Education: Challenges & Perspectives – Workshop 4B: Cultural Determinants of Asian Immigrant Community

Parmatma Saran:

I just wanted to introduce myself. I am Parmatma Saran. I am professor of sociology at Baruch College. I am chair of this panel. Each presenter has about seven to eight minutes for their presentation. That will be followed by a couple of minutes of discussion, only a couple minutes of discussion. Then at the end, depending on how much time we have, we will have for discussion. What happens [inaudible] discussion and presentation depends on and sometimes we forget about the speakers. Some people [inaudible] allows ten minutes of discussion after each presentation. I am going to invite Mr. Krase from Brooklyn College. We’ll start with him.

Jerome Krase:

My name is Jerome Krase and I am Murray Koppelman and Emeritus Professor at Brooklyn College CUNY. Thank you for coming. I am going ask that when I put the slides on that the lights can go out so people can see the images a little better. Let me just very briefly introduce these images by reviewing the proposal and abstract I provided for this visual presentation.

“Imagining Chinatown: A Visual Approach to Ethnic Spectacles.” Ethnic stereotypes and their commercial exploitation hinder the socioeconomic advancement of immigrants and ethnics. Over the past three decades I have studied, and photographed, a wide range of internationally recognized ethnic neighborhoods where one finds ethnic festivals and more mundane spectacles. “Chinatown” is one of many genres of commercial precincts or what I have called elsewhere “Ethnic Theme Parks.

My friend and colleague at the University of Amsterdam, John Rath, notes that innovative approaches are needed to help social scientists, as well as practitioners, to better understand the process by which “expressions of immigrant culture can be transformed into vehicles for socio-economic development to the advantage of both immigrants and the city at large.” Visual Sociological methods and Spatial Semiotics can be of considerable value in this regard. The presentation will address two of the recognized “potential problems” for The Immigrant Tourist Industry: the reinforcement of stereotypes about the ‘authentic’ ethnic Other or the ‘authentic’ ethnic experience, and the homogenization and fossilization of urban landscapes.

Theoretical and methodological discussions will be illustrated and supported by comparable photographs taken in cities where “Chinatown” has touristic currency. Mention of “Chinatown” can be found in commercially produced tourist guides such as the Lonely Planet Guide, Fodor’s, and/or Frommer’s for these cities: London, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. For theoretical contrast, the emergent “Chinatown” in Rome Italy will also be visually and conceptually examined.

One of the most important, but often neglected, aspects of the development an ethnic tourist industry in cosmopolitan cities are the new uses of public space created by new residential groups. In a globalized world immigrants are continuously changing many of our already complex urban landscapes. Innovative approaches are needed to help social scientists, as well as practitioners, to better understand the process by which “expressions of immigrant culture can be transformed into vehicles for socio-economic development to the advantage of both immigrants and the city at large.” It is argued in this paper that Visual Sociological methods and the theoretical stance of Spatial Semiotics can be of considerable value in this regard. Over the past three decades I have studied, and photographed, a wide range of internationally recognized as well as virtually unknown ethnic neighborhoods.

This paper will focus on ethnic festivals and more mundane spectacles found in Chinatowns which are two genres of commercial precincts or what I have called elsewhere “Ethnic Theme Parks.” There are many methods studying the post-modern, post-industrial metropolitan urban scene. Central to all of them are spatial and subliminally visual ideas. Explaining how urban spaces are used contested, and transformed by different social groups is a crucial task. It is suggested here that a visual approach to the study of vernacular landscapes in ethnic neighborhoods could encourage a synthesis of old and new approaches to the pre- to the post -modern urban scenes. It could also provide insight as to how visible cultural resources are commodified. Some see ethnic enclaves as a “natural” spatial form and function of the city as a biological analogy as did Parks and Burgess. Others describe them as commodities, reproductions of power, and circuits of capital a la Manuel Castells, David Harvey, and Henri Lefebvre. The visual Symbolic Capital (a la Pierre Bourdieu) of Chinese neighborhoods cum “Ethnic Theme Parks” have been chosen because they have already been the focus of a broad spectrum of historical and sociological description and analysis. They are also places which ordinary people seem to feel that they “know,” and places that easily attract visitors. The presentation will also attempt to address two of the recognized “potential problems” noted by Rath for The Immigrant Tourist Industry: the reinforcement of stereotypes about the ‘authentic’ ethnic Other or the ‘authentic’ ethnic experience, and the homogenization and fossilization of urban landscapes. I believe that Visual Sociology and Spatial Semiotics are important tools for addressing these problems.

Theoretical and methodological discussions will be illustrated and supported by comparable photographs taken in cities where “Chinatown” have some tourist currency. Mention of Chinatown can be found in commercially produced tourist guides such as the Lonely Planet Guide, Fodor’s, and/or Frommer’s for these cities: London, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. For theoretical contrast, the emergent “Chinatown” in Rome Italy will also be visually and conceptually examined.

I argue that Ethnic Theme Parks are actually used primarily to benefit people other than the people who live in those places. The methods I use are called visual Sociology and Spatial Semiotics I believe that they are invaluable tools for addressing this problem of the reinforcement of stereotyping about the more or less “authentic” ethnic who lives or works in the community and to counter the homogenization and fossilization of the powerful image of the group.

I’m going to show you 80 slides very quickly and in seven minutes you are going to get a tour around the world. Some of what I speaking about is in an article I published recently “Navigating Ethnic Vernacular Landscapes Then and Now,” Journal of Architecture and Planning Research. 19: 4 (Winter) 2002: 274-281. You’re going to see photographs of places called “Chinatown” from East to west beginning in Rome, London, Boston, Brooklyn, of course Manhattan, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Houston, of all places, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. What I have done is I selected from the thousands of photographs that I have on various ethnic communities. I have a special section of my photographic archive and notes on Chinatown. I’m going do it very, very quickly until my seven minutes are up. The lights, can they be dimmed down? I’m going to make a visual presentation. Lights, Camera, Action.
Okay, perfect. We will begin here, this is in Rome. This is actually a sign right here: “Alimentare Cinese Italiani.” You would translate it as “Chinese American Groceries.” The Chinese family grocery store in the l’Esquilino area of Rome near the central train station. Rome is one place where the word “Chinatown” has not yet hit it in the guidebook. One of the keys to whether something is an Ethnic Theme Park is when tourists are told about it and told to go visit there. It is an area that is noted now for a lot of jewelry stores owned by Pakistanis, and for the Chinese businesses particularly the rag trade. This is the most recent photo, I actually went back to this neighborhood three years later. I photographed it when I was a Visiting Professor at the University of Rome, la sapienza, and this is the most recent photo.

Now this is in London. The common features of the ethnic theme park are the ornate entrances into these places, they are very virtually becoming like amusement parks. This of course is at night, and this one is upside down. What I’m trying to get you to do is to appreciate the images, because I think what you’ll see in them as we go from place to place that there are some similarities. At some point along the route, you don’t know where you are.
This is in Boston. These are murals. These are the interesting kinds of things that local communities, in response to issues like trivializing ethnic heritage, start putting up on the walls. I don’t know if you noticed these kinds of things, but what happens is that you begin to see “Chinese” stylized street lights, facades, street furniture, sculpture, and telephone booths. In some ways what organized communities will do is in response to the growth of the Ethnic Theme Park, they kind of try to take back the definition itself. They are fighting with being a spectacle, a spectacle being something which is being controlled by an outsider. This is ethnic vernacular landscaping, or ethnic vernacular architecture. This is also in Boston.

This is a historical photograph. This is me, the guy with the hand up here in the mid-1970’s with my students. I’ve been taking my students on field trips throughout New York City ever since I’ve been teaching at Brooklyn College. I recently retired there. This is a group I took to Manhattan, to the Lower East Side and Chinatown back in the mid 70’s. This is an interesting photograph because Baciagalupo’s funeral parlor used to be here. This is Columbus Park, which I think has been recently renamed. One of my friends and colleagues criticized me for not using good form to show change by using photographs. The simple way of thinking about change and showing change is having two photographs of the same place at different times. In this case, the Italian funeral parlor in Chinatown, I only show one.
This is Sunset Park a couple years ago. I had taken my students on a field trip when I by accident ran into this. These are the most beautiful things, I think, when I go on photographing and see people, young people and children. Generally I don’t take pictures of people. This is an interesting photograph, because here we have this dance where people come and are observing this dance. Of course if you look at the characters and realize they are not Chinese characters. It’s a very important thing for us to understand that culture is something which can be transported and be learned by people and that’s really where its value is. So it’s something which can be appreciated by other people, too. So here we have this dance where we have non-Chinese people giving a cultural performance in front of other people who are Chinese. I think that’s a wonderful expression of what culture is really all about. This of course is more of the ethnic vernacular landscape, the way that, in people changed the meaning of space by doing things to it. One of the most powerful things is that you change the meaning of space is simply by being in it…simply by being in it. What makes a neighborhood a Chinese neighborhood or an Italian neighborhood is not only that they change what the space looks like, but the fact that they’re there, they are doing something.
Anyone know where that is? Philadelphia, right. Another entrance. Some of these places are very, very small, I should show you maps as well. You can see me also in the reflection there on the right. This of course is a semiotic. This is another thing which has a great deal of meaning (Photograph of sewing machine equipment). That’s the association with these places, with Chinatown and with the needle trade. These are wonderful things, food, ethnic food. Here are the kids in this Chinatown in Philadelphia. I’ve put together an exhibition. Nice combination there, with their cell phones.
This is Washington D.C.. This is a rapidly disappearing place, which actually was a very rapidly built place. This is a deteriorating neighborhood. Chinese initially, then other Asians moved into the area, and now there’s a great deal of development in downtown Washington D.C., so much so that they have their own police station. This is an interesting scene here of a yellow ribbon for someone in family perhaps who has gone to Iraq. Look at this very carefully here. Now what they have done in terms of, their trying to maintain the sense of this as a Chinatown. Of course what they’re in the process of doing is removing the Chinese from Chinatown. So what they have is a strip of stores here, and this is Legal Seafood. If it isn’t fish, it isn’t legal. Is that what it says? (Photograph of other Legal Seafood window in Chinese) Do you understand what goes on here is the idea of maintaining this notion that they’re in some sense authentic. This goes with McDonald’s as well. That’s the equivalent of the Chinese-Italian grocery store that we saw in Rome.

These are some places in Houston, Texas. This Chinatown is actually virtually all gone now, but there are still some indications of the shopping, etc. that still goes on there. This is another sense of it. Chinese, as most of the immigrant groups who really don’t have very much political power when they first come, they come to the worst places in the city. They make a home of those places, and then over time those places become valuable and they get displaced. That’s true in Houston, that’s true in New York City, that’s true everywhere you go. This is all in Houston. Even downtown Houston is getting better.

This of course is San Francisco. Again we see all of the same things: gates, street lamps, furniture, signs, etc. This is the shop of one of the storeowners I interviewed, who was concerned about the number of Vietnamese moving into Chinatown in San Francisco. And here we see this kind of vernacular architecture. You can always tell the Ethnic Theme Park because of the tourist menus. And this is San Francisco’s Chinatown at night. This is something else. (Photograph of non-tourist area of Chinatown) Tourists very seldom go into the real neighborhood. They very seldom go behind to take a look at that. This is actually where people are, people living a block off the main commercial street.

Now we’re in Los Angeles, and this is the Chinatown Wishing Well. Look at that themed architecture. And finally we’re on the next street over. Let’s see where the real action takes place. And that’s it, thank you. That’s my seven minutes.

Parmatma Saran:

We have, a couple of minutes for some response on the presentation by Dr. Krase. Anybody have any observations at this time?

Audience Member:

What do you make of the earlier [inaudible]?

Jerome Krase:

It’s interesting. I do a lot of visual sociology work. I have found that it is important to understand that people have value judgements in their minds about what they see. Community organization work is a wonderful aspect of this. Decades ago I involved myself in the practice of using images to in show people what the neighborhood actually looked like. When I worked with African American organizations I found that there was a stigma on the community; the stigma of the ethnic group was ghetto. And then I went on into Italian-American groups whose neighborhoods also had a stigma; the stigma of the Mafia. What’s interesting is that the Italians in Little Italy also have this kind of exotic place for tourists to visit, and eat.

What I would question is whether in fact something isn’t or is exotic, in the same sense of questioning if something is authentic. What changes the meaning of these things? When you look at the Chinese child on the street in Sunset Park, is that child exotic? What’s different? Exotic really has the sense of quality, beyond the control of the people who are being seen; something that is being put into it by the observer. I think that the notion of certain places being exotic, is a problem that the viewer has. The place isn’t really exotic, it’s simply there.

What happens is that people, in some way or another, they come to learn that there’s something else that’s there. You see that little girl there, you see that boy there? You see those people hanging around on the corner? They’re about something else. They’re not simply there, and that’s basically how I handle it. I don’t answer the question, as it really isn’t a question but a statement of belief or disbelief. Very difficult to do in a very short period of time, impossible perhaps to go behind the scene, to see something which is input by the observer. I agreed to give you the tour in a short period of time. But time is up. I want you to know that I also I do stuff on Jewish communities, ghettos, and The Holocaust makes you realize what they are and what people will do to those communities because of the images they have in their heads about what they see.

Parmatma Saran:

Thank you very much. Next presentation is titled “Parental Involvement and Student Achievement: Perceptions and Challenges of Asian Parents and Students” and our presenters are Xiwu Feng from LaGuardia Community College, and Heping Li from John Bowne High School, New York City. They were supposed to go first, but because of the equipment problem they are coming now. Are you ready?

Heping Li:

We need one minute for the machine to warm up. I’m sorry.

Xiwu Feng:

My name is Xiwu Feng, from LaGuardia Community College. I am presenting with Mrs. Heping Li, teacher from John Bowne High School in Queens. The topic we will discuss is Parental Involvement and Student Achievement—Perceptions and Challenges of Asian Parents and Students.

This presentation is based on our recent study of parental involvements by Asian parents and their children’s academic performances in a New York City public school district. The examination of student achievement indicates that there was a high correlation between student performance and parental involvement. The results of the survey show some interesting findings on perceptions of the Asian parents towards their children’s learning and perceptions of the students toward their parents’ involvement in their learning. We would also like to reveal some concerns and challenges that Asian parents face in helping their children’s learning. This study was conducted under the GEAR UP Program (Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs) sponsored by LaGuardia Community College, serving over 2000 students from the Western Queens public schools. It is the GEAR UP Program enabled faculty from a college and a public school to work together, serving students in need and learning some new experiences. Mrs. Li is going to introduce some background of the study.

Heping Li:

I’m a high school teacher and I’m bilingual, I’m so lucky to have Chinese students come into my school. So if you have a Chinese student sitting in your class, what do you expect them to do?

Audience Member:

Quiet.

Heping Li:

Very good, you expect them to be quiet and work hard. But now things are different for the younger generations.

Being a teacher, I wanted to help my new immigrant students and make sure everyone of them will succeed. LaGuardia Community College GEAR UP Program can help my students. Most of the time they stay at home and we need the parental support. So how can we get the parents into school, because if you ask the American teachers they say “No, they don’t come because they work all the time, 24 hours.” The Chinese parents they say “No, I can’t come to school because I don’t speak English.”

Then I start making phone calls, telling them to come and we have Chinese teachers here to help. Then I’m making morning calls, to wake them up and say, “I’m sorry to tell you, your son or daughter needs your support”. Then the Chinese parents, they say, “Hey Li, I give my son to you, you take care of everything for me”. I say, “No, by law, I can’t do everything, I’m only a teacher, not a social worker.” I say, “You’ve got to do something to help your child.”

I asked the peer program for the parent involvement program, to get the parents to participate in the school. After one year, I suddenly started thinking, let me see how it works. And then we started to do group conferences and have the parents come to the conference. We gave out the questionnaires to fill out the questions.

Also, I made two groups. First I wanted to make three groups, Hispanic, Chinese, and regular American groups, but I had some trouble getting the third group, Hispanic group. But I compared the general education group and the Chinese bilinguals group and try to find out how it works. Finally, I found out it was very successful. If the parent can participate in school and work together with the child, the kid’s grades are coming up. In my group most of the kids pick up a very good grade and no one failed the class anymore. It shows that parental involvement is so important.

While we still have difficulties to get parents to the school, also, some parents say that “They are new generation, I can’t do anything about it.” I have run a workshop with the parents and I told them, “You have to stand up to tell the kids, you are the parent, you are responsible for their education.” I was wondering how we could work with parents and them they could provide the best supports for their children’s learning. Professor Feng, who is a very experienced educator, found this was an interesting topic and we began to work on it. Now let Professor Feng present to you the study..

Xiwu Feng:

Research has shown that more frequent parental involvement results in students’ higher achievement. The parents we worked with also recognize that. Now I’m going to talk about the results of the study by showing some of the data collected. The study was conducted in Mrs. Li’s school, involving a number of 150 parents, whose children were studying in the school bilingual program. We received 94% responses. Though the study covered quite broad areas, we have only selected the parental involvement portion to discuss. Through analyzing the data, we are able to see how these parents feel about their involvement in their children’s learning and how they actually do in supporting their children’s learning.

1. Parental Involvement

In response to the question on the frequency of parents helping students, 11% of the parents helped students daily while 18% helped once or twice a week. Another 18% only did once a month. Yet nearly half (48%) of the parents helped their students less than once a month. That means half of the parents couldn’t provide their kids with regular assistance in their learning. Our second question was about meeting with the teachers. We thought this should be a special topic to Asian parents, Chinese parents in particular, who were considered as a group that cared about learning and showed respect for teachers. To our surprise, over 60% of the parents rarely go to school and meet their kids’ teachers. Almost 33% could only meet teachers several times a year. Certainly we would like to find out why these parents couldn’t go to school and meet with teachers. Among the four major reasons, they ranked “Don’t have skills” as the top (45%), job the second (23%), time constraints (19%) the third and “needs of younger children” (12%) the last. Talking about skills, the biggest problem they had was the language barrier. In addition, lack of knowledge in subject areas was also a big problem.

When asked about the school environment, parents’ responses were very positive. They felt welcomed and helped by teachers and staff. We asked parents about problems at school. This is how they ranked: the most serious one was discrimination, then followed by poor quality teachers, violence, lack of school safety. As a matter of fact, the one about parental involvement was the last one. They thought the school has the full responsibility when kids are at school. Teachers should take charge of everything during the school hours. This might partially answer the question why the parents were not actively involved in school activities.

Mrs. Li has a unique way of working with Chinese parents. She met parents, telling them about their children’s learning and giving them “task” to fulfill. For some important occasions she would call them and asked them to participate. Based on the results, we find out the parents who help their children regularly, their kid demonstrate higher academic performances. Those who do not provide sufficient assistance in their children’s learning see their children perform poorly on course work. For example, in social studies, parents who were very supportive and willing to do everything for their kids would see their kids test scores almost at the 90^th percentile rank. The less involved parents did not have such luck.

1. Students’ Perceptions

Now I would like to show students perceive parental involvement with their personal experiences. These were the students who were taking social studies and whose parents participated in the parental involvement survey. Student survey was conducted through an informal inventory. Similar questions were asked and students’ responses were interesting. The following are the questions and students responses:

“How often do your parents help you with your course work?”

“Almost everyday” 6%
“Once or twice a week” 20%
“Once or twice a month” 26%
“Rarely” 48%

“Why do you think your parents can’t help you as much?”

“They are busy at work” 24%
“They don’t understand the subjects” 31%
“Their English is not good enough” 36%
“They don’t care” 9%

“How often do your parents participate in school events?

“Almost every time” 7%
“Once or twice a semester” 24%
“Once or twice a school year” 41%
“Never” 28%

“Why do you think your parents don’t participate in school events as expected?”

“They are busy at work or chore” 51%
“They can’t communicate well in English” 43%
“They feel it unnecessary” 5%
“They feel unwelcome. 1%

“How often would you expect your parents to participate in school events?”

“Most of the time” 9%
“Often” 30%
“Sometimes” 41%
“Seldom” 20%

“What makes you feel embarrassed while attending school events with your parents?”

“They don’t understand English” 54%
“They don’t act properly” 17%
“They still control me in front of my friends” 29%

We found out that students’ responses were consistent with that by their parents to some extent. Students knew the problems and were aware of the cause of these problems. The reported that almost half of their parents could not help them with their course work. As for participation of school events, according to the students, nearly half of the parents could only do once or twice a year, while 28 percent of them even did not participate at all. Their answers explained why their parents could not help, that is, a great majority of the parents either did not understand the subjects or their English was not good enough to help. Of course language problem became a barrier that blocked parents from cooperating with schools. The fifth question was to ask how students perceived their parents’ involvement in their school activities. To our surprise, less than ten percent of the students wished their parents to participate in all the school events. Many students did not care about their parents’ involvement. Some even did not want their parents to come to the school activities. The most obvious reason was the language barrier. Incapability of using English language severely hindered parents from participating in school activities and communicating with teachers. Students felt embarrassed by the situation in which their parents were struggling with their poor English in front of their fellow students. During the discussion, students expressed their frustration over the issue. Parent participation, as they suggested, should be “the fewer, the better.”

Our survey was conducted in a local area and its results may not be appropriate for generalization. Yet the situation the students and their parents were facing might be common among the new immigrant families. Many of them settled down in their little community as they arrived. They are pretty much isolated from outside, speaking their native language, eating the same food, shopping in the convenient stores, watching the TV programs in their native language. They never have the chance to improve their English. As a matter of fact, they don’t feel the need. The openness and generosity of this great city of New York greets people form all over the world and allows them to remain unchanged in their own communities. People are enjoying the convenience and the protection from their little community and begin to forget their original dreams. Of course, many Asian parents, who have dreams but on their children, feel desperate when finding themselves helpless in realizing their children’s dreams. This is not just a language issue. It is a cultural, social and educational issue considering the younger generations. Educators have the responsibility to teach youngsters knowledge, skills and ability. Our goal is to help them learn effectively. We know effective learning can be realized with all the efforts, including that of parents. Without parents’ active involvement in the learning process, students will not be able to see a full success in academy. Let’s welcome parents to this learning project and teach them how to help their children succeed in learning.

Parmatma Saran:

Thank you very much. We have time for a couple of questions.

Audience Member:

You mentioned that a lot of times the parents lacked the English proficiency to be involved in school. How would you suggest, if they lack the language ability, that they can become involved in their children’s school? What are some ways?

Xiwu Feng:

The answer is education and parents need to be educated as well. Parents have to start with a positive perception in learning and the impact of parental involvement in learning. If they want to help their children, they have to first help themselves. Participating in school activities, parents are not just getting information for their children; they themselves are getting assistance in many ways. As a matter of fact, school-related events benefit parents as well as students. While inviting parents to school activities to help students, schools can offer workshops and other services for parents, training their language, social, and job skills.

Audience Member:

Is there a way that you could suggest ways for parents….

Xiwu Feng:

I think a change in perception is needed. Parents, especially the new immigrant parents, have to understand that their child’s dream is not their dream, and vise versa. While helping your children fulfill their goals, never give up your own goals. A positive image of a parent in front of his/her child will not only help get the child’s respect and appreciation but also has strong impacts on the child’s life. It is true that these parents work so hard to change their economical condition regardless of their personal life. Yet there is a wrong message that making money and being wealthy would change everything. Having money does not mean that one’s entire condition will be changed.

New immigrant parents face various challenges, linguistically, culturally, and socially as well as economically. Facing the confrontation and improving yourself, you will stand tall in front of your child. You may not be the winner but in your child’s eyes you have tried and are still trying. You may not be as helpful in their course work, but they know you are on their side during the whole learning process. The spirits and efforts of a parent who never gives up trying will not only gain respect and appreciation from the child but also inspire his/her learning and life. The biggest reward that a parent can get is seeing the improvement and success in his/her child’s learning.

Audience Member:

What is the socio-economic status, or economic status of the parent that you have?

Heping Li:

Their economical situation varies: some of these parents have received very good education at home country, some not. After having immigrated in this country, they find themselves badly in need of language and job skills in order to survive. They have to get a job to support the family. They are facing the tough time in their life.

Parmatma Saran:

Thanks very much. If we have time we’ll take another question, and we’ll have more discussion toward the end. Anna [inaudible] she is the conference coordinator, just informed me that since we started a little late because of lunch, we will not stop until 4:10, so we have an extra 10 minutes, we will be here until 4:10. So I am hoping still that toward the end we will have some time for discussion. Pleased to invite our next speaker now, Virginia Tong, professor of Curriculum and Teaching at Hunter College. Her topic is “cultural issues concerning Asian students.”

Virginia Tong:

Thank you very much. Boy, there are so many gadgets here, I don’t know where to move, my goodness. Thank you so very much. As I was listening to Professor Feng’s discussion and Ms. Li’s discussion, I couldn’t help but think about the fact that acculturation—and my talk is “the acculturation of Chinese high school students, levels of participation and interaction”—I couldn’t think about how complex acculturation is in society. These parents obviously experience what we call a “cultural mismatch” between the home and the culture, the home culture, and it cause probably a lot of anxiety in our children and our students. That’s really where our concerns are.

I want to talk to you about some preliminary findings of a study I recently conducted. I think in listening to many of the talks today, some of the earlier sessions, the general sessions, I see us that as Asian Americans and the movement of Asian Americans, I would say that we are in what I would call a “third phase” of Asian American history. The first being the immigrant presence was noted, the second that there was an awareness-raising through Asian American programs and publications, and the third which is now, what I’m going to address, the need for social services, to address the social and psychological needs of our Asian students.

What you see up there are Crystal and Kevin. They were two of 54 students that I interviewed and administered a questionnaire to. They graciously volunteered these responses to a question that I posed to them, which was, “If you had to tell me one thing that you wanted to know about America, what would it be?” Crystal said, “I want to know about their habits.” Kevin said, “What’s their language all about, what does their language mean?” I thought about this and I thought they were very provoking quotes.

What it says to me is that they are dying to know about the culture of America, and not only the dress, which is a surface level, but some of the values that underlie behavior of Americans, because they can’t interpret the behavior of Americans as well as they would like to. They obviously can, but not as well as they’d like to. Kevin really speaks to the idea of language. It’s language beyond the ESL classroom, it’s language and how it’s used in society to really drive home a secondary level meaning, something that sometimes a meaning that is not very tangible. So these I thought were very provoking quotes.

Again, just a summary, these were two students who were part of a larger group of 54 students. They range in age from 15 to 17 years old, and their two grades indicated are the 9th and 10th grades. They’ve been in this country from zero months to three years, so there’s a large range in the 54 students I interviewed.

What I’d like to share with you are some of the other findings that I was able to get from, thank you, that I was able to pull from the survey. They are preliminary findings. The purpose of the study was to get a snapshot of where their acculturation is at this point in time. I defined that as how acculturated are they now, today, May 3^rd, 2003, and secondarily, and I think more importantly, what happens during that adjustment process? Because we talk about acculturation, we talk about the process as an end product, but for me what’s equally as important are the social and psychological factors that really play into that success or maybe not success, full time. These are immigrant students who I think are at the earliest stages of acculturation. So [Marie Marks] will address that group.

I think knowing about their acculturation means know about their attitudes. Their attitudes will help us understand what they feel and believe. I hope that the outcome of research that’s out there and mine included that we can develop strategies that are social strategies as well as instructional strategies so that we can help them as they adjust, not after they’ve adjusted. I’m worried about the kids who are adjusting now, and that journey. Because they suffer from moments of depression to frustration, to being so disappointed that they can’t perform academically, that they’re disheartened, and this is the group that I saw. It’s a small group of students, but I’ve done a larger study of 200 students and interestingly I found that the findings themselves give me a sense of cultural tension in the group.

So as I said, the first set of findings up there, and I found this to be very intriguing, that 65% of the students feel that they are part of America. That’s 65%, even though they are only here for a short period of time. I found that really to be very interesting. But on the flip side of it, they still said, and 85%, said they still feel they are Chinese. So there’s that kind of tension I’m talking about. Where are they? Are they Chinese, or are they American? Where are they? More importantly, what is that [c], that gap of unknowns between these two polars?

The next set of findings there. In terms of being successful, I feel that wanting to be successful is an indicator of acculturation or their commitment to a country. The first statistic: 48% believe they will succeed in their home country. That’s a little less than 50%. But 53% feel they would succeed in America. Again, there’s that tension, that cultural tension. In terms of language, their ability to use language or express their feelings and ideas, again it’s a mixed bag. Where are they, really, in terms of language?

Literature research says that language loyalty and language maintenance are clear indicators of where individuals feel their hearts are. These students are Chinese, yet they are also American in terms of using Chinese to express their feelings and ideas, and Chinese, when they express their ideas and feelings. So again there is what I’d call a cross-cultural identity. They may never shed this cross-cultural identity, which is what the literature says too, they will adapt to being in America.

In terms of making friends, and I think friendship is a very important piece in life, I certainly like my friends, I’m sure you like your friends, and they say here that they’d like to have both American and Chinese friends. If you look at these, these are of course youngsters in a very modern age, but perhaps if you compare it to a study that might have been done maybe 30 years ago, 20 years ago, maybe the 50/50 proportion may not be present. I can’t say, because I haven’t done those studies.

Acculturation is such an incredibly complex phenomenon. You look at foreign-born Asians, foreign-born Chinese in this case, and the stages of acculturation that they go through, at each phase of that acculturation going from preservation to social adaptation to acculturation, at each of those stages, there are different conflicts that they are challenged by in life, being in America. I think we need to look beyond the surface manifestation behavioral pieces.

I was at a talk before, where someone talked about the overt level of culture, dress, and music. Underlying that are what we call the overt values and beliefs. Those overt beliefs govern the language that we talk in, speak in, express ideas and feelings, and they also… the values and beliefs in my native culture will also guide the way that I bring my children up if I’m a foreign-born Chinese mother. What Doctor Feng was talking about, the parental involvement, it’s your job in the school, but at home it’s my job. But still, the degree of involvement that you were talking about, it’s not at the point where the Chinese parents make their presence known in their school. I think even the parents are going through an acculturation, not a conflict, but they are adjusting their perceptions and expectations of who they should be in America.

So when you talk about acculturation, it really happens on many, many levels and at different stages. The evidence in my findings seems to support what I call a cross-cultural identity, fueled by a cultural tension. It’s not a negative thing, its just what is…it is a tension that some children, in this case these are high school kids, sometimes they can resolve, sometimes they can’t. Most of the time they work it out, but towards the end of this acculturation process. I can remember being in the school that I collected my data and this boy was carrying a huge knapsack and he had this look on his face. I said, “What’s the matter?” He said, “Exams, everything, being in America, I don’t know anymore”. He was very articulate in English.

On a positive note, it seems that they are willing to negotiate the two cultures, at least according to my findings, as evidenced in one of the questions that I asked them. They said that they want opportunities to talk about being Chinese in America, because it helps them understand and feel better about being Chinese in America. 70% of those students said that.

Another question they responded to is that they want to use culture to learn about culture, that is, to encourage teachers in their classes to talk about both Chinese and American cultures. So the profile of the immigrant Chinese student has changed somewhat. They are much more open, they seem to embrace the other culture or cultures, and I think that Crystal and Kevin really are a snapshot of the complexity and the changes that these immigrant students really project. This is only the beginning of my study, it’s a preliminary summary, and I hope to uncover more things. Thank you very much.

Parmatma Saran:

Thank you. We have time for a couple of quick questions. I see so many hands, but I can take only two.

Audience Member:

I’m honored to be the first. I’d like to also respond to the issue of this cultural identity. I figured all these culture problems actually stem from the confusion about their identity. I can see as myself, because I’m an immigrant and followed my parents as immigrants to this country when I was very young. First I came here, I find out, I’m from China, go figure, I’m still Chinese, tried to be popular, tried to merge into the American mainstream as soon as possible, I had that kind of impulse. I figured, how am I going to adapt myself into this, especially at the age of the teens. You really want to be compatible with your peers. You don’t want to be left out, you want to be recognized as your peers, you want to dress like them. That’s what I’m talking about, 30 years ago [inaudible]. You’re afraid to be left behind, so you want to be just like them. But meanwhile, you figure, because of your language barrier, you’re still Chinese, and your Chinese is better than your English, and then, its kind of conflict, psychological conflict, you want to be part of America, you cannot lose your identity, there’s no way you can drop your original identity. So, we keep asking ourselves, who are we, are we Chinese or American, or Sino-American, you can put it that way. We may be neither one. We are living on the edge, the border, of these two cultures, and I think that will cause a lot of confusion for these new-coming students.

Virginia Tong:

I think what you’re talking about is the sense of marginalization, many of these kids feel marginalized. Interestingly, one more fact I leave with you, I took a count of the number of the 54 students, how many gave me American names and Chinese names or just Chinese names. I don’t have the summary in front of me, because I didn’t do a complete summary, I’d say probably about 60% gave me American names as well. So what they are saying in my previous study confirms this that because they are Chinese they feel very strong about their culture and their language that they can go forward, and not feels so marginalized anymore. That’s what this tells me, that they’re courageous to look at both cultures at the same time.

Parmatma Saran:

We’ll take one more comment.

Audience Member:

Could you clarify implications that they like both American friends and Chinese friends, and also, about cultural assimilation, do you still think that American culture is still a melting pot or a solid bowl?

Virginia Tong:

Your first question was for me to clarity both American and Chinese friends?

Audience Member:

Some students like to make American friends and Chinese students, what’s the implication of that to you?

Virginia Tong:

To me, it means that they are not feeling as marginalized, that they are not as isolated, that they are willing to accept different values because it’s not as much a threat. I think they feel less threatened so that friends who are not Chinese or not Chinese in this case because these are Chinese students, that they embrace them as well. But I can’t say which group they would embrace over other groups, the non-Asians. That I can’t say because my research didn’t uncover that.

And the second piece, I don’t think we’re a melting pot, I think we, if anything, we’re moving towards individualization where cultures are standing up and their profiles are as distinguished compared to the next ones. I don’t think we’re so much a melting pot anymore.

Parmatma Saran:

Thanks very much. We will save these questions to end. We want to give time to the next speaker, Yang Hu, Assistant Professor of Education at Hunter College. Okay, please. We’ll have time for these discussions at the end, please.

Yang Hu:

Hello, raise your hand if you’re a teacher. Quite a few of us. Raise your hand if you are considering becoming a teacher. None? Or you’re a student? Good. I want to talk about the immigrant students’ use of silence and what it means and especially to explore the cultural significance, and if I have time I’ll quickly talk about how as teachers we can help these students in our classrooms.

Before I became a professor at Hunter College, I was a staff developer working at the New York City public schools. So I was at a lot of workshops with teachers, and also I go to a lot of conferences. Two of the questions that were frequently asked were: one, why are the Asian students so quiet; and two, how can I help them to speak up, to participate more in class. So, invariably, our discussion would focus on the cultural significance of their silence.

In order to find, when I was studying book club in the middle school in Chinatown, I pulled out eight quiet students in an eighth grade class, and in a focus meeting I asked them this question. I said, “Could you please talk about why you think you do or do not talk in the classroom?” Nobody said a word. Of course. So I said “ok, why don’t we take a few moments and write down your thoughts along these lines”. So after a few minutes of writing one by one I heard their voices. If I could put this on the overhead to just give you an example of some of the things that they said.

So they said, “Some people are shy in class.” “Yes, I am, me too.” “Sometimes I don’t have the answer for some questions, so I’m afraid that my answers may not be correct.” “I’m afraid of being laughed at when I make mistakes.” “Sometimes kids have the answers but they don’t want to share.” “Noisy.” What do you mean? Speak up. So we asked her to speak again. She said “too many people talking, and I need time to think what I’m going to say. When I’m thinking, someone will have the answer. Sometimes my tongue gets tied up.”

So what is the cultural significance of these students’ perceptions? I looked at their perceptions in these four categories—they’re silent because they think they’re shy, they’re silent because they are afraid of having incorrect answers, they’re silent because they are not familiar with the demand in the American classrooms because talk is considered as a major vehicle for making meaning, and they’re not familiar with that kind of mode of learning. Finally, they don’t have the skills in which in speaking the English language.

First thing I want to talk about is the notion of silence, of being shy, because a lot of people say they are shy. That is used as a common term to describe that these people are shy, they are just faces in a crowd, they don’t talk, they’re voiceless. But, that’s just a common term. There are different reasons for being quiet. According to [James McClusky], there are seven reasons to be quiet. One is their skill deficiency, social introversion, social alienation, ethnic and cultural divergence, unfamiliarity with academic discourse, lacking confidence in subject matter, and communication apprehension. I think that being shy or quiet in the classroom is one of those seven reasons or a combination of the seven reasons, but for most immigrant students it’s the cultural, ethnic and cultural divergence.

The other thing about the cultural significance of their silence is that the silent behavior, or being quiet or I choose not to talk is a learned behavior as when researchers said that “an essential part of the acquisition of communication competence is how children learn when not to talk, and what silence means in their speech community.” What I want to say is that silence for the Asian, for many students coming from Pacific Asian countries like China, like Korea, like Japan, it is a learned behavior. In the U.S., when children are growing up, parents talk to babies before they can even talk. They talk to them, and for them, and with them. Kids are encouraged to speak up, “use your words”.

I have a student that said, this is an Asian student, when she was babysitting for an American family, she was specifically told, “Ask the child to tell you what they want, don’t give it to them, ask them to talk, use your words”. In school, when you’re in kindergarten, you go in there, you have show-and-tell. Even in preschool, you show and tell, you use your words. So, talking is being encouraged in this culture, whereas in China or in many Pacific Asian countries there is no need to talk because you don’t need to talk to make decisions, decisions are usually made for you, you don’t need to talk to defend your action, you cannot talk back to your parents. You need to be seen, not heard.

Another thing along the lines of exploring the cultural significance, you can put this back, is I want to talk about the Confucian notion of hierarchy. The Confucius philosophy emphasizes social and political stability. How do you maintain that social and political stability? You do that through imposing a kind of hierarchy in society, as well as at home. Let me show you an example. This is my childhood [inaudible], and you can see where we children sit. We sit at lower seats, whereas the grandfathers and fathers or male members of that generation would sit at the upper seats. Their sides are reserved for female members of the family. So, in a family, we have a hierarchy, so where you sit at the dinner table will show you your status in the family hierarchy. The same is true in society.

How do you maintain that hierarchy in family and in a society? There are two tools. One is obedience, you can’t talk back. One is the de-emphasis of the individual. Who you are is not important. Which family you came from, which village you came from, is very important. So you better not do things that will hurt the good name of your family, or of your village, or of your community.

As Asian children growing up in a family hierarchy, they accept their lowest position, lowest seats at the family dining table. They also accept that they’re lowest in the family hierarchy, so they better not talk. They listen and when they go to school, they learn to listen to the teacher, they learn to memorize and during exam time they gave back what you have learned. Many times I see Asian parents dropping off their kids at the school, and the departing words is not “I love you”; it’s “listen to your teachers.” So, silence and shyness is linked to value of the speaker in that speaker’s community, and a tenet said that “knowing your rightful place in a hierarchy can feel as safe and close as being with your family.” A quintessential hierarchy institution”.

Another thing I want to address about the students’ perception is that unfamiliarity with the demands of talk in American classrooms. Because in American classrooms, in the West, and especially in the classroom situation, talk is viewed as a major vehicle for meaning-making, also in corporate situations. My husband also was born and grew up in China, came here and got his degree. When he got his first job in a corporate setting, he realized that in staff meetings, he had to talk, because if he didn’t talk it would feel that he didn’t do much work, because he realized that a lot of people really didn’t do much work and talked a lot. Talking was so important, even in that kind of environment.

Many students, especially immigrant students growing up in a culture where they do not need to talk and there is that mutual dependency in communication and they feel that they do not know what to do in the classroom, where you have to talk not only to demonstrate what you have learned but also to make meaning. It’s that fear of unfamiliarity with the demand of talk.

Another thing I wanted to talk about is when one of the students said “That was noisy”. When we asked her, “Ccan you talk about why you were so quiet.” She says, “It was noisy, too many people talking.” What was she saying here? There are two things that I can make of it along the lines of cultural significance. One is that indirectness of communication, that is a culturally learned behavior. For example, in Japan, you have that mutual dependency and inter-connectedness that, in a conversation, it’s considered rude for me to tell you what I have to say before I perceive how you will receive what I said. Then I will say half the sentence, and it’s very tentative.

For example, I could say, “Could you come over to my family, we’re having a party.” And then the other person might say, “Well, that would be inconvenient”. In Japan, this was fine, this was considered a very polite way of talking. But in the United States, and you’re saying, if I invited somebody for a party and they said it was very inconvenient, what do you think? That she just didn’t want to come, she just didn’t care about coming. But if you go into this Japanese person’s mind, what she was thinking, was that I’m going to a funeral. I’m not going to tell you because I have to go a funeral I can’t come to your party because I don’t want you to feel sad for me. It’s that consideration of what the impact of what I say on you rather than being direct and telling you “I’m sorry, I can’t.” Even in the United States, if you can’t come to somebody’s party, you tell them your life story. You don’t say that, right?

The other thing about being indirect. One thing I want to say along that line, which goes to how do we help students who have learned to communicate in that indirect way, is to… many times I hear teachers say, “Well what do you mean? Give me a complete sentence.” That’s going to make it even worse, because the students think, “Okay, my English is not good, so you want me to give you a complete sentence, so that makes it even harder. I don’t know very good grammar.”

One thing I’ve, in working with teachers, is I try to talk to them about not to emphasize on completeness in the sentence but they tell me more rather than give me complete sentence. Finally, for example, they say, “ I don’t want to talk because my tongue gets tied up” or “When I was just thinking what I have to say, somebody else would have the correct answers.”

I myself had a similar experience when I first came to the United States for my graduate study. I was in a course studying memoirs. So we read Maxine Hong-Kingston’s Woman Warrior. This is a graduate classroom, we were sitting in a circle and we were all contributing and talking and discussing about this book. I had a lot to say, I don’t think I was shy but I couldn’t find a polite moment to enter the conversation so I just remained silent until the professor said, “Well, Yang what do you have to say about this?” and then I had a chance to get into the conversation.

Along that same line about how do you get the children into the conversation, one thing I do often is raising a question and, instead of going for it the first hand, I say, “Why don’t you use your pen and think on paper for two minutes”. So, people can think their own thoughts. I can think my own thoughts in those two minutes rather than just listening to other people. And then say, “Okay, turn to the person next to you and share what you have”. I use those two minutes to gather my own thoughts.

There are many other… I need to stop here. But if you’re interested in getting to know more about how we help students like these, an article by the same title is coming out in the April issue of Teaching and Leaning: the Journal of Natural Inquiry. Thank you.

Parmatma Saran:

Okay. Very quickly, yes?

Audience Member:

I just come from a panel about arts education, where we discussed how our panel was one of the leading panels dealing with non-verbal learning so that most of education is certainly [inaudible] involved in learning verbal communication and how to use written language. I think my panel was interested in increasing art education and increasing non-verbal learning, particularly where silence is valuable in being able to generate what you’re going to do. So I think from point of view as an artist or curator or critic I was very interested in what Asian American artists are doing in the United States, because one way in which non-verbal communication can bring out your thoughts on their responses is, [inaudible] I think with a culture with English, the language of frankly, the major culture in the United States, the culture in the world, the culture which over the last several hundred years has [inaudible]. That language allows students with an Asian background may feel difficult in ways of responding.

I think the other thing about what comes out of non-verbal communication through the arts, are those feelings [inaudible]? I think one other aspect of this is that there is a movement in the United States called American Buddhism, and there’s an awful lot of people now taking part in that. Not maybe, Asians, but there are a lot of Americans. They’re doing this because in the industrial society that we are a part of, it’s difficult to find peace, and a lot of people are finding peace by just sitting here, without any words, anything in their heads, and coming to a different form of learning, of knowledge, of understand. This has to increase if we’re really going to have a multi-cultural society in the United States.

Parmatma Saran:

Thanks very much. We have just a few minutes left. I would like to recognize a few more people. If you don’t mind, as a presider I have not said a word so far. I cannot help but make one brief comment in response to what Professor Hu is saying. I came as a graduate student back in 1967 to CUNY Guidance Center. I was taking 4 or 5 seminars in the graduate level, small groups, a lot of talking. Coming from India, you know, you call it shyness or silence, there is a number of factors involved in this. Essentially, it got to the point that one of my teachers got worried about me and she brought me to her office and she said, “What is going on?”. I simply had to explain that in India in my classes, I was not intended to do any talking, simply there as a passive listener. Luckily, I wrote strong papers in all those classes and I got a satisfactory grade.

When I started teaching, myself, in ’68, I noticed that when I was grading papers I thought that I knew my students, but when I was reading papers, somebody has 90, and I don’t know this student, somebody has 95, and I don’t know this student. I checked my roster, and guess what, they are mostly Asians. It’s very interesting. I’m thinking that some of you were suggesting that we are trying to overcome those limitations and hopefully this whole notion of shyness and silence will not remain for too long. Some of you were raising questions about identity and all that, you know, I think its pretty much [inaudible] that question. You don’t have to be only American anymore, you can be American, you can be Chinese, you can represent a religious group. You are provincialized identity, your past identify. Like in my case, it’s still an immense part of our lives. There is no dichotomy between one or the other, they are all really complementary and you can have multiple identities. I just finished reading a book by [inaudible]. He used to be on the right, but now he has written a book called [inaudible] and we have to do this and all that. I just hope that panels like this like will increase sensitivity, particularly among the educators and try to understand these cultural variables in the classrooms as we teach. My old friend…Yes?

Audience Member:

Professor Yang Hu, about the strategies, you didn’t comment on them. What’s the jigsaw and what’s the fish bowl?

Yang Hu:

First let me take you back about what I said about using the arts. One of the things I suggested is visual response. For example, after reading the text or poem, instead of asking the student to talk verbally, I say draw, sketch, or use watercolor to sketch out or draw your response, because drawing slows time down. That will give you time to think, and then you can talk based on what you have; it’s like thinking on paper in writing.

Fish bowl is something that I use in reading clubs that I can demonstrate how people talk. What are good moves in a group situation, so I put a group of students in the middle, a group of quiet students in the middle and as they talk about one book or one chapter of a book I have the rest of the class research, notice, what are some good entering moves, what are the moves that help them collaborate, like I was thinking back on what you said. I disagree. So that students will notice what are the good strategies to get the conversation going or to enter the conversation.

The other thing is jigsaw. Jigsaw is wonderful because one thing I forgot to mention is that if we don’t help students who like to remain silent, that silence then becomes, they develop a psychological resistance and that can distance their experience with their conscientiousness with experience. That becomes terrible. The key thing in helping a student is to empower them. What we end up doing is to make them feel as though “I have a lot to contribute to the group situation, it’s not like I’m here, my English is bad, I don’t know much about subject matter, and I learned not to talk so I’m going to be silent”. So jigsaw is one way that will help students feel that I have something to contribute.

For example I have 25 students, and I have five chapters in the book. I break the 25 students in five groups, and each group studies one chapter. As they study one chapter, they talk about how they may disseminate the information of that chapter to the rest of the class. Then I regroup the class, and the second time I make sure that every group have five students, each will bring one chapter of text, so that the whole group makes up the whole text, so that each one is the jigsaw puzzle.

In the new group, for example we studied Chapter 1 in the first group, then I will disseminate information from my chapter. I have a lot to tell you, and I have a lot to say, so that will empower them so that they can talk better. I feel that if you talk well, you first need to feel that you have authority over what you have to say. You also need to feel that you have authority over what you have to say.

Parmatma Saran:

Thank you. Who has the last words of wisdom?

Person:

In your study, do you find women to be more silent than men in general? How do you think… you mentioned that Chinese hierarchy, how do you approach Chinese women or other women who have had silence in their homes, how do you make them more verbal or more articulate in the classroom, how do you help them break through?

Yang Hu:

I have two girls, I find that in America it’s easier to raise my girls, because they don’t have to take that stereotype that you’re a woman in an Asian family. I think that it’s a big question, and I can tell you a lot that as a mother I never buy gender-specific toys. I have trucks, I have tool kits for them. They come home they say “girls…” whatever, I say “No, boys can do that to. I think it starts at the home.

Parmatma Saran:

Well, thanks very much. We don’t want to be late for the cocktails. Once again, I want to thank my panelists, all of you, for your cooperation. Thanks again, we will see you at the cocktail.

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