we want the relationship to be mutual and not exploitative on the part of students.

The field of Asian American studies in which I worked for the last three… centuries, no, three decades—just testing to see if you’re awake—three decades, provides opportunities for sure. It has given numerous people jobs. But with those opportunities come very deep and heavy responsibilities—the responsibilities to our students, to our communities, and to the field at large. It can provide one with the immense sense of satisfaction, and believing that one’s work helps to liberate students’ minds, to serve the needs of our communities, to democratize America by ensuring that Asian Americans, too, are included within higher education and society’s definition of who is an American.

This task is immense, as are the rewards. And it is reassuring to know that our future rests in the hands, in our very hands, in ourselves. We can shape that future and our present. So the challenge awaits all of us, now, and for our next generation. I won’t wait for the red light. Thank you very much.

Hiroko Karan:

Thank you, Professor Okihiro, for a very inspirational talk. We have some time to go over questions. Any question for all three speakers?

Audience Member:

Obviously, School District 26 violence is shocking, because that is supposed to be the number one ranking school district in the city. I didn’t get a sense of how serious, what percentages of students are in that category that you are so concerned about.

Incha Kim:

Well, we have our district over 70,000 students, among them 49% are Asians. Like, English language learners are 9% of our population, and [inaudible] 1,400 students, from them 9.5% are recent immigrants. So those children who just came to this country, they have lots of problems. [inaudible] from school and come home, then where can they go? Those children, you really have to take care and provide for them. Still it is the number one district.

Audience Member:

It seems to me that there is such a disparity between Asian signs of what is deemed to be honorable, and also western American ideals. For example in my teaching, the whole notion of participation in democracy is at the forefront and the cultivation of individuality, whereas in more Asian societies collectivity and also beginning stages where you’re just copying all the stuff, learning the language, and memorization. So I’m wondering if any of you could address these kinds of issues where you have such a disparity between the logos in an Asian culture and the social values of collectivity and then the western, which is very individual and this sort of negotiating in between extremes.

Virginia Kee:

Well, I don’t know about answering the question, but very often we see within our own families. I always have to interpret for the parents, because they would complain about what their kids look like—the hair cut, the baggy jeans, the this, the that. And I say that we’d always have to interpret what is happening in our culture to the parents, so that parents would not nag the children about insignificant, like the hairstyle, but concentrate on what is so important, the motivated student getting through school, who wants also to look like the other students.

So sometimes, our role as teacher meant that we are the facilitator with the student and also understanding the students… always said that the fathers may not love them. The first things they do after work is complain, “Well what did you eat, why didn’t you eat this, and why didn’t you eat that,” and then they would sit down and read their newspapers. I would have to interpret for the students, “Do you know that your father works as a waiter? Do you know what that means every day? The customers complain, the cooks complain. Your father loves you, if he says what did you eat, that shows that he cares.” So I think we have to bridge the different cultures.

Hiroko Karan:

One more question, maybe two more questions.

Audience Member:

Virginia talked about bringing students out of the classroom and into the community in community activist projects, and Gary talked about sending them up to do research and also bringing people into the classroom. Whether that kind of connection of the classroom and the community is something allowed, prohibited, discouraged, or encouraged by the institution, in one case the former Board of Education and the university?

Virginia Kee:

Gary, did you want to start… I always did that. I always took my students out, and at that time if we had permission slips the days that I was teaching from the 60’s to the 90’s, we were allowed to take students out. I remember that when I was first teaching, my principal said to me, “How could you do this Mrs. Kee? There are gangs out there.” “Well, Mr. [Fein], I am not going to lock my students in the classroom forever, we’re going out.” He couldn’t stop me, so we went out.

I think it was important for them to see that their action, fighting against the jail, building a new school, and whatever it was, we achieved it. They saw success in that, and they’re very early aged, most of them 8th graders, they were willing to take a stand. And I think it would be a shame if we never took a stand from now until middle age, then we are certainly not going to take a stand. So they have to start very young.

Gary Okihiro:

In truth it is a vexed relationship. That is, the relationship between higher education and communities. Many institutions of higher learning, especially research institutions, feel quite divorced from the social realities around them, and that’s why we have the name Ivory Tower. These kinds of involvements are frequently discouraged within research institutions. While many practitioners in the field will refuse to have this a one-way relationship of a kind of paternalism, or an exploitative relationship whereby our students benefit from various community organizations and the research they conduct. So there is this question of ethics and the relations with those communities. It is a very difficult question, however many of us still maintain it as much as we can, and try to conduct ourselves in a way we deem to be proper and ethical.

Audience Member:

I want to know [inaudible]. And we are fighting against all kinds of violence. What kind of methods do you use to stop violence in the schools?

Incha Kim:

There are so many ways. So, first of all I mentioned parent education, [inaudible] in society and how to educate children. Most of the recently immigrant parents, they both work, so they cannot take care of children at home. [inaudible] education like church activities could help those children and provide a kind of [inaudible] society for those children. So many young kids they selling drugs and, particularly 7th graders, very dangerous.  And they are maybe, if we do not stop them, they continue to be like that and like 8th, 9th, high school. I know a few teenagers they are involved in gangs or crimes more than 10 years like that, which should [inaudible] different kinds of stuff.

Hiroko Karan:

Thank you very much, Mrs. Kee, Ms. Kim, and Mr. Okihiro for your excellent speeches.  Please give them a round of applause.

---

Copyright © Asian American / Asian Research Institute (AAARI), 2002.
All rights reserved. No part of this transcript may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means without explicit permission of the Asian American / Asian Research Institute.
Recording and transcription services provided by
Transcendent International, LLC.
www.tiTranslation.com