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Chinese immigrants united for self -empowerment: Case study of a weekend Chinese school
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CHINESE IMMIGRANTS UNITED FOR SELF-EMPOWERMENT:
CASE STUDY OF A WEEKEND CHINESE SCHOOL
by
Gwendolyn Ching-Yao Liu
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(EDUCATION)
May 2006
Copyright 2006 Gwendolyn C. Liu
UMI Number: 3237107
3237107
2007
UMI Microform
Copyright
All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against
unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code.
ProQuest Information and Learning Company
300 North Zeeb Road
P.O. Box 1346
Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1346
by ProQuest Information and Learning Company.
ii
DEDICATION
For Jasmine and Camille
iii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I want to express my deepest gratitude to the many people who have
helped me in so many ways to bring this research project into fruition. I am
particularly grateful for the generous participation of my interviewees, who were
instrumental in my understanding of the complex relationship between education
and identity.
I am greatly indebted to my advisor, Professor Nelly P. Stromquist, whose
guidance and extraordinary support during my doctoral studies and throughout the
entire dissertation process kept me motivated in every stage of my long academic
journey.
Special thanks to Peiying Chen, George Da Roza, Gregory Knotts, and
Irene Lin, who have provided invaluable content feedback. I also want to thank
Elizabeth Berg, who provided invaluable editorial assistance during the final stage
of my writing. In addition, I want to thank Michel Houte and Matt Stevens, who
have also provided editing assistance.
Finally, I want to thank Huashih Lin, my husband, for his love and support
as I struggled to complete my degree. To him and to our daughters, Jasmine and
Camille, I dedicate this dissertation.
iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
DEDICATION ii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iii
LIST OF TABLES v
ABSTRACT vi
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1
CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 17
Figure 1 33
CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 55
CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS ON HABITUS 79
CHAPTER 5: THE SCHOOL EXPERIENCE AT NECA 120
CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION 158
REFERENCES 174
APPENDIX 187
v
LIST OF TABLES
Table 1: Place of Birth for the Foreign-Born 8
Population of Los Angeles County
Table 2: Comparison of Educational Attainment: 10
Immigrants from Taiwan and Americans
Table 3: Types of Informants by Degree of Assimilation 67
Table 4: Basic Statistics Regarding NECA 83
Table 5: Educational Attainment of Grassroots Activists 84
Table 6: Occupational Type of Grassroots Activists 85
Table 7: Grassroots Activists by Degree of Assimilation 85
Table 8: Adult Participants of NECA: English Fluency 89
Table 9: Types of Virtues and Corresponding Numbers 125
of Texts in Chinese Primers
Table 10: Demographic Features of Adult Participants 154
of NECA
vi
ABSTRACT
This study explores a common cultural practice in immigrant Chinese
communities— nonformal Chinese language education for children of Chinese
immigrants— through a case study of a weekend Chinese school founded by
immigrants from Taiwan in Southern California.
Using in-depth interviews, field observations, and documents/texts, the
study explores the school process as a field that represents the physical
manifestation of resources and the collective memory of human agency. Adult
participants of the Chinese school, comprising parent volunteers, teachers, and
administrators, were interviewed in order to understand the meaning of ethnic
preservation for the Other— a culturally marginalized group in the society.
Aiming to cultivate altruistic citizens through ethnic maintenance , the
weekend school under study functions as an i mportant mechanism of selective
acculturation . The school provides fifteen levels of Chinese language courses for
students aged five to eighteen. Mandarin is the language of instruction. Chinese
language learners are expected to acquire approximately 1,300 Chinese characters
after completing the fifteen levels at the school. Familiarity with 1,300 Chinese
characters and their combined usages places students at a fifth- or sixth-grade
reading level. The vast majority of students of the Chinese school are able and
willing to communicate with their parents in Mandarin after receiving their
Chinese education at the weekend school.
vii
The adult participants of the Chinese school are empowered by the school
process as parents and as immigrants searching for identity affirmation. The
indoctrination of Confucian and Buddhist thoughts reinforces the ethnic identity
of the adult immigrants. Inculcation of the traditional Chinese value of filial piety
strengthens their parental authority.
The social profile of the parents at the Chinese school shows that the vast
majority are middle-class immigrants with substantial human capital. This
finding contradicts stereotypical thinking that has stigmatized bilingual education
as an educational practice needed only by underclass immigrant minorities.
This study proposes nonformal education as an alternative to true bilingual
education, which is no longer available to language minority children in the
public school system following the passage of Proposition 227.
1
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
States should take appropriate measures so that, wherever possible,
persons belonging to minorities have adequate opportunities to learn their
mother tongue or to have instruction in their mother tongue.
— The United Nations Declaration on Minorities,
article 4, subparagraph 3
Statement of the Problem
The findings from the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS)
1
show that “selective acculturation” invariably leads to positive adaptation
outcomes— including higher self-esteem, higher educational and occupational
expectations, and even higher academic achievement— in the case of 1.5 - and
second-generation immigrants, regardless of their ethnic origin (Portes &
Rumbaut, 2001, pp. 274–76).
2
Selective acculturation refers to minority groups’
deliberate cultivation of ethnicity in the process of assimilation. Immigrants
taking the path of selective acculturation preserve their native cultural traits,
including language, norms, values, and lifestyle, while adopting a complementary
set of skills from the Anglo-dominant culture to facilitate their social mobility.
1
The Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study is a multifaceted investigation conducted during
the early 1990s surveying the educational performance and social, cultural, and psychological
adaptation of children of contemporary immigrants. It is the largest study of its kind to date in the
United States. The original CILS sample was composed of 5,262 teenagers of 77 nationalities in
two metropolitan areas: Miami and San Diego (Rumbaut & Portes, 2001).
2
1.5 generation refers to immigrants born abroad but educated and socialized in the U.S. This
term particularly refers to those who join the host society by age 12.
2
This path enables minority children to learn the language and culture of the host
society at no expense to their ethnic language fluency or cultural identity.
Based on the CILS findings, soci ologists argue that in order to better
educate children from ethnic or linguistic minorities, an additive approach to
bilingual education should be adopted, which would incorporate minority
students’ languages and cultures into the school program. However, American
educational policy and existing bilingual programs discourage additive
acculturation. Bilingual programs with native language support were abolished in
California following the passage of Proposition 227, the English for the Children
Initiative, in 1998.
Bilingual programs in the United States can roughly be classified into two
types based on w hether the program encourages additive acculturation. The
existing “remedial” programs— ESL, transitional bilingual education, and
structured immersion— which aim to mainstream linguistic minority students into
all-English classes as rapidly as possible, are based on a subtractive approach to
acculturation. Only enrichment bilingual programs, including maintenance
bilingual education and two-way bilingual education, provide true bilingual
education based on an additive approach to language acquisition.
3
3
Bilingual education is an umbrella term in the United States, comprising a variety of programs
with various types of students, and distinct goals and pedagogical approaches for language
teaching and acquisition. August and Hakuta (1997) classified bilingual programs into seven
types: (1) English as second language (ESL), (2) content-based ESL, (3) sheltered instruction, (4)
structured immersion, (5) transitional bilingual education, (6) maintenance bilingual education,
and (7) two-way bilingual programs (p. 19-20). Only maintenance bilingual education and two-
way bilingual programs are based on additive bilingualism. Ramirez et al. (1991) classifies
bilingual education into three types according to their instructional model: structured immersion in
3
Studies of bilingual education show that the most successful bilingual
programs in terms of facilitating minority students’ academic progress appear to
be those that strongly reinforce students’ cultural identity and promote students’
L1 (primary language) literacy development (Cummins, 1983/1994/2001a).
Moreover, studies of patterns in school performance of minority students show
that widespread school failure does not occur in minority groups that are
positively oriented toward both their native culture and the dominant culture, do
not view themselves as inferior to the dominant group, and are not alienated from
their own cultural values (for a review, see Cummins, 2001a). These findings
illuminate the key role that cultural or ethnic identity plays in empowering
minority students. Based on these findings, Jim Cummins (2001a) contends that a
full definition of empowerment in terms of educating minority students must
include both cognitive/academic and social/emotional components. In other
words, the school programs intended to empower minority students should aim
both to enhance students’ cognitive development and to foster their cultural pride.
Maintenance bilingual education (also called “one-way developmental
bilingual education”) is thus considered an ideal way to serve minority students.
However, maintenance bilingual education— in which minority students’
language and culture are incorporated and thus marked as valuable— has no
English, “early-exit” (transitional) bilingual education, and “late-exit” bilingual education. The
first two models lead to subtractive bilingualism, whereas the “late-exit” (also called gradual exit
or developmental) results in additive bilingualism and provides students with support in the native
language for at least five years.
4
political clout because it contravenes the established pattern of dominant versus
dominated group relations by conferring status and power on the minority group
(Cummins, 2001a). Moreover, the implementation of maintenance bilingual
education is virtually impossible in classrooms or school districts with low
concentration of particular groups of minority students. A solution to this
problem is through nonformal education (NFE).
Nonformal Education: The Alternative
Nonformal education (NFE) provided by the private sector has become the
only channel for fostering bilingualism among the second generation in California
since the passage of Proposition 227. NFE is education that takes place outside of
formally organized schools. NFE has two characteristics: it is not compulsory; it
does not lead to a formal certification. NFE usually refers to adult education
(Paulston & LeRoy, 1982; Picon, 1991), particularly adult literacy (Torres, 1990;
Stromquist, 1997). It also includes educational programs with a gender agenda—
for instance, workshops for women’s empowerment (Stromquist, 2000)— as well
as programs aiming at income generation for the rural poor (Coombs & Ahmed,
1974). Empowering subordinate groups in society is the fundamental philosophy
of NFE. Proponents of conflict and critical theories commonly believe that
formal schooling— a strong mechanism for socialization — plays a significant role
in reproducing social inequality, instead of counteracting the power relations that
exist within the broader social structure. NEF enters the education picture when
5
the formal educational system fails to provide for the needs of non mainstream
people.
NFE is an important means of empowering nonmainstream people
because it is economical and is not mandated by the state (Coombs & Hallak,
1987). NFE’s independent status guarantees greater autonomy and frees it from
the ideological control of the ruling elites. True empowerment requires both
“bottom-up” and “top-down” approaches (Stromquist, 2000). Thus, until the
public school system is able to provide developmental bilingual education that
works for language-minority children, NFE is necessary.
Although commonly practiced in immigrant communities, NFE aimed at
ethnic maintenance has never received the scholarly attention it deserves. This
dissertation examines nonformal ethnic education for minority children by
focusing on the experience of Chinese/Taiwanese immigrants. This study was
motivated by a desire to explore how nonformal education functions as an
important mechanism of ethnic socialization for Chinese American youth. This
study relies heavily on Bourdieu’s practice theory to analyze nonformal Chinese
education as a prevalent cultural practice in immigrant Chinese communities.
Experiences of Chinese Immigrants
Chinese communities in the United States have undergone a rapid
proliferation of zhongwen xuexiao (Chinese language schools) in the past two
decades. There are more than thirty Chinese schools in the Greater Washington,
6
D.C. and Houston areas (Yang, 2002), and the number of Chinese schools in the
Greater Los Angeles area alone exceeds thirty (Southern California Council of
Chinese Schools). The existing nonformal Chinese schools can be classified into
two types according to their management model: nonprofit and for-profit
organizations. Nonprofit Chinese schools are usu ally affiliated with either
religious organizations or the municipality Chinese American association. In the
Greater Los Angeles area, for example, more affluent municipalities, such as San
Marino and Arcadia, have their own Chinese American associations, which
support cultural transmission by providing Chinese language classes for the
second generation. Religious organizations in Chinese American communities—
such as Catholic churches and Buddhist associations— often offer Chinese
language classes to community members and provide Chinese education as part of
their community service programs. For-profit organizations that provide after-
school tutoring to children of Chinese immigrants often incorporate Chinese
language education into their curriculum. This dissertation explores nonformal
Chinese education by focusing on a successful nonprofit weekend Chinese
school — New Enlightenment Chinese Academy (NECA)
4
— in the Greater Los
Angeles Area.
The Case of NECA
NECA is successful in terms of both popularity and sustainability in the
Chinese immigrant community. Founded in 1994, this Chinese school has
4
Pseudonym was adopted for both the school’ s and people’ s names in this dissertation.
7
undergone rapid growth over the past ten years, during which time its enrollment
nearly doubled. At present, approximately 540 students, aged five to eighteen, are
registered in the school. The school mission is to cultivate well-behaved and
altruistic citizens through teaching of the Chinese language and indoctrination of
the core values of Confucianism and Mahayana Buddhism. Its mission of
facilitating the second generation’s successful adaptation to the host society
through the indoctrination of Chinese core cultural values makes NECA a
textbook example of selective acculturation. Though NECA provides ethnic
education for children of Chinese immigrants, this study focuses on the adult
participants— the school administrators, teachers, and parents— whom I call
grassroots activists because NECA was established through grassroots activism
and the school process was the outcome of Chinese immigrants’ collective effort
in (re)constructing ethnicity.
Social Context of NECA
NECA is located in San Gabriel Valley of Los Angeles, California. In the
past few years (2000, 2001, and 2002), California has been ranked first in
population of legal immigrants. Since 2001, the Los Angeles–Long Beach area
has been ranked highest among the six metropolitan areas in the United States that
admitted the most immigrants (Homeland Security, Fiscal Year 2002 Yearbook of
Immigration Statistics).
5
Characterized by ethnic and cultural heterogeneity, Los
Angeles County accommodates 196,157 Chinese immigrants (including 128,672
5
New York City, Chicago, Miami, Washington, DC., and Houston the other cities.
8
from China and 67,485 from Taiwan) (Table 1). The majority of Chinese
immigrants in the Greater Los Angeles area are concentrated in San Gabriel
Valley.
Table 1
Place of Birth for the Foreign-Born Population
of Los Angeles County
1
Total: 3,449,444
Asia: 1,022,289
East Asia: 384,265
China 128,672
Taiwan 67,485
Japan 41,116
Korea 145,669
South Eastern Asia 372,073
Indonesia 11,838
Laos 3,385
Malaysia 3,681
Vietnam 96,029
Americas: 2,177,052
Latin America: 2,143,049
Caribbean: 38,517
Central America: 2,012,287
Mexico 1,512,157
South America 92,245
North America: 34,003
Africa: 43,024
Oceania: 12,560
Europe: 194,503
Source of data: U.S. Bureau of the Census, Census 2000 Summary File 3 (SF 3)
1
The total population of Los Angeles County is 9,519,338
Chinese Ethnoburb
Wei Li (1997/1999) argues in his study of Chinese immigrants’ settlement
models that the San Gabriel Valley region has developed into a Chinese
“ethnoburb,” or ethnic suburb. However, the San Gabriel Valley Chinese
9
community, developed from the city of Monterey Park, is more than just a
suburban version of Chinatown Los Angeles: it has di stinct social and economic
structures. Specifically, an ethnoburb is an open system tied by information
exchange, business connections, and social connections with mainstream society,
in contrast to ghettos, which are isolated ethnic communities. Li contends that the
Chinese ethnoburb in the San Gabriel Valley is characterized by “international
flows of commodities, skilled labor, high technology and managerial personnel,”
adding that the ethnoburb is a deliberate creation by the Chinese community to
“maximize ethnic personal and social networks as well as business connection[s]”
(cited in Frank, 2000, p. 2).
Chinese Immigrants in the United States
“Chinese immigrants” and “Chinese Americans” are umbrella terms for
ethnic Chinese from various parts of Asia, including Taiwan, China, Singapore,
and other Southeast Asian countries. This ethnic group displays linguistic
diversity and distinct national and political identities. Mandarin is the lingua
franca for Chinese from China and Taiwan and the dominant ethnic language in
suburban immigrant Chinese communities. Cantonese— the dialect spoken by
people from Hong Kong and Guangzhou (in Guangdong province, China)— has
long been the most popular dialect in Chinatowns. A large number of immigrants
from Taiwan speak Hokkien— a dialect from Southern Fujian province in
China— as well as Mandarin. Ethnic Chinese from Vietnam speak various
10
Chinese dialects from Guangdong province in China, including Hakka, Teochew,
and Cantonese.
Immigrants from Taiwan
Although NECA is open to Chinese language learners of all ethnic
backgrounds, the majority of students (90 percent) are from families with at least
one parent from Taiwan. Immigrants from Taiwan are characterized by high
human capital: a high percentage of college graduates, low poverty rates, and high
median income. Table 2 shows a recent survey on the educational l evel and
occupational status of Taiwanese immigrants in the United States:
Table 2
Comparison of Educational Attainment:
Immigrants from Taiwan and Americans
Taiwanese Immigrants Americans
Bachelor’s degree 36% 52%
Postgraduate degree 34% 9%
Source: Cited in Chen, 2004
According to the U.S. Census Bureau (2000), the median household
income of Taiwanese immigrants in Los Angeles County is $50,439, compared
with $46,503 for immigrants from China, and $42,189 for all residents.
Theoretical Framework
The motivation for doing this research was the crucial need to understand
nonformal education as an important mechanism for promoting fluent
11
bilingualism and biculturalism in Chinese immigrant communities. I approach
the issues of nonformal Chinese e ducation and ethnic preservation through the
conceptual lens of selective acculturation. I also use practice theory to analyze
nonformal Chinese education as the product of the individual’ s social dispositions
(habitus) intersecting with the dynamics and structures of particular fields (e.g.,
the field of education).
Acculturation and Assimilation
The concepts of acculturation and assimilation are crucial to
understanding immigrants’ adaptation to the host society. The distinction
between these two terms is based on the differences between culture and society.
Acculturation refers to learning a second language and culture, whereas
assimilation denotes a newcomer’s move out of ethnic associations and
institutions and into their mainstream counterparts in the host society.
Acculturation is a prerequisite of assimilation, because immigrants must undergo
the process of learning the new language and culture in order to assimilate into the
host society.
Additive Acculturation for Empowerment
Arguing that multiculturalism should be the norm for human experience
and that language minority children should acquire the English language at no
expense to their native language and ethnic identity, education scholar Margaret
Gibson (1995) proposes “additive acculturation” as an important strategy and
policy recommendation for the academic improvement of ethnic minority children.
12
Fred Genesee (1994) asserts that to better serve linguistic minority students,
public schools should adopt the “whole child” approach built upon additive
acculturation, in which social, culture, and psychological dimensions of
development are all taken into account.
Jim Cummins (2001a) is another education scholar who advocates
additive acculturation for the empowerment of language minority students. He
argues that the notion of empowerment in the context of educating ethnic minority
children involves both cognitive/academic and social/emotional factors:
Students who are empowered by their school experiences develop the
ability, confidence, and motivation to succeed academically. They
participate competently in instruction as a result of having developed a
confident cultural identity as well as appropriate school -based knowledge
and interactional structure… Students who are disempowered or “disabled”
by their school experiences do not develop this type of cognitive/academic
and social/emotional foundation (p. 179).
Considerable research data suggest that, for language minority children, the extent
to which students’ language and culture are incorporated into the school program
constitutes a significant predictor of academic success (see Cummins, 2001b).
Cummins points out further that the school success of language minority students
appears to reflect both a more solid cognitive/academic foundation developed
through intensive instruction in the primary language and a reinforcement of their
cultural identity (Cummins, 1994).
6
6
Research shows that L1 and L2 (second language) cognitive/academic language proficiency
(CALP) are interdependent. In other words, previous learning of literary-related functions of in the
first language will predict future learning of these functions in the second language (Cummins,
2001b, p. 152).
13
Based on Cummins’s definition of empowerment, I add one more
component to this notion: the political component. The political dimension of
empowerment refers to the ability to mobilize and organize resources to enhance
individuals’ or a group’s status in society. Conceptualizing resources (or capital)
as sources of power is one of Bourdieu’s contributions to the soci ology of practice.
Selective Acculturation
The notion of selective acculturation is similar to, but more complicated
than, Gibson’s “additive acculturation.” Selective acculturation refers to an
acculturation pattern defined as immigrants’ “paced learning of the host culture
along with retention of significant elements of the culture of origin” (Rumbaut &
Portes, 2001, p. 308). However, selective acculturation requires a cohesive ethnic
community. That is, the existence of a solidary immigrant community of
substantial size is a structural precondition for selective acculturation. In this
study, selective acculturation is redefined as a self-empowerment tactic of
Chinese immigrants. Selective acculturation empowers ethnic minority children
by giving them a clear sense of roots (ethnic identity). Moreover, selective
acculturation is commonly associated with fluent bilingualism in the second
generation. Research shows that fluent bilingualism enhances family harmony,
significantly increases children’s self-esteem and educational aspirations, and
reduces depression (Espiritu & Wolf, 2001; Portes & Rumbaut, 2001; Rumbaut &
Portes, 2001; Zhou, 2001). Thus, American sociologists predict that additive and
selective acculturation, rather than subtractive or indiscriminant acculturation,
14
will become the normative path to social mobility (Portes & Zhou, 1993; Zhou,
2001).
Fluent Bilingualism versus Limited Bilingualism
In investigating the linguistic outcomes of children of immigrants in the
United States, social scientists have classified bilingualism into two types:
fluent/true/additive bilingualism and limited/quasi/subtractive bilingualism,
according to whether the acquisition of the new language is accompanied by a
loss of the native one. Fluent bilingualism is a consequence of additive
acculturation, whereas limited bilingualism results from the subtractive form of
acculturation.
Significance of the Study
Although social scientists have acknowledged the positive meaning of
ethnic retention and consider selective acculturation to be the cultural norm of
immigrants’ adaptation to the host society, the mechanisms through which
ethnicity was transmitted from generation to generation are unclear (Alba & Nee,
1997; Archdeacon, 1983; Zhou, 1997). This dissertation contributes to
illuminating Taiwanese immigrants’ ethnic maintenance process by examining an
educational practice aimed at cultural transmission. Moreover, since true
bilingual education for language minority children in California is no longer
possible following the passage of Proposition 227, this study establishes a
foundation for additive bilingual education in the United States within the private
15
sector by presenting the case of a successful weekend Chinese school that aims at
ethnic preservation. This study illuminates an alternative to and an economic
model for maintenance bilingual education. It shows that true bilingual education
in the United States requires collaboration between the public and private sectors,
between the government and the civil society.
Overview of the Chapters
This study is presented in six chapters. Chapter 1 provides an overview of
the study and introduces the research background of the study. Chapter 2 contains
a literature review that covers three fields: theories of assimilation, assimilation
and ethnicity, and assimilation and education. Chapter 3 is comprised of two
parts. The first part introduces two conceptual lenses used to examine the cultural
practice of nonformal ethnic education by Taiwan immigrants: selective
acculturation (a notion proposed by contemporary American sociologists) and
Bourdieu’s practice theory. The perspective of selective acculturation is tied to a
set of concepts: group/ethnic solidarity, ethnic maintenance, fluent bilingualism,
parenting strategy, and empowerment tactics. Practice theory shows that human
action (practice) is not a product of either the person (human agency) or the
structure (structural preconditions) alone but rather a product of the dialectic
occurring between them. The second part of this chapter describes the research
design, methods, research questions, and data analysis. Chapter 4 presents the
significance of ethnic preservation from the perspective of the grassroots activists,
16
that is, the adult participant-stakeholders of the Chinese school under study.
Chapter 5 deals with the school experiences of NECA, including the resources
and the physical manifestation of these resources that constitute the Chinese
school. Lastly, chapter 6 offers a summary, discu ssion, and conclusion of the
study.
17
CHAPTER 2
LITERATURE REVIEW
A growing body of research challenges the conventional wisdom of
assimilation ideology, which asserts that immigrants have consistently striven to
assimilate into the social mainstream by replacing their old-country culture with
the Anglo-dominant culture for the sake of social mobility. This mode of thinking
created the myth of assimilation, in which assimilation was conceptualized as a
zero-sum game in which ethnicity acted as a barrier to newcomers’ successful
integration into the host society. In reality, this argument does not hold, as
demonstrated by some common acculturation scenarios.
A 1998 McKinsey analysis of the data on cultural segmentation of
Hispanics shows a tendency for H ispanics to simply acculturate rather than fully
assimilate.
7
Instead of assimilating into society by replacing their native customs
with the Anglo-dominant culture, Hispanics have largely preserved their cultural
traits while adopting a complementary set of skills from the mainstream, a process
known as (additive or selective) acculturation. According to the McKinsey
analysis, 61 percent of Hispanics choose to be bicultural (acculturated), 29
percent have remained monocultural, and only 10 percent are assimilated. Above
all, the acculturated group has achieved economic parity with the assimilated
7
McKinsey is a research institution and management consulting firm (see
http://www.mckinsey.com).
18
group. The average household income among the acculturated group was
$36,100, roughly equal to that of their assimilated counterparts ($37,000) but
significantly higher than that of isolated Hispanics ($20,500) who did not
acculturate at all (Magana, 2003).
One must also consider that ethnic language education provided by
religious institutions or ethnic associations for the second generation and intended
to ensure ethnic preservation is very common among Asian immigrants,
especially East Asian immigrants, the so-called model minority. Ethnic churches
that provide Korean language classes for children of Korean immigrants play an
important role in Korean American communities. Chinese immigrants send their
children to Chinese language schools established by their co-ethnics. Southeast
Asian immigrants, such as the Vietnamese, have also established ethnic language
classes in their communities for the sake of ethnic preservation (Saito, 1999).
8
Clearly, assimilation should not be seen as a zero-sum game. Nor is
complete assimilation the only route for successful integration into American
society. In this chapter, I review the relevant literature underlying the discourse
on “the paradox of assimilation.”
8
I highlight the experiences of Hispanic and Asian immigrants because these two groups
constitute the main body of contemporary immigrants in the United States.
19
The Discourse of Assimilation
Assimilation and Acculturation
Acculturation and assimilation are two essential notions in the
investigation of immigrants’ adaptation to the host society. In the conventional
usage of assimilation and acculturation as defined by the University of Chicago,
the distinction between these two terms is based on differences between culture
and society. Acculturation refers to minority groups’ adaptation of “the cultural
traits of the host society...Assimilation … refers to the newcomers’ move out
of … ethnic associations and other institutions into the non-ethnic equivalents
accessible to them in that same host society” (Gans, 1997, p. 877). Gans further
proposes the “rapid acculturation/slow assimilation” thesis— similar to Park and
Burgess’s (1924) “rapid accommodation/gradual assimilation” thesis— and points
out that ethnic minorities can acculturate on their own. They cannot assimilate
unless they are given permission to enter “American” groups or institutions,
because power and resources are controlled by the mainstream people. Thus,
assimilation is always slower than acculturation. Put simply, acculturation is the
first step of the adaptation process, whereas assimilation is the final stage of the
same process (Gordon, 1964; Portes & Rumbaut, 1996). Acculturation is the
process of adjustment, and it is a prerequisite of assimilation. Assimilation is the
completion or a possible result of acculturation.
20
Theories of Assimilation
Within the discourse of assimilation, there are two schools of thought: the
classical account and the contemporary account. Assimilation was conceptualized
in the classical account as a progressive and irreversible process of socioeconomic
advancement that all immigrant groups undergo, as well as the only route to
upward social mobility (Park, 1950). Yet scholars of post-1965 immigration
observed different patterns of adaptation and distinct assimilation outcomes
among contemporary immigrants, and thus proposed the theory of “segmented
assimilation,” a more contemporary account.
9
The Classical Account and Its Criticism
Park and Burgess (1924), Gordon (1964), and Gans (1973) are the major
contributors to the conventional linear model of assimilation.
Robert Park: The Race Relations Cycle
Park and Burgess (1924) define assimilation as:
A process of interpenetration and fusion in which persons and groups
acquire the memories, sentiments, and attitudes of other persons or groups,
and, by sharing their experience and history, are incorporated with them in
a common cultural life (p. 735).
Park (1950) contends that assimilation is the final stage of a “race-
relations cycle.” In his view, intergroup contacts regularly go through a race-
relations cycle of contact, competition, accommodation, and eventual assimilation,
leading to the reduction of social and cultural heterogeneity.
9
By “contemporary,” I mean those immigrants who came to the United States after the passage of
the immigration and Naturalization Amendment Ac t of 1965.
21
Milton Gordon: A Multidimensional Formulation
To capture the complexity of the adaptation process, Gordon (1964)
distinguishes seven dimensions of assimilation: cultural, structural, marital,
identificational, attitude -receptional, behavior -receptional, and civic. Cultural
assimilation and structural assimilation are Gordon’s terms for acculturation and
assimilation. He defined acculturation as newcomers learning and embracing the
American “core culture”— middle-class white Anglo-Saxon protestant cultural
patterns. Assimilation or structural assimilation was defined by Gordon as
“entrance of the minority group into the social cliques, clubs, and institutions of
the core society at the primary group level” (p. 80).
Herbert Gans: Straight-Line Assimilation
The notion of “straight-line assimilation” originated with Warner and
Srole, although the term was popularized by Gans. Warner and Srole (1945), in
their study of assimilation among eight European-origin immigrant groups in
Massachusetts, explicitly link upward social mobility to assimilation. They
conceptualized assimilation as a process in which minority groups unlearn their
“inferior” cultural traits in order to successfully learn the way of life necessary for
full acceptance by the mainstream society.
Influenced by Warner and Srole’s thesis of straight-line assimilation, Gans
(1973) argues that assimilation is continually refined by immigrants and will be
achieved in successive generations, if not by the first generation of immigrants.
In Gans’s theory of assimilation, “generation” is the motor for ethnic change.
22
Criticism of Linear Models
Park’s thesis emphasizing the reduction of social and cultural
heterogeneity as the natural process of assimilation neglects the structural
constraints for minority groups’ integration and acceptance into the social
mainstream (Zhou, 1997). Scholars have pointed out four limitations to Gordon’s
theory of assimilation. First, he omits secondary-structural assimilation. Second,
his theory of assimilation overlooks the issue of power. Third, his
multidimensional typology is oriented toward a micro-sociological account of
assimilation that fails to recognize the distinction between individual and group
levels of ethnic change. Fourth, acculturation is not necessarily one-directional.
Mutual influences from mainstream and ethnic cultures sometimes lead to cultural
hybridization. For example, ethnic influences on mainstream American culture
are apparent in such aspects as food and music (Alba & Nee, 1997; Feagin &
Feagin, 1999).
Critics of Gans’s “straight-line assimilation” have argued that the
generational time frame is overly endogenous and ahistorical, and thus overlooks
contextual influences on ethnic change (Glazer & Moynihan, 1970; Yancey,
Eriksen, & Juliani, 1976; Conzen et al., 1992). In recognition of this criticism,
Gans (1992a, 1992b) modified his approach, proposing the “bumpy-line theory of
ethnicity.” He asserts that acculturation or Americanization has continued among
immigrants. In his analysis of “second generation decline,” Gans (1992a)
considers unfavorable contextual factors— such as racial discrimination, exposu re
23
to the alternative behavioral models of the inner city, and shrinkage of the labor
market— as bumps on the way to eventual assimilation into a “non -ethnic”
America. He implies that “delayed acculturation” should be expected for some
second-generation groups, such as the children of dark-skinned, poor, and
unskilled immigrants.
The views of “progressive improvement” or “progressive socioeconomic
advancement” in the host society in the classical accounts of assimilation have
faced great challenges— ideologically and empirically— in American scholarship
of ethnicity since the 1960s. Old cultural ways, such as maintenance of native
language and ethnic enclaves, norms, and values, were considered disadvantages
from the classical assimilationist standpoint (Child, 1970; Warner & Srole, 1945;
Wirth, 1956). In fact, ethnic languages, culture, and enclaves could be advantages
for minority groups, becoming “ethnic capital” and functioning as sources of
empowerment for ethnic minority groups (Borjas, 2001, p. 146).
Empirically, a compelling body of evidence points to a negative
correlation between Americanization/acculturation and assimilation outcomes,
whether measured in terms of infant health, adolescent health and risk behavior,
or educational aspirations and achievement (see Rumbaut, 1997). These new
findings have led contemporary American sociologists to reexamine the notion of
assimilation.
24
The Contemporary Account: Segmented Assimilation
Conventional immigration researchers viewed assimilation as a straight-
line advancement into American social mainstream. However, a new generation
of ethnic scholars contends that contemporary immigrants and their children are
undergoing a process of segmented assimilation where outcomes vary across
immigrant minorities and direct movement into the American mainstream
represents just one alternative (Portes & Rumbaut, 2001). In other words,
contemporary immigrants and their children follow different pathways of
acculturation, leading to diverse assimilation outcomes. Why different patterns of
adaptation emerge among contemporary immigrants and how these patterns lead
to ethnic stratification are the main concerns of segmented assimilation.
Three Perspectives on Ethnic Stratification
Social scientists’ studies of ethnic stratification can be classified into three
approaches: the human capital approach, the structural approach, and interaction
effects. Human capital theories are advanced by economists who focus primarily
or exclusively on individual human capital (see Borjas, 2001). The structural
approach emphasizes the extent to which immigrants adopt host country ways,
arguing that the benefits of adopting these ways depend on the social and
economic structure of the host country. Shibutani and Kwan (1965) argue that the
way an ethnic minority is treated in society depends “not on what he is,” but on
the “manner in which he is defined” (p. 27). “Interaction effects” form the core of
segmented assimilation theory, which seeks to explain why different patterns of
25
adaptation emerge among contemporary immigrants and how these patterns lead
to convergence or divergence (Zhou 1997, p. 984). Segmented assimilation
theorists argue that the determinants of assimilation outcomes are manifold,
including both individual factors and contextual facts. Individual features
influencing immigrant adaptation include age, education, occupational skills,
family class status, and proficiency in English. Contextual factors, according to
Portes and Rumbaut (2001), pertain to the social environment that receives them,
including official policies of the host government (exclusion, passive acceptance,
or active encouragement), attitudes of the native population (sympathy,
indifference, or rejection), the economic condition and structure of the host
society, and the presence and size of a co-ethnic community. Segmented
assimilation theorists argue that these two sets of determinants (the individual and
contextual factors), however, are in themselves of minimum importance and that
different assimilation outcomes are the result of the interaction between these two
sets of variables
Three Patterns of Acculturation
Research shows that immigrant parents’ ability to keep up with and guide
their children’s acculturation is critical in determining children’s assimilation
outcomes (Smith-Hefner, 1999). Based on parent-child relations, sociologists
developed a typology of acculturation in which three patterns of acculturation
were present (Portes & Rumbaut, 1996/2001).
26
Consonant acculturation occurs when either parents and children learn the
language and culture at approximately the same pace and adjust their behavior
accordingly or both parents and children remain unacculturated. The first situation
is often found in families with high human capital in the first generation, whereas
the second situation is found in families who regard their presence in the host
country as temporary.
Dissonant acculturation takes place when children’s learning of the
English language and American ways outstrips that of their parents. Parents in
this situation often feel powerless to discipline their children, possibly resulting in
parent-child role reversal. Working-class immigrants and those situated in a
negative context of reception are likely to move along this path because of their
own poverty. Their poverty reduces the authority of their directives, which are
further weakened by a lack of external validation. This path is marked by sharply
higher levels of family conflict because of the attenuation of parental authority
and control, as well as children’s diminished regard for their cultural origins.
Between these two extremes is selective acculturation. This path is
characterized by paced learning of the host culture across generations,
accompanied by retention of significant elements of ethnic culture and a high
level of family integration into a cohesive co-ethnic community. Selective
acculturation is commonly built upon densely knit ethnic networks. It is also
commonly associated with bilingualism among the second generation (Portes &
Rumbaut, 1996/2001).
27
Proponents of segmented assimilation argue that none of the
aforementioned patterns is decisive in terms of adaptive outcome unless one takes
into account interaction effects with a set of contextual factors (Portes & Rumbaut,
1996, p. 252). For example, consonance acculturation does not guarantee positive
adaptive outcomes despite parents’ high human capital; downward assimilation is
still possible when racial discrimination blocks the entry of a minority group into
the social mainstream. This triggers “reactive ethnicity” in the second
generation— namely, “the product of confrontation with an adverse native
mainstream and the rise of defensive identities and solidarities to counter it”
(Portes & Rumbaut, 2001, p. 284). Dissonant acculturation does not necessarily
lead to downward assimilation; however, it does increase its probability.
Selective acculturation is the only route that guarantees a desirable adaptation
outcome among the second generation. Selective acculturation is impossible
without a sizeable co-ethnic community to act as a buffer between immigrants and
the unfavorable context of reception.
Challenges to Second-Generation Adaptation
Racial discrimination, restructured American labor markets, and the inner-
city counterculture are the three major barriers to upward assimilation of the
second generation (Gans, 1997). Because the majority of contemporary
immigrants are non-whites from Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean, they are
more vulnerable to racial and ethnic discrimination than their European
predecessors. The transformation of the American economy is also a major
28
challenge to second-generation adaptation. Social scientists indicate that the
American labor market has been transformed into a bifurcated, service-oriented,
technology-driven job market in which the middle zone that channels immigrants
from low to high has been shrinking (Portes, 1995; Sassen, 1991). Thus, the
second generation without higher education who refuse to take menial jobs such
as their parents hold experience downward assimilation because of a lack of
economic niches (Gans, 1992a). Moreover, immigrant families tend to settle
disproportionately in urban and coastal locales. First-generation immigrants are
especially likely to live in metropolitan areas. Except for a few more affluent
groups, such as Filipinos, Chinese, Koreans, and Asian Indians, who show a
pattern of suburban residence, the majority of first-generation immigrants are
working poor who aggregate in cities (Jensen, 2001). An unexpected
consequence of urban settlement is that immigrant children come into close
contact with an inner-city subculture inimical to educational achievement. The
exposure to the central -city youth culture is a major barrier to a desirable
adaptation outcome among the second generation. It also poses a daily challenge
to parents.
Rumbaut and Portes (2001) argue that selective acculturation protects
children of immigrants from the psychological trauma of racism because
discrimination can be “filtered through ethnic networks and confronted with
family and community support”; the current bifurcated American labor markets
are “met with parental guidance backed by family and community resources”;
29
inner-city subcultures detrimental to educational achievement are
“counterbalanced by countervailing messages based on both family aspirations
and community networks” (p. 306).
Herbert Gans (1997) attributes the emergence of two schools of thought in
the discourse of assimilation to two sets of researchers, who have studied different
types of immigrants. He argues that most researchers who study European
immigrants who came to this country a century ago have a mainstream
background. These researchers take no personal interest i n the survival of an
ethnic group and very few of them speak immigrant languages. Examining
immigrants’ experiences from the outsiders’ perspective, they see only public
acculturation rather than private ethnic retention. However, many of today’s
sociologists are “insiders” who study their own ethnic groups. They are able to
observe immigrant groups up close, and thus see more cultural retention. In
addition, European immigrants came to America at a time of rapid economic
growth. Though some worked in ethnic enclaves and never had to learn English,
many were employed in the larger American economy. Economic growth
encourages movement out of an ethnic enclave. This in turn encourages
assimilation. Today, when the economy is growing much less slowly than a
century ago, there is less economic assimilation.
30
Assimilation and Ethnicity or Nationality
Contemporary immigrants are highly diverse in terms of national and
socioeconomic origins, phenotypic traits, and motivations for migration. This
diversity sets them apart from their white European counterparts who joined
American society in the late nineteenth century and the first few decades of the
twentieth century. The majority of contemporary immigrants (those who came to
the United States after passage of the 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act)
are nonwhites from Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean, and their
socioeconomic backgrounds cover a wide spectrum, including manual laborers,
uprooted refugees, professionals, entrepreneurs, and even capitalists.
Social scientists have identified ethnicity as a significant predictor of
adaptation outcomes of the 1.5 and second generations. For example, Steinberg
(1996), in his research on adolescent development, found ethnicity to be just as
important as social class and gender in shaping the everyday lives of American
children, both in and out of school. For instance, Asian American students
outperformed European-American students, who in turn outperformed African
American and Latino students by significant margins. The ethnic difference
remained consistent across nine high schools in the study, after controlling for
variables such as social class, family structure, and place of birth of parents.
Portes and McLeod (1996), using the data of National Education Longitudinal
Studies (NELS), reported that the negative effect of disadvantaged group
membership among immigrant children was reinforced rather than reduced in
31
suburban schools, but that the positive effects of advantaged group membership
remained significant even in inner-city schools. To date, every multivariate
analysis based on the data of Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS)
has identified nationality or ethnicity as a significant predictor of virtually every
adaptation outcome for the second generation (see Rumbaut & Portes, 2001).
A Nationality-Specific Examination
Researchers have observed the three patterns of adaptation most likely to
occur among contemporary immigrants and their offspring. In the words of Portes
and Zhou (1993), “One of them replicates the time-honored portrayal of growing
acculturation and parallel integration into the white middle class; the second leads
straight into the underclass; still a third associates rapid economic advancement
with deliberate preservation of the immigrant community’s values and tight
solidarity” (p. 82). The following nation-specific cases demonstrate these three
patterns of adaptation.
Pattern 1
Filipino immigrants’ adaptation experience of rapid integration into the
American middle class approximates the first pattern of assimilation because of
their high human capital combined with a neutral context of reception. English
fluency and the considerable economic attainment among the first generation
often lead Filipino families to the path of consonant acculturation in the initial
state of their course of adaptation. However, severe conflicts often occur between
parents attempting to maintain traditional values and ambitions and their
32
thoroughly acculturated children. Empirical evidence shows that in the case of
Filipino youths, this generational dissonance is positively correlated with
psychological maladjustment, including lower self-esteem and frequent
depression (Espiritu & Wolf, 2001).
Pattern 2 and Variation
Ethnic minorities of Mexican, Haitian, and Nicaraguan descent have
formed a new “rainbow underclass” in American society because of their lack of
professional or entrepreneurial skills, aggravated by unfavorable governmental
reception and persistent discrimination (Rumbaut & Portes, 2001).
Mexican Americans represent the largest legal and illegal immigrant
population in the United States. Their chances of upward social mobility at a
group level are fairly slim because of their low human capital and persistent
poverty, combined with an adversarial context of reception (Buriel, 1984; Jensen,
2001; Lopez & Stanton -Salazar, 2001; Stanton-Salazar, 2001; Valencia, 1991). A
country-specific comparison shows that Mexicans have the highest poverty rate
(for both adults and children) among all immigrant groups. Adult Mexican
immigrants had the lowest educational level of any major U.S. ethnic group
(Jensen, 2001). In California, Hispanics have the poorest socioeconomic
outcomes of all ethnic groups; and Mexicans have the lowest median family
income among all Hispanic groups. Above all, Mexican Americans’
socioeconomic condition, by many measures, has worsened in the last thirty years
(Reyes, 2001). Americanization is feared by working-class Mexican immigrant
33
parents, for their settlement in central cities inevitably exposes their children to an
inner-city subculture detrimental to educational achievement. The children of
these immigrants are trapped into a forced-choice dilemma: if they strive to meet
their parents’ expectations for academic achievement, they are likely to be
ostracized by peers as “acting white” or “turnovers,” whereas if they bow to peer
pressure and adopt inner-city American ways, they will likely experience
downward assimilation into the bottom stratum of society (Gibson, 1989).
Haitians’ adaptation experiences tell a similar story. Not only are they one
of the largest recent immigrant groups, but they also form the largest group of
black immigrants in the United States. As a group, Haitians encounter threefold
discrimination in this country. They are faced with a hostile social context
because they possess low human capital and are black minorities speaking Haitian
Creole, a language Americans generally cannot understand (Stepick, 1992;
Stepick et al., 2001). Empirical evidence shows that second-generation Mexicans
and Haitians have high rates of child poverty (Jensen, 2001). Figure 1 shows the
vicious cycle both groups experience in terms of their adaptation pattern.
Figure 1
Figure 1
Low social economic status of the first-generationà povertyà settlement
in urban areas (put children into close contact with inner-city
subculture) + weak ethnic communities + racial discrimination+
generational dissonance
àLow educational achievement of the second-generation
and bleak occupational prospects.
34
Large numbers of Nicaraguans migrated to South Florida in the 1980s to
escape the Sandinista revolution. Coming to this country for the sake of freedom,
Nicaraguans consider themselves to be freedom fighters rather than seekers of
economic advancement. However, as people from a small country with little
military and strategic significance, Nicaraguans have never gained the kind of
favorable treatment bestowed by the U.S. government upon other refugees (e.g.,
Cubans and Vietnamese). Nicaraguans’ petitions for legal residence have
consistently been rejected at the federal, state, and local levels (Fernandez-Kelly
& Curran, 2001). A country-specific portrait shows that among the first
generation, Nicaraguans— along with M exicans, Laotians and Cambodians,
Salvadorans, and Dominicans— are the most disadvantaged workers in terms of
occupational attainment, with these groups most likely to occupy menial positions
in the labor market (Jensen, 2001).
According to Kasinitz, Battle, and Miyares (2001), Jamaican and other
West Indian immigrants are subject to racial discrimination like that experienced
by Haitians because of their skin color. However, for West Indians, racial
discrimination is partially balanced by parents’ educational and occupational
credentials and their fluent and distinctly accented English. Jamaicans, along
with Cubans, Filipinos, Chinese, Koreans, and Asian Indians, are more likely to
have professional occupations and less likely to hold low-paying positions in the
American labor market (Jensen, 2001). Although a sizable proportion of
immigrants from the West Indies are of middle-class professional origin, this does
35
not insulate their children from American street culture. In Miami, only a small
proportion of West Indians reside in the suburbs; the majority settles in
impoverished black communities. Kasinitz et al. (2001) indicate that no matter
how much West Indian immigrants may want to maintain distance from the
African-American population, the lack of white recognition of them as a distinct
group combined with the fact that black immigrants share schools and
neighborhoods with black natives eventually obscure such differences.
Vickerman (1998) also points out that sometimes West Indian immigrants identify
with African Americans through reactive solidarity, usually after encounters with
whites expose them to racism.
West Indian assimilation is a contested terrain where downward pressures
stemming from racial discrimination are countered by the intellectual and material
resources of families and their commitment to preserve their culture and maintain
ethnic ties. The opportunities of West Indian immigrants’ offspring are, by and
large, similar to those of the African American middle class— white-collar and
upper-level service sector employment— because of the absence of ethnic
enclaves as a springboard or safety net (Kasinitz et al., 2001).
Pattern 3
Cuban, Vietnamese, Korean, and Chinese or Taiwanese immigrants’ paths
of assimilation approximate the third pattern because of the strong co-ethnic
communities they create. Strong immigrant communities are characterized by the
spatial concentration of an ethnic group, which facilitates ethnic maintenance and
36
the development of ethnic “economic enclaves” — a broad range of highly
differentiated entrepreneurial activities (Portes & Bach, 1985), such as the well-
established ethnic economy of Korean Americans in Los Angeles (Light &
Bonacich, 1988).
Cubans are the largest single group in the Greater Miami area and the
most influential one. There were four major migration waves of Cuban
immigration: the Golden Exile (1960–64), airlift (1965–74), Mariel boatlift
(1980–81), and post-Mariel exodus (1982–90). Those who came to the United
States during the first two waves of migration were mainly Cuban elites and their
families. Sizable representation from Cuba’s lower socioeconomic sectors and its
nonwhite population immigrated in the last two waves. The Cuban elites who
came to the United States during the “Golden Exile” period laid a solid
entrepreneurial base for their co-ethnic communities in Miami. This facilitated
the incorporation of less-educated Cubans into the U.S. labor market, through
ethnic networks with a familiar language and culture (Perez, 2001; Portes, 1987;
Portes & Stepick 1993). Most Cuban immigrants thus experienced rapid
socioeconomic assimilation. The socioeconomic achievement of the first
generation and a cohesive co-ethnic community has consolidated parental
authority in the family and fended off the threat of downward assimilation of the
second generation.
The U.S. government provided extensive financial assistance for the
displaced Cuban elite to facilitate their resettlement in and economic adjustment
37
to the new country. The favorable treatment that Cubans have received from the
U.S. government is not limited to financial programs; local governments also
assisted the children of Cuban immigrants with bilingual education programs. In
1963, the first true bilingual program in modern America was established for
children of Cuban immigrants in Florida’s Dade County (Castro, 1992).
Although bilingual education was terminated by the English Only movement ten
years later, Cubans compensated by developing a system of bilingual schools.
Enrollment in these private schools, secular or religious, shields Cuban American
children from both outside discrimination and the influence of inner-city culture
(Portes, 1995). According to data of CILS, Cubans are comparatively advantaged,
boasting the lowest child poverty rate of any immigrant group, and Cuban
American adolescents in Miami show the highest levels of self-esteem and lowest
perceptions of discrimination (Perez, 2001).
Vietnamese immigrants also benefited from the supportive official policies
of the U.S. government when they entered this country as refugees in the mid-
1970s and 1980s. Although Cuban and Vietnamese immigrant parents may not
reach advanced professional positions in the host society, their success in small
business combined with a dense social network provide a supportive environment
for the educational and occupational advancement of the second generation.
Among the minority groups sampled by CILS, the Vietnamese experience the
most dramatic drop in the poverty rate from the first to the second generation
(Jensen, 2001). Zhou (2001) attributes the compelling results for children of
38
Vietnamese immigrants growing up in San Diego to the selective acculturation
promoted by their well-structured co-ethnic community, which effectively shields
the children from the detrimental influence of the inner-city counterculture.
While sociologists suggest that immigrants who live in ethnic enclaves
generally do better than those who do not because the “warm embrace” of the
enclave helps immigrants escape the discrimination they would otherwise
encounter in the labor market, economists have observed that residential
segregation does not benefit immigrants. Borjas (2001) found a negative
correlation between the rate of economic assimilation and the geographic
clustering of immigrant groups. He argues that geographical clustering of
immigrants may hinder the move to better jobs by reducing the incentive to learn
the culture and language of the American labor market.
Interestingly, the data of CILS show a wide gap in academic performance
between children of earlier waves of Cuban refugees and those of Mariel and
post-Mariel immigrants. The offspring of the first two waves of Cuban refugees
display superior school performance. The data of CILS also show that private
school enrollment and academic achievement are positively and significantly
correlated in the case of Cuban American youths. However, multivariate analysis
suggests that enclave private schools positively affect school performance
primarily as a result of their socioeconomic characteristics and academic
standards and not because of ethnic homogeneity (Perez, 2001, p. 120).
39
Chinese- and Taiwanese-born adults in the United States are immigrants
with high human capital. Chinese and Taiwanese as well as those born in Asian
countries that do not produce refugees, such as Korea and India, have high
educational and occupational attainment (Jensen, 2001). Chinese and Taiwanese
Americans are labeled a “model minority” because of their overrepresentation in
higher education. Cheng and Yang (1996) identified “culture, family, selectivity
of immigration, and the receiving context” as contributing factors to the
remarkable educational achievement of Asian Americans (p. 316). This is
particularly true in the case of the immigrant groups from East Asian countries—
China, Taiwan, Korea, and Japan— which show a strong Confucian influence.
East Asian immigrants subscribe to a culture-wide belief that success comes
through education , leading to a reverence for learning and scholarly achievement.
The belief in social mobility through educational success plays a crucial role in
shaping parental behavior. Chinese parents are more likely than white parents to
use their resources to enhance their children’s education— for instance, by
assigning additional homework tasks, providing a place to study in the home,
rewarding children for doing well in school, and investing in private lessons
(Cheng & Yang, 1996; Kao, 1995; Schneider & Lee, 1990). This produces the
high academic achievements of Chinese and Taiwanese American youth.
Research data show that an intact family (the presence of both parents in
the household) is an important correlate of the social and economic well-being of
children. In comparisons of immigrant groups, Chinese, Korean, and Indian
40
children show the highest rates of living with both parents (Jensen, 2001). These
groups are also relatively advantaged in having a low child poverty rate.
The selectivity of highly educated Asian immigrants since the 1960s is
another important factor in the educational and occupational success of Chinese
and Taiwanese Americans. Post-1965 Chinese immigrants stand in sharp contrast
to their counterparts who came to the United States before World War II in terms
of human capital. Highly skilled immigrants have dominated the flow of Indians,
Koreans, Filipinos, and Chinese (especially the Taiwanese) since the 1960s. The
proportion of the highly skilled immigrants in each ethnic group increased
noticeably after the passage of the Immigration Act of 1990 (Rumbaut, 1997).
The transformation of the reception context from a very hostile
environment to a neutral one is another important factor for the occupational
mobility of Asian Americans, laying the foundation for the educational success of
their offspring. It is important to note that the academic and occupational success
of Chinese Americans is a contemporary phenomenon. It was not until after
World War II that the opportunity structure in the United States was opened to
Asian Americans, and the ban on Chinese immigration to the United States was
only lifted with the passage of the Immigration and Naturalization Amendment
Act of 1965.
41
Assimilation and Education
Research data on the school performance of minority students in
California show that immigrant parents’ “psychocultural status” is strongly
predictive of their children’s grade point averages (Rumbaut, 1995, p. 52).
Specifically, research shows that in addition to “objective factors,” such as
parents’ income and the size of the household, two sets of subjective variables are
strongly associated with the GPA of ethnic minorities: the level of psychological
distress of the mother (the higher this score, the lower the student’s GPA); and the
parents’ score on an index measuring their ethnic resilience and reaffirmation (the
higher this score, the higher the GPA of their children). This score was a summed
index of the following items:
1. Their ethnic group stays together as a community to preserve their own
culture and identity even as they adapt to the U.S. economy to “make a
living”;
2. they stick together as a group for social support and mutual assistance;
3. they live in co-ethnic neighborhoods; and
4. they would not return to their homeland even if there were a change in
government. (Rumbaut, 1995, pp. 51–52)
Thus immigrant parents’ ethnic resilience or affirmation and their children’ s
academic achievements are positively correlated.
A great deal of recent research, quantitative and qualitative, shows that
assimilation reduces achievement. For example, research on the educational
achievement of 80,000 students in San Diego Unified School District shows that,
except for Hispanics, all non -English-speaking immigrant minorities
outperformed their English-only co-ethnics (Rumbaut, 1997). Research data also
42
show a negative association between length of residence in the United States and
school performance (see Fuligni, 1997; Gibson, 1989; Kao & Tienda, 1995; Ogbu,
1974; Portes & MacLeod, 1996; Rumbaut & Ima, 1988; Rumbaut, 1997; Suarez-
Orozco & Suarez-Orozco, 1995). Conversely, education literature shows that,
regardless of their socioeconomic origins, the ethnic minority children who
perform well in school are those who grew up in families or communities that are
strongly committed to retaining their culture, values, and customs. This is
documented in four studies.
Mexican Americans. Matute-Bianchi’s (1991) ethnographic case study of
Mexican students in a California high school illustrates the sharp contrast between
first-generation immigrant children and the more acculturated Chicanos in terms
of behavior model and academic performance. The more acculturated Chicanos
and Cholos were generally regarded by teachers as “irresponsible,”
“disrespectful,” “mistrusting,” “apathetic,” and “less motivated,” and their poor
school performance was attributed to these traits. The first-generation Mexican
immigrant children, who remained firmly under the guidance of parents and
extended families, were generally regarded as serious and well-behaved students.
Sikh Americans. In her ethnographic study of the Punjabi Sikhs— a group
of Indian youths from the rural Punjab— in a relatively poor rural area in northern
California, Gibson (1989) reports outstanding school performance despite local
white residents’ extremely hostile attitude. Gibson attributes Punjabi youths’
school success to deliberate cultivation of ethnicity, particularly to parental
43
pressure put on children to adhere to their own immigrant families and avoid
Americanization. For Sikhs, becoming Americanized means forgetting one’s
roots and adopting disparaged traits of the majority, such as leaving home at age
eighteen, making decisions without parental consent, dancing, and dating. At the
same time, parents urge children to abide by school rules, ignore racist remarks
and avoid fighting, and acquire full proficiency in English.
Vietnamese Americans. Vietnamese American children who are the least
assimilated into American youth subculture tend to show the highest levels of
academic performance. In their research on Vietnamese immigrants in New
Orleans, Zhou and Bankston (1998) show how underclass Vietnamese families
have managed to maintain close generational ties and forge strong ethnic
institutions centered on the Catholic church. Most children in this community
excel academically. These two scholars attribute Vietnamese children’s high
educational achievement to the tight integration of this community and children’s
compliance with parental expectations and norms (selective acculturation).
Chinese Americans. Ogbu (1989) reveals in his study of Chinese-
American students in Oakland, California, that despite cultural and language
differences and poverty within the various ethnic groups, these students fare well
academically. Ogbu attributes their academic success to the integration of these
44
students into the family and the ethnic community, which value education highly
and hold positive attitudes toward public schools.
10
There are two common themes in these studies. First, they all converge at
the point of selective acculturation — an acculturation path built upon
biculturalism (and even bilingualism) as well as family and ethnic solidarity.
Second, all four groups belong to the working class. That is, selected
acculturation is particularly important to underclass immigrants and their children
because underprivileged immigrant parents lack the material resources to insulate
their children from adverse external influences, such as racial discrimination and
the inner-city youth subculture, which are inimical to children’s educational
achievement. Community-based social networks built upon ethnic solidarity are
impoverished immigrants’ most important social capital, positively influencing
the adaptation of minority children through both support and control.
Unfortunately, American public schools discourage selective acculturation.
The so-called bilingual programs implemented in American public schools— ESL
and English immersion programs— are based on a subtractive version of bilingual
education that delegitimizes the language and culture of immigrant parents. By
instilling in children the belief that their parents’ language is inferior and should
be abandoned in favor of English, English immersion and other remedial
programs weaken parental authority, sever the bond between generations, and
deprive underprivileged immigrant youths of the only resource they have in the
10
For a similar finding on Southeast Asian refugee children, see Caplan, Choy, and Whitmore
1989.
45
host society: the social capital inherent in their families and co-ethnic
communities (Portes & Rumbaut, 2001). Many social scientists and activists thus
urge the implementation of true, or maintenance, bilingual education for the sake
of social justice (Crawford, 1992; Cummins, 1994; Portes & Rumbaut, 2001).
However, the implementation of true bilingual education is impossible until the
barriers it faces— funding needs, teacher shortages, and political obstacles— are
overcome.
The Debate over Bilingual Education
Bilingual education has long been a controversial issue in American
education. Scholars support and oppose bilingual education for different reasons.
The opponents contend that bilingual education is illogical in its implication that
less English instruction will lead to more English achievement. They believe that
“English only” approaches are pedagogically superior to bilingual programs
because the former provide language minority students with maximum exposure
to English. For example, Christine Rossell (1986), a political scientist, proposes
the theory of “time-on-task” to argue that “the amount of time spent learning a
subject … is … a good predictor of achievement” (cited in Crawford, 1992, p.
223). English immersion provides larger quantities of English exposure; thus, it
must be a superior means of English acquisition.
The Canadian total immersion program— a remarkably successful
program of teaching French to middle-class Anglophone children— is most often
cited by proponents of English immersion. Students start school entirely in
46
French, and English is introduced gradually. Most students reach fluent levels of
French by the end of elementary school with no drop in academic achievement or
English proficiency. Critics argue that since English is a high-status language in
Canada, French immersion poses no threat to students’ native-language
development and cultural identity. However, minority children in the United
States— particularly those who live in poverty and suffer from discrimination —
lack the motivation and opportunity to develop their native-language skills outside
of school (Crawford, 2001; Cummins, 2000). In other words, Canadian children
benefit from the additive bilingualism of French immersion, whereas English
immersion in the United States is a form of subtractive bilingualism.
11
In opposition to the notion of “time-on-task,” Krashen (1992), a
psycholinguist, has advanced the theory of comprehensible input, arguing that
language acquisition happens in only one direction: when acquirers understand
incoming messages. That is, what really matters in second language acquisition is
the quality, and not the quantity, of new language exposure. He further argues
that native language support is more effective because it provides a more
comfortable learning environment for linguistic minority children, thus
minimizing the unfavorable psychological factors that act as an affective filter—
anxiety, stress, and so forth. Krashen contends that successful bilingual programs
result in faster acquisition of English than “submersion” or “sink or swim”
programs. Cummins (2001c), also a psycholinguist, proposes the theory of
11
The bilingual program instituted in the Dade County (Miami) public schools in 1963 is one of
the very few examples of two-way bilingual education in American history (Castro, 1992).
47
linguistic interdependence to argue that a firm command of the first language
facilitates acquisition of a second language (see also Hakuta & Snow, 1992).
Important Research on Bilingual Education
Despite the academic benefits of bilingual education shown by basic
research— which focuses on the cognitive process of second-language
acquisition— advanced by Cummins (1997), Krashen (1992, 1999), and Hakuta
(1986), most evaluation research of programs in actual schools indicate
otherwise. Hakuta and Snow (1986) have argued that the majority of evaluation
studies are doing a poor job of measuring the benefits of bilingual education.
Most evaluation studies in the early years were seriously flawed in research
design. Common problems included inappropriate comparison and
generalizability of results. For instance, students enrolled and not enrolled in
bilingual education should be compared across similar SES and native
backgrounds (Crawford, 1992; Willig, 1985). Yet inappropriate comparisons are
typically made between native English speakers and language minority students
rather than between language minority students who are enrolled in bilingual
programs and those who are not (Roscigno, Velez, & Ainsworth-Darnell, 2001).
The longitudinal studies of bilingual education conducted by Ramirez,
Yuen, and Ramey (1991) and Thomas and Collier (2002) confirm the merits of
bilingual programs with strong native language support. The objective of the
study conducted by Ramirez, Yuen, and Ramey was to compare the relative
merits of three instructional models: structured immersion in English, “early-exit”
48
(transitional) bilingual education, and “late-exit” (developmental) bilingual
education. This study involved more than two thousand English-language learners
(hereafter ELL, another term for Limited English Proficient students [LEP]
students), all Spanish-speaking, enrolled in nine school districts in five states
(California, Florida, New York, New Jersey, and Texas). It took five years to
gather data (1984–88) for this study. Two of the most illuminating findings are
that students in all three groups took at least five years to acquire academic
proficiency in English, and children in late-exit programs had the greatest
sustained growth in academic achievement. Both findings confirm the hypotheses
of Cummins (linguistic interdependence ) and Krashen ( comprehensible input).
The implication of these research findings is that bilingual programs that strongly
promote students’ first -language literacy skills successfully promote academic
development in English.
Before the Ramirez study, Cummins (2001c) had cautioned that premature
transition of ELLs to an all-English classroom would result in academic failure.
A premature transition is often caused by educators’ failure to distinguish
between two types of language proficiency: basic interpersonal communications
skills (BICS) and cognitive-academic language proficiency (CALP). The former
is the everyday, conversational type of English; the latter involves context-
reduced, cognitively demanding linguistic skills— a higher-level thinking tool
necessary for academic success. ELLs first develop BICS in English, generally
within six months to two years of entering school. CALP typically takes four to
49
nine years (Collier, 1987/ 1989) or five to seven years (Cummins, 1981) to
develop. This suggests that the empowerment of minority children, both
linguistically and cognitively, is an extended process that requires the school to
make a long-term commitment to the academic improvement of the minority
children whose primary languages are not English.
Cummins interprets the research findings of Ramirez’s report not only
from a linguistic perspective but also from a socio-psychological point of view.
According to Cummins, the language of instruction may not be the most
significant variable in the success of late-exit programs. The success of late-exit
bilingual programs may owe more to their affirmation of the ELLs’ cultural
identity than to their linguistic effects. Cummins (2000) further argues that socio-
cultural determinants of school failure in minority students are more fundamental
than are linguistic factors. For example, consider the school failure of Finnish
immigrants to Sweden, where historically they have faced discrimination, as
compared with their success in Australia, where being a Finn carries no social
stigma (Troike, 1978). Children of the Burakumin minority perform poorly in
Japan, but they perform as well as other Japanese students in the United States
(Ogbu, 1978). Maori children in New Zealand entering school with English
fluency are soon outperformed by Samoans, a nonstigmatized minority group that
enters school with limited English skills (Crawford, 1995). That is, to empower
minority children through education, schools must counteract the power relations
that exist within the broader social context. Thus, an antiracist strategy is
50
necessary, including fostering minority children’s cultural pride through heritage
language maintenance.
A five-year research study conducted by Thomas and Collier (2002)
concluded that one-way and two-way developmental bilingual education
programs are the only programs found to “assist students to fully reach the fiftieth
percentile in both L1 (primary language) and L2 (second language) in all subjects
and to maintain that level of high achievement, or reach even higher levels
through the end of schooling” (p. 7).
Barriers to Bilingual Education
Bilingual education faces strong public opposition in the U.S. despite its potential
social benefits. The factors that account for the public qualms to the
implementation of true bilingual education are manifold, including the common
misunderstanding on bilingual education and other political and economic
reasons. The common belief in English immersion — i.e., the more time that the
children are exposed to English, the faster they will learn the language— is an
important factor that accounts for public opposition to bilingual education.
Politically, proponents of assimilationism argue for a subtractive approach to
bilingual education for the purpose of de-ethnicization to avoid the danger of
cultural fragmentation and national divisiveness as a result of the fractious
influences of multiple languages and cultures. Yet, nothing is more discouraging
than the high financial cost to taxpayers caused by bilingual education. George
Borjas (2001), a leading economist in this country, points out that immigration
51
increased the annual tax bill of California’s typical household by $1,200 in
the1990s and public schooling for immigrant children— especially bilingual
education— plays a key role in determining the fiscal burden. Schooling
accounted for over one-third of the tax burden immigrants imposed on California.
In California, public doubts on bilingual education culminated in the passage of
Proposition 227, English for the Children Initiative, in 1998. Nearly two thirds
of whites and Asian Americans as well as over 40% of Hispanics voted for
Proposition 227, which abolished native l anguage support in classroom for ELLs
in the public school system (Borjas, 2001, p. 123).
The implementation of true or additive bilingual education in California—
despite its long-term benefits to individuals and society as a whole— is impossible
because of the current political climate. Language minorities therefore resort to
nonformal education to foster bilingualism and biculturalism among the second
generation. In fact, nonformal ethnic language education has existed in many
immigrant groups and communities in the United States for long time. However,
very little research documented minority groups’ experiences in nonformal
education intended for ethnic socialization. Saito’ s (1999) research on
Vietnamese immigrants’ adaptation experience in the United States is the only
literature that highlights the relations between nonformal ethnic language
education and cultural maintenance and transmission.
52
Conclusion
In this chapter, I first traced the theoretical genealogy of assimilation in
American sociological scholarship, and then reviewed the literature regarding the
adaptation experiences of contemporary immigrants in the United States. I
reviewed the important issues and research pertinent to bilingual education in the
last section.
There are two schools of thought within the discourse of assimilation: the
classical school and the contemporary school, with different types of immigration
as their respective targets of analysis. Assimilation was conceptualized in
classical accounts as a straight-line movement into the social mainstream,
accompanied by abandonment of the original language and culture. Based on
empirical evidence, a new generation of scholars argues that there is no uniform
mode of assimilation for contemporary immigrants, and that rapi d integration and
acceptance into the American mainstream represents just one possible outcome of
assimilation. These scholars propose a revised theory of “segmented
assimilation” to explain why the processes and outcomes of assimilation vary
across immigrant minorities. Some scholars examined the psychological,
educational, and social adaptations of children of immigrants using the results of
the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS), and identified
ethnicity/nationality as a significant predi ctor in every adaptation outcome.
Proponents of segmented assimilation argue that the adaptation outcome of the
second or 1.5 generation was largely determined by the interaction of individual
53
factors with contextual factors. They also emphasize the importance of a
cohesive co-ethnic community that fosters ethnic solidarity and ethnic pride in the
second generation by promoting selective acculturation — an additive approach to
acculturation characterized by biculturalism and even fluent bilingualism in the
second generation, since ethnic networks are conceptualized as a form of social
capital that positively influence children’s adaptation through social support and
control in a framework of segmented assimilation. In other words, ethnic
language, identity, and enclave— the building blocks of ethnic solidarity— could
be sources of advantage in the theory of segmented assimilation.
Proponents of segmented assimilation call attention to the Cuban private
bilingual school system in Miami as a model for institutional promotion of
selective acculturation, and note that Asian parents have not been able to create a
similar bilingual school system because the smaller size of their communities has
made collective support for second-generation bilingualism more difficult (Portes
& Rumbaut 2001). In fact, what these scholars do not know is that Asian
immigrants— including Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese— commonly resort to
nonformal education for ethnic language preservation. Chinese immigrants in
major metropolitan areas— such as Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay area, New
York, and Houston— have successfully established an informal educational
system for ethnic language preservation. Inspired by the issues discussed and
studies cited in this chapter, I will focus the subsequent chapters on the common
54
cultural practice of nonformal Chinese language education in immigrant Chinese
communities by examining a case study in Los Angeles.
55
CHAPTER 3
METHODOLOGY
This dissertation research grew out of a preliminary study of New
Enlightenment Chinese Academy (NECA)— a weekend Chinese school— in the
fall semester of 2003, undertaken as a term project for a Qualitative Research
Methods in Education class offered by the School of Education at the University
of Southern California. Findings from the preliminary study formed the basis of
the present study, which formally began in February, 2004. In this chapter, I first
introduce the theoretical framework that I use to examine the common cultural
practice of nonformal Chinese education in immigrant Chinese communities.
Then I lay out the key questions, data sources, participants, research design, data
analyses, ethics, and limitations of this research as well as the scientific standards
of data collection this research followed.
Two Useful Conceptual Lenses
This study examines nonformal Chinese education provided by a weekend
Chinese school using a double perspective: selective acculturation — a concept
derived from Alejandro Portes’s (1995) segmented assimilation theory— and
Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of practice.
56
Portes and Rumbaut (2001) identified parenting as an important task for
immigrants— a task that is no less challenging than their struggles in the labor
market and their efforts to gain social acceptance in mainstream society.
Research shows that immigrant parents’ ability to keep up with and guide their
children’s acculturation is critical in determining children’s assimilation outcomes
(Smith-Hefner, 1999). When children outpace their immigrant parents in learning
the new language and culture, parents depend on their youngsters to communicate
with the outside world and for guidance in the host society. In this case,
immigrant parents lose their authority because the roles of parents and children
are reversed. American sociologists have identified selective acculturation as a
way for immigrant parents to avoid parent-child role reversal. Portes and
Rumbaut (2001) defined selective acculturation as follows:
Selective acculturation takes places when the learning [acculturation]
process of both generations is embedded in a co-ethnic community of
sufficient size and institutional diversity to slow down the cultural shift
and promote partial retention of the parents’ home language and norm.
The … option is associated with a relative lack of intergenerational
conflict, the presence of many co-ethnics among children’s friends, and
the achievement of full bilingualism in the second generation (p. 308).
As an institution promoting ethnic language and culture, the weekend Chinese
school under study is a clear example of selective or additive acculturation.
American sociologists distinguish selective acculturation from reactive
ethnicity by emphasizing that the ultimate goal of selective acculturation is
upward assimilation and that ethnic identity formed through selective
acculturation is built on second-generation youths’ absorption of “key values and
57
normative expectations from their original culture” accompanied by concomitant
respect for them (Rumbaut & Portes, 2001, p. 309).
12
Selective acculturation— in
which ethnic culture and identity are viewed as sources of advantage for minority
groups— provides us with a critical perspective (as opposed to the mainstream
view) of ethnic maintenance. In this study, selective acculturation leads us to
consider nonformal Chinese education as a self-empowerment tactic for Chinese
immigrants. In other words, selective acculturation is not simply an assimilation
mode or process, but also a self-empowerment tactic and a parenting strategy that
fosters children’s ethnic identity through deliberate ethnic preservation.
13
Selective acculturation does not take place in a vacuum. It is commonly
grounded in ethnic solidarity embedded in densely knit social networks capable of
supporting immigrant parents’ cultural outlooks. Put simply, the existence of a
co-ethnic community of sufficient size is a structural precondition for selective
acculturation. The concept of selective acculturation thus points to a relational
approach to human behavior. A social science approach that emphasizes actions
or practices cannot be reduced to either idealism or material determinism; rather,
12
Reactive ethnicity occurs when the formation of ethnicity is not based on a minority group’s
appreciation of the key values and characteristics of ethnic culture. It is the product of
confrontation with an adverse native mainstream, which gives rise to defensive identities and
solidarities (Glazer, 1954; Portes & Rumbaut, 1996/2001).
13
Michel de Certeau distinguishes strategy from tactic, defining the former as a practice in which
dominant institutions and groups exercise their power to control knowledge, structure social life,
and maintain order. However, tactical practices are employed by those who are under the control
of a dominant group to subvert or redirect the rules of behavior established by dominant
institutions or groups (see Polkinghorne, 2004, p. 66). Ethnic socialization using ethnic language
education as a parenting “strategy” implies the dominant status of immigrant parents in parent-
child relations. Constructing ethnic identity and fostering ethnic pride in the second generation
through ethnic preservation as a self-empowerment “tactic” implies that Chinese immigrants are a
culturally marginal group in American society.
58
practices are the outcome of the interaction between human agency and social
structure. In this dissertation, human agency is represented by what I call
“grassroots activists”— the adult participants in NECA who came together to
make the nonformal school possible.
This relational approach (to human action) comes from Pierre Bourdieu’s
theory of practice (1977), in which human actions and social practices are
understood as the outcomes of interaction between an individual’s learned
disposition (habitus) and a specific field of contention. In other words, both the
historical context of human agency and the social context or structure are critical
factors in understanding social practice in the relational mode of thinking. This
was intended to overcome the dichotomies between human agency and social
structure, subjectivist and objectivist, and idealism and material determinism that
have been used to explain human action. According to Bourdieu (1984), all social
practices can be summarized by the formula:
[(habitus) (capital)] + field = practice (p. 101)
Habitus is Bourdieu’s redefinition of culture. Bourdieu’s Outline of a
Theory of Practice (1977) conceives of culture not as a set of rules but in terms of
the individual’s historically developed dispositions, which reflect socialization by
past experiences and habits (habitus). Habitus is a collective memory, “a person’s
learned disposition to use similar strategies in the performance of actions across a
variety of situations” (Polkinghorne, 2004, P. 59). Bourdieu argues that although
people adapt to new situations, they continue to make use of defensive strategies
59
that are consistent with their original disposition, because the habitus resists
change.
Capital denotes resources used by people to enhance or maintain their
social status. According to Bourdieu, resources become capital when they
function as a source of power. In other words, he extends the notion of capital to
encompass all forms of power. The four forms of capital Bourdieu proposes are
economic capital (material wealth, e.g., money and property), cultural capital
(cultural goods, personal style, and taste used in social selection), social capital
(social networks), and symbolic capital (legitimation of other forms of capital).
Of these four types, cultural capital is the focus of Bourdieu’s analysis of social
practice(s), which shifts our concept of social inequality from an economic
ground to a cultural ground. Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital shows us how
the unequal distribution of cultural resources reproduces social inequality.
Bourdieu (1984) contends that social actors use culture in creative ways to further
their own interests in a system based on unequal power, but the effect of that
struggle is to reproduce the basic structure of the system. He argues that class-
based differences in cultural capital tend to have a decreasing importance as one
ascends the educational ladder.
Although Bourdieu conceptualized and wrote about habitus as a function
of social class, I have broadened the concept of habitus to include ethnic identity.
Cultural capital thus becomes a more complex notion in this study. It refers not
only to educational credentials, but also to whatever fosters ethnic identity, for
60
instance, social and cultural values. More importantly, from the perspective of
selective acculturation, which points to the assimilation paradox, ethnic language
and identity become the cultural capital necessary for undoing the power
asymmetry caused by an unequal distribution of cultural resources between
mainstream people and ethnic minorities.
Bourdieu defines fields as separate, independent structures from the
external environment. They are arenas of struggle for legitimation, sites of
resistance as well as domination (Swartz, 1997). There are cultural, political, and
economic fields, each defined in terms of its valuable resources and rules (games)
of domination. Nonformal education can be considered a site of contestation that
comes into the educational field with alternative knowledge that empowers
minority groups within the mainstream society. This study uses Bourdieu’s
model of practice— in which human action is conceptualized as the outcome of
the habitus of human agency intersecting with the dynamics and structures of
particular field— to analyze the cultural practice of nonformal education.
Research Question
The purpose of this study is twofold. First, i t aims to show how a group of
Chinese immigrants united to (re)construct ethnic culture and identity through the
field of (nonformal) education. Second, it aims to understand the meaning of
Chinese education from the perspective of human agency— the adult participants
of the Chinese school under study, whom I call grassroots activists. Two sets of
questions were formulated to explore: (1) grassroots activists and their habitus,
61
and (2) the school process as a field that represents the physical manifestation of
resources (capital) and the collective memory of human agency (habitus).
I call the adult participants of the Chinese school “grassroots activists” for
two reasons. As a self-initiated cultural practice of Chinese immigrants,
nonformal Chinese education is usually provided by ethnic organizations of civil
society. It thus demonstrates a bottom -up (grassroots) approach to education.
Moreover, as a product of Chinese immigrants’ collective efforts in constructing
ethnic identity, nonformal Chinese education can be viewed as a social movement,
specifically, a new social movement (NSM). According to Melucci (1989/1996),
NSMs often involve the emergence of new or formerly weak dimensions of
identity. The activists’ grievances and mobilization factors focus on cultural and
symbolic issues linked with issues of identity, rather than on the economic
grievances that characterized the working-class movement. NSMs are associated
with a set of symbols, values, and beliefs related to sentiments of belonging to a
differentiated group in which members can feel powerful (Larana, Johnston &
Gusfield, 1994, p. 10).
The research questions fall into two categories:
A. Questions regarding the adult participants of NECA: What are the
cultural factors ( habitus) that induced grassroots activists to come
together to found a nonformal school? What are the sources of
commitment that account for grassroots activists’ sustained
participation in the Chinese school ?
62
B. Questions regarding how ethnic language fluency is fostered and how
ethnic identity is constructed in the school process: Where do the
material, cultural, and social resources of the Chinese school come
from? What kind of knowledge, aside from ethnic language, is
considered valuable in NECA? How are ethnic language and culture
transmitted to the second generation?
Qualitative Methods
I use a case study method to illuminate “a contemporary [social]
phenomenon within its real-life context” (Yin, 1994, p. 13). Among numerous
nonprofit and for -profit Chinese “schools” in Los Angeles, I chose a reputable
one in the San Gabriel Valley region as my research site, which I will refer to as
the New Enlightenment Chinese Academy (NECA).
NECA attracted my attention because of its low tuition and the
outstanding performance of its students in interschool Chinese language
competitions held by the Southern California Council of Chinese Schools, as
reported by a local Chinese newspaper. NECA’s tuition for the 2004–2005
school year was $290, which is the lowest among all nonprofit weekend Chinese
schools in the area. A reputable Los Angeles Chinese school, NECA is a
successful, economical model of nonformal Chinese education. In addition,
NECA is a division of the New Enlightenment Foundation (NEF), a rapidly
growing international Buddhist charity organization headquartered in Taiwan.
63
Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism are the three main cultural paradigms of
Chinese civilization (de Bary, Chan & Watson , 1960; Chan, 1963). Gordon (1964)
indicates that ethnic religion is an important “intrinsic cultural trait” of ethnicity,
and thus one of the “vital ingredients of [the ethnic] group’s cultural heritage”
(cited in Alba & Nee, 1997). Its Buddhist orientation makes NECA a good
example of the institutional promotion of selective acculturation. Because it is a
Chinese school with a strong religious orientation, NECA opens its doors to
children of Chinese immigrants from all strata of society. It thus functions as a
microcosm of the Chinese immigrant community. In other words, NECA is a
good choice for a sociological or educational case study in terms of sampling,
because it provides researchers with human subjects of diverse socioeconomic
origins.
Data Collection Methods
Mason (2002) suggests six categories of data sources for qualitative
research:
• People (individuals, groups, or collectives)
• Organizations, institutions, and entities
• Texts (published and unpublished sources)
• Settings and environments
• Objects, artifacts, and media products
• Events and happenings
Referring to Mason’ s list, I gathered data for this study from a number of sources.
64
Interviews with Grassroots Activists
A selective acculturation perspective in research endeavors to be sensitive
to the experience of ethnic minorities as “the other” and to make sure that its
interpretation respects the people being studied. To achieve this goal, I follow
Stromquist’s (1997) advice by presenting “multiple voices” in this study, namely,
“the free voices of the respondents, other voices, and the voice of the researcher”
(p. 55). The voices of the people being studied can be heard through in-depth
interviews. An in-depth interview enables the researcher to get an “insider view”
rather than imposing an “outsider view” on the phenomenon under study (Mason,
2002; see also Duranti, 1997 for “emic view” and “etic view”).
Another reason for using in-depth interviews as a data-collecting tool is to
excavate the cultural factors that propelled grassroots activists (GA) into the
collective practice of adopting Chinese education as a parenting strategy. Cultural
analysis is crucial to understanding what constitutes the habitus of this subgroup,
because individual choices are shaped by dispositions that reflect their past
socialization. Only through in-depth interviews can we recuperate GAs’ past
experiences, because in-depth interviews (or qualitative interviewing) is a
“meaning-making” process that serves to fill the gap between “meaning” and
“behavior.” Meaning— defined as “the set of understandings and emotional
attachments by which people make sense of their own everyday environment”— is
generated through the researcher’s interaction with individuals as well as subjects’
construction and reconstruction of their experiences (Stromquist, 1997, p. 55).
65
I used Seidman’s (1998) three-part interview format as a guideline for my
interview protocol: (1) focusing on the life history of participants, (2) detailing the
experiences of participants (for example, adaptation experiences in the host
society and parenting experiences), and (3) r eflecting on the meanings of a
combination of both (1) and (2). This strategy enables interviewees to reconstruct
their experiences and construct the meanings of their actions, thereby recuperating
their collective memory (habitus).
The GAs I interviewed in this study are teachers and volunteer parents
who play various roles in the Chinese school, including administrators, teachers’
aides, room parents, school janitors, and crossing guards. The human resources
and free labor provided by grassroots activists enable NECA to operate on a very
low budget. Only adult participants at NECA were recruited as informants for
this dissertation, although NECA serves students aged five to eighteen.
Twenty-seven grassroots activists were interviewed for this study: twenty-
two interviewees were NECA parents or former parents, of whom ten play double
roles of parent/administrator or parent/teacher. I used the criteria of length of
participation in NECA and diversity to select informants. Only those who had
participated in NECA for at least three years were selected. The majority of the
grassroots activists interviewed had participated in NECA for over five years. I
diversified my samples by interviewing grassroots activists who played a variety
of roles in NECA. The other way of looking at diversity is categorizing potential
informants by their degree of assimilation.
66
As mentioned previously, this study developed out of a term project for a
course I took in 2003. In those findings, I classified the human subjects into three
groups in terms of their degrees of assimilation. I classified the informants as
retentionists, pluralists, and assimilationists. There were three retentionists, five
pluralists, and one assimilationist in my sample. Retentionists are those who
remain ethnic in both primary and secondary groups. The primary group is family
and neighborhood; the secondary group is one’s school and workplace. All
immigrants in this category live in an ethnic community, and they commonly
have low English proficiency. Pluralists demonstrate at least one of two
characteristics: completion of higher education in the United States or residential
assimilation. Compared with the first group of informants, the pluralists have a
higher level of English proficiency. Despite their moderate English fluency,
pluralists remain ethnic at home by communicating with their children only in the
ethnic language. Assimilationists are those who have completed assimilation
through intermarriage with middle- or upper-middle-class whites. English is the
only language used at home for this type of informants. For this study, I actively
sought informants in those three groups as a representative sample of the kinds of
adult participant-holders at NECA. After interviewing twenty-seven human
subjects, I classified them according to these three categories. Table 3
demonstrates the numbers and types of informants in this study: nine retentionists,
fifteen pluralists, and three assimilationists.
67
Table 3
Types of Informants by Degree of Assimilation
Degrees of
Assimilation
Retentionists
Pluralists
Assimilationists
Number of
Informants
9
15 3
As a data-gathering technique, interviews can hide as much as they
disclose (Stromquist, 1997). The credibility of the information derived from
interviews depends on the motivation and willingness of participants to recall
their experiences (Polkinghorne, 1991; Stromquist , 1997). Out of concern for the
validity and quality of this research, I also looked for data sources other than
interviews.
Field Observation
Direct observation is another important data-collecting method employed
in this study. I observed seven different levels of Chinese language courses,
school events, staff meetings, and teacher-training workshops over a three-
semester period (Spring 2004, Fall 2004, and Spring 2005).
I investigated nonformal Chinese schooling as a process for reconstruction
of ethnic culture and identity by looking at the central beliefs and values taught in
Chinese classes, rituals and customs performed at the school, and artifacts and
symbols used for boundary maintenance.
Other Data Sources
• Textbooks. Content analysis of textbooks and other teaching materials
helped me understand the dominant ideology promoted by NECA for
68
cultural transmission. For this study, I examined both textbooks for
Chinese language education and those designed by NEF and NECA for
character education.
• Documents generated by the Chinese school. These included NECA’ s
internal documents, a parent-child handbook, the yearbook— a special
edition— published in 2002, and the Web site used to post stories about
NECA’s volunteer parents.
• NEF publications. I collected printed data on NEF to gain a more
comprehensive understanding of NECA, since NECA is a division of the
foundation, including quarterly journals— both English and Chinese
versions. I checked the NEF web site monthly to keep abreast of the latest
information on the foundation and possible influences on NECA.
• Local Chinese newspapers. I largely relied on local Chinese newspapers,
especially Chinese Daily News (the largest Chinese press in Southern
California) to gain information on special events of NEF and NECA. The
Web site of the Southern California Council of Chinese School s (SCCCS)
was another important information source on nonformal Chinese
education in the greater Los Angeles area.
Data Analysis
Data collection and analysis evolve together in qualitative research
designs (Agar, 1986; Wolcott, 1994). The dialectic dialogue between data
collection and interpretation aims at identifying interpretable relationships among
69
themes or categories of data (i.e., patterns) in a conceptual framework. The
recursive process of any qualitative research procedure allows researchers to
revisit and revise the themes of the data until they become conceptually
meaningful and coherent (Polkinghorne, 1991). Open coding and axial coding
(Strauss & Corbin, 1998) are adopted in this study to find patterns and their
relationships. The four main categories in open coding are: people (the adult
participants of NECA), curriculum, hidden curriculum, and school events.
Research Design
A strategy of snowballing was used to contact potential interviewees. I
initiated the research by contacting the school principal to get permission to begin
my study, to request support, and to identify teachers and administrators as
possible key informants. At the same time, I also asked three room mothers for
help in identifying potential informants of diverse social backgrounds— for
instance, Chinese immigrants in interracial marriages and immigrants from China,
Indochina, or other Southeast Asia countries (in order to diversify my sample).
Since NECA is part of a Taiwan-based charity organization, the majority of
NECA’s adult participants are immigrants from Taiwan and only a very small
percent of the parents (approximately 2 percent) are from China. Although most
parents from China do not participate in the Chinese school, I found one room
mother from a southern Chinese province. However, when I approached her at
NECA, she adamantly rejected my request to participate in the study. The failure
70
to get information from immigrants from China may limit this study, because they
represent distinct voices and experiences of the adult participants of NECA.
The interview questions fall roughly into four categories: (a) basic
information: age, occupation, educational attainment, English fluency, marital
status, national origins, and length of time spent in this country and in the Chinese
school, home language; (b) ethnic issues: grassroots activists’ beliefs about
American and Chinese societies and cultures, opinions or experiences regarding
discrimination; (c) school experiences: relationship with NECA and NEF,
opinions about the curriculum and school events; (d) parenting: parent-child
relationship, language used in parent-child communication, choice of
extracurricular activities (see Appendix).
Research Participants and Interviews
The participants in this study were friendly and cooperative. Most of them
were enthusiastic in sharing their parenting and acculturation experiences,
although some were skeptical of the motivation behind the study. One teacher
asked me repeatedly what I was going to do after completing my Ph.D., because
he could not see why Chinese education— his everyday life experience— would
attract scholarly attention. He considered Chinese education to be a potentially
profitable business in California and suspected my research was a marketing
survey prior to starting my own business. When I told him that it had never
occurred to me to start my own business in education, he responded: “You must
71
want to become a middle-school principal.” I smiled in answer to any question
that I did not want or did not feel the need to answer.
An average interview lasted for about one and a half hours, ranging from
forty minutes to two and a half hours. All interviews, except for one with a
Caucasian parent, were conducted in Mandarin. Interview data were taped,
translated, and transcribed into English by the researcher.
Research Ethics
Because the circle of Chinese schools in Los Angeles is small,
pseudonyms were adopted in this study for the weekend school and the human
subjects in order to encourage participants to freely talk about their personal
experiences of biculturalism and about the school.
Ideally, the research process should be built upon a reciprocal interaction
between the researcher and the researched. Some researchers help out in the
classrooms by handling housekeeping chores while they conduct fieldwork at
educational settings. However, my participation was not needed in any classes
that I observed, since there was always at least one room mother in each class.
Chinese classes at the lower levels were packed with enthusiastic parent
volunteers.
I normally asked the teacher’s permission before conducting a classroom
observation. Teachers are more respected in East Asian societies than in the West,
and Chinese teachers, in most cases, expect this kind of courtesy notification or
they might be offended. The disadvantage of this courtesy notification is that
72
some teachers might change their teaching plan because of the presence of
outsiders.
My Taiwanese immigrant identity and Chinese fluency smoothed the way
for my observations. As a Taiwanese immigrant, I blended well with the setting
of the Chinese school during my fieldwork. Since NECA encourages parent
participation and even allows nonvolunteering parents to stay on campus and even
in classrooms during school hours, the weekend school is full of people who look
like me— Chinese immigrants in their thirties or forties. Plain clothing makes me
look just like other adult participants of NECA. Those who did not know me
might just have regarded me as one of the school parents.
Scientific Standards of Data Collection
Reliability and validity are two basic criteria for data of high quality.
Reliability concerns the replicability of data. The underlying issue in discussing
reliability is whether the evidence of the study is consistent— reasonably stable
over time and across researchers and methods. Validity refers to the accuracy of
data. Both reliability and validity are rigidly controlled in quantitative research to
ensure the objectivity of its “scientific” findings, upon which a generalization can
be made. Qualitative studies, by contrast, ground their ontology and
epistemology in “interpretivist” philosophies (Mason, 2002; Seidman, 1998).
Interpretive theorists propose a gestalt understanding of social phenomena,
arguing that not all subjects of inquiry in social sciences are quantifiable. Not all
subjects can be simplified into or described in statistical regularities; thus the
73
criteria used to assess the scientific “objectivity” of quantitative research are not
applicable to qualitative studies.
Despite their adamant rejection of the notion of objectivity in social
science, many qualitative researchers propose redefining reliability and validity in
ways appropriate for evaluating research that adopts qualitative methods
(Hammerseley, 1990; LeCompte & Goetz, 1982).
Reliability
I agree with LeCompte and Goetz (1982) that qualitative researchers
should ensure the reliability of their data by complying with the following rules:
• External reliability. Investigators must have a critical awareness of
his/her social role in the research site; of the importance of informant
choice; and of the social situations and conditions in which data are
collected. A researcher must have a clear idea of the method he/she
adopts to collect data and of the units of analysis in his/her study before
the processing of data collection begins.
A Chinese immigrant interviewing another Chinese immigrant may
develop a closer relationship then does a non -Chinese interviewing a Chinese, yet
some social distance remains. Since Chinese place a high value on education and
show great respect to people with high educational attainment, the gap in
educational level between the researcher and interviewees with modest education
becomes a barrier in interviews. A solution to this problem is to conduct a second
round of interviews with the same people, since interviewees with modest
74
educational attainment tended to be more open and eloquent in the second round
of interviews. This strategy, though more time-consuming, proved useful in this
study.
• Internal reliability.
a. Low inference narratives. Low-inference descriptions provide
researchers with basic observational data. Interpretive comments
can be added, deleted, or modified, but the record of who did what
under which circumstances should be as accurate as possible.
b. Mechanically recorded data. Mechanical devices, such as tape
recorders, are used to preserve to the greatest extent the raw data.
c. Data triangulation. Multiple methods— formal and informal
interviews, observations, and document analysis— are used to
collect data.
To ensure the internal validity of data, all interviews were recorded, with the
consent of the interviewees. After each interview, I transcribed the taped
interview content at home before the next interview was conducted.
Validity
In discussing the issue of internal validity (credibility/authenticity) of
evidence, Miles and Huberman (1994) encourage researchers to ensure evidence
of the highest quality through:
• Representativeness. Researchers must have wise sampling strategies. For
example, a researcher should not just focus on confirming, typical, or
75
representative instances but also pay attention to “disconfirming” or
“negative” instances. To discover and accommodate disconfirming or
atypical samples to ensure the emergence of multiple voices, I diversified
the interviewees by selecting informants who fulfilled different roles in
NECA. I also selected informants of distinct socioeconomic backgrounds
by picking people from a variety of neighborhoods.
• Compensating for researcher effects and biases. Because the researcher is
the instrument of inquiry in qualitative research, critical self-reflection is
helpful in generating evidence of high quality. The researcher must have a
clear idea of possible biases he/she might have and acknowledge them.
He/she must spend enough time on the research site to avoid naïve
analysis of the phenomenon under study, and maintain a theoretical
distance from the case investigated in order to avoid being co-opted or
falling prey to the accepted version of local events.
As a researcher who investigates a common cultural practice of her co-
ethnics, I followed the rule of “making the familiar strange” in the data-collecting
process so as to maintain a theoretical distance from the people and phenomenon
that I studied. My fieldwork at the Chinese school lasted for three semesters
(Spring 2004, Fall 2004, and Spring 2005) to avoid premature interpretation of the
nonformal school process.
• Getting feedback from informants. Informants are the cultural brokers
between researchers and the cases under study. Having key informants
76
review field-note drafts and correct a researcher’s misconceptions is an
important strategy (see also Yin, 1994).
I checked often with three key informants and discussed my field notes
with them during the process of data analysis to avoid one-sided misinterpretation
of data.
• Triangulation to strengthen analysis (discussed in detail later).
External validity in qualitative studies refers to the generalizability of
research findings. Quantitative research uses random samples to justify the
generalization of findings (from sample to population). However, the
“generalization” of qualitative research is done by readers through the
features that are the details in context. That is, generalizability of the
findings of qualitative research requires that the conclusions of a specific
research be transferable (Miles & Huberman, 1994).
Data Triangulation
Triangulation in qualitative research means the application of several
research methodologies to the study of one phenomenon. This is an important
way to ensure both validity and reliability of evidence. Social scientists (Denzin,
1978; Patton , 1987; Yin. 1994) suggest four types of triangulation for qualitative
researchers:
1. Data triangulation. This refers to the presentation of multiple realities
that are represented by a variety of sources of data, such as interviews,
observation, and document analysis.
77
2. Theory triangulation. An example of theory triangulation is using
both macro- and micro-theories to interpret the same set of data.
3. Methodological triangulation. This means the application of a variety
of methods of data collection, such as observations and interviews.
4. Investigator triangulation. Having multiple investigators examine the
same set of data is another way to ensure external validity (not
applicable to this study).
Multiple methods of data collection, including content analysis of
textbooks, interviewing, and participant observation, were adopted in this study to
achieve methodological triangulation. To achieve theoretical triangulation, I
followed Erickson’s strategy of “funneling sampling” (cited in Miles &
Huberman, 1994). I approached the issue of ethnic maintenance and education
from three distinct angles, including macro (social), mezzo (institutional), and
micro (individual) perspectives.
Limitations of the Study
This study is limited in number and type by the Chinese school, the school
participants, and the specific approach that I have used. The same limitation
applies to the data analysis I have used to interpret the meaning of the social
phenomenon being studied. However, the primary interest of this study is not to
make a generalizable conclusion. Rather, its purpose is to produce a full and
integrated description of a social practice: a nonformal ethnic education process
that empowers its participants. Insiders’ knowledge and thick descriptions
78
(Geertz, 1973) generated by qualitative methods enabled me to fully describe and
interpret how ethnic culture and identity become a source of advantage and
empowerment for the Taiwanese immigrants in this study.
79
CHAPTER 4
FINDINGS ON HABITUS
Bourdieu (1977) defines habitus as “a system of lasting, transposable
dispositions which, integrating past experiences, functions at every moment at a
matrix of perceptions, appreciations, and actions” (pp. 82-83). The habitus “could
be considered as a subjective but not individual system of internalized structures,
schemes of perception, conception, and action common to all members of the
same group of class” (p. 86). The habitus, in McLeod’s (1995) words, “is
composed of the attitudes, beliefs, and experiences of those inhabiting one’s
social world” (p. 15).
In this chapter, I first present the social and psychological profiles of the
grassroots activists, then I probe their cultural beliefs and parenting experiences in
order to understand the habitus that propelled them into the cultural practice of
nonformal Chinese education. I examine grassroots activists’ life experiences,
with an emphasis on parenting, because the majority of grassroots activists are
volunteer parents who play distinct roles in the Chinese school— as
administrators, teachers, and room parents.
80
Overview of NECA
Before we explore the people in NECA, some general information on the
Chinese school is needed.
New Enlightenment Foundation (NEF)
New Enlightenment Chinese Academy (NECA) is a division of the New
Enlightenment Foundation (NEF), a Buddhist charitable institution with its global
headquarters in Taiwan. NEF was founded in 1966 in Taiwan by a local Buddhist
nun supported by thirty housewives, who each donated NTD 0.50 (US$0.013) of
their daily grocery money to establish a charity fund. Today, NEF has developed
into a well-established nonprofit, nongovernmental organization (NGO) with its
own publishing house, general hospital, television channel, and accredited schools
(from preschool to university) in Taiwan. NEF’s four missions are charity,
medicine, education, and culture. The purpose of NEF is to help the poor and
encourage the rich to share what they have with the needy.
NEF provides long-term aid in many countries affected by poverty. For
example, NEF provides income-generation programs for low -incomers in South
Africa, Lesotho, and northern Thailand. The foundation has built elementary
schools in such countries as Mexico, Dominican Republic, and South Africa.
Since 1997, NEF has built six elementary schools for approximately two thousand
black children of Durban, South Africa. At the end of 2004, there were seven
NEF chapters in the United States, with forty-nine offices and seventeen
nonformal Chinese schools. NEF overseas chapters and Chinese schools are
81
based on grassroots solidarity and employ a decentralized model of administration.
NEF’ s U.S. headquarters was established in Los Angeles County in 1985. Today,
the Los Angeles office has developed into NEF’s largest overseas chapter. The
following examples demonstrate the financial power of the foundation:
• Since 2001, NEF has provided financial assistance of nearly $2 million to
people or families affected by the September 11 incident in New York
(3,322 cases).
• The organization has given more than $1 million to families affected by
the 2003 California wildfire.
Ironically, although NECA is a division of an NGO with great financial power, it
has never been funded by NEF. The NGO funds only the formal schools it founds.
NECA is financially self-sufficient and operates on a very low budget. Its largest
expense is classroom rental, at $2 1,000 a year. Teachers’ salaries are the second
largest expense. NECA i nstructors’ starting hourly rate is $17.50, which
increases by $0.50 a year. Tuition — $300 per student per year (for 540 registered
students in 2004)— is its major source of income.
Although NEF does not support NECA financially, it does support the
Chinese school with human resources. NEF also provides cultural resources for
NECA; for example, NECA participants wear a NEF uniform, and the character-
training program— which is part of NECA’s Chinese education— is based on the
sermons of NEF’s charismatic leader.
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Grassroots Activism
Since it lacks external funding and operates on a very low budget, NECA
relies on its adult participant-stakeholders to sustain it— especially through the
free labor of volunteer parents. It also relies on local ethnic businesses for in-kind
donations, such as stationery and little gifts used as awards for students. The
majority of NECA administrators are school parents. Active parental
involvement provides important human resources for NECA. In the 2004–2005
school year, 172 parents (120 mothers and 52 fathers) registered as volunteers
(see Table 4). All administrators, except for the school secretary, are unpaid
volunteers, and they play various roles in NECA’s organizational structure. This
structure is composed of four major divisions: student affairs, school activities,
instructional affairs, and administrative affairs.
The division of student affairs is composed of attendance and records,
student/family counseling, and the mobile team. The mobile team is primarily
responsible for supporting the other groups during labor shortages and collecting
donated items from students. The major obligations of the division of school
activities are janitorial support, providing photography for the photo journal,
traffic coordination, street cleaning (once a month), coordination of monthly
nursing home visits, and promotion of environmental protection as a character-
training program. Approximately four thousand pictures were taken for NECA’s
photo journal during the 2004–2005 school year.
83
Table 4
Basic Statistics Regarding NECA
1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004
Students
Teachers
Chinese
classes
Life
enrichment
classes
Volunteers
(mothers)
Volunteers
(fathers)
297
23
12
12
66
N/A
393
26
14
14
80
12
395
33
16
18
95
24
468
37
18
21
98
32
495
40
19
21
144
32
492
33
20
20
140
25
516
34
20
19
140
25
531
33
20
17
150
25
540
35
21
17
150
40
540
35
22
17
110
48
540
36
22
17
120
52
Source: NECA Yearbook for 2002
The division of instructional affairs is in charge of the production of
instructional props, classroom inspection, and public relations. The
administrative affairs division is composed of the information office and the
miscellaneous goods section. The former is in charge of digitalizing student
information, and the latter for processing of school goods, such as uniforms,
books, and donated items for students.
Since nonformal ethnic language education is a self-initiated cultural
practice of Chinese immigrants— a bottom-up approach to education built upon
grassroots activism— all adult participants of NECA, including administrators,
teachers, and volunteer parents, are what I call grassroots activists.
84
Grassroots Activists
Social Profile
The social profiles of grassroots activists show that the majority of them
are immigrants with substantial human capital. Table 5 shows the educational
levels of the grassroots activists interviewed in this study. Among the sixteen
females, two have master’s degrees, three graduated from junior colleges, and the
rest of them are college graduates. Among the ten male informants, six have
postgraduate degrees and four are college graduates. Grassroots activists can be
classified into three groups according to their financial status: lower middle class,
middle class, and upper middle class. Table 6 shows occupational types. All
male subjects are either white-collar workers or business owners. Eight female
interviewees are professionals (or white-collar workers), one is a small-business
owner, seven are homemakers, and one supports herself by baby-sitting. Among
the housewives, one is the spouse of a mail carrier; two are spouses of business
owners. The spouses of the other four are white-collar workers. The social
profile of grassroots activists shows that the adult participants of NECA are
basically middle-class immigrants.
Table 5
Educational Attainment of Grassroots Activists
Female Male
Graduate school 2 6
College 9 2
Junior college 6 2
Total 17 10
85
Table 6
Occupational Type of Grassroots Activists
Female Male
Professional 8 8
Business owner 1 2
Blue-collar worker 1 0
Homemaker 7 0
Total 17 10
Table 7 shows the degrees of assimilation of the grassroots activists.
Retentionists live in ethnic communities and commonly have low English
proficiency. Pluralists are those who have completed their higher education in the
United States or live in nonethnic middle-class communities. Assimilationists
are those who are married to middle- and upper-middle-class whites. English is
the home language of assimilationists.
Table 7
Grassroots Activists by Degree of Assimilation
Degree of
assimilation
Retentionists
Pluralists Assimilationists
Subjects Lining, Tienyou
Suling, Chenta
Yuwen
Ruyi
Shuyao
Meili
Aihua
Huaying, Kaihung
Sumei, Tonwu
Junru, Wushan
Meiru, Shaoyi
Lien, Huashan
Ruyun, Yishan
Shanhu, Wei
Sasha
Bob
Dana
Fiona
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Psychological Profile
Grassroots activists can be divided into two types, according to
their psychological profiles: sojourners and Chinese diaspora.
Sojourners
“It’s very likely that I will move back to Taiwan when my girls grow up.
Taiwan is my home, after all,” softly said Sumei, a woman in her mid-forties, the
mother of two teenagers and a NECA room mother. She immigrated to the
United States with her parents in her early twenties and completed her college
education here. She is a sojourner type, who regards her stay in the host society
as temporary and plans to return eventually to her native country.
Chinese Diaspora
“I want my children to learn Chinese, because if they want to search for
their roots someday in the future, Chinese fluency will make that easier,” said Yi-
Shan, a man in his mid-forties and a NECA room father. Yi-Shan and his wife
are Laotian Chinese. They were born into Chinese families in Laos and fled to
Taiwan in the 1970s, when Communists gained political power in Indochina.
They immigrated to the United States in the 1980s and have been in this country
ever since. Yi-Shan and his wife received a Chinese education in Laos and
Taiwan.
Mr. Wei came to the United States in the 1970s to attend graduate school.
He retired as a bank manager a few years ago and has taught Chinese at various
Chinese schools since his retirement. “I have two [grown] children. They both
87
have master’s degrees. However, their inabi lity to read and write Chinese is my
greatest regret in life,” Mr. Wei sighed.
“I fly to Taiwan every other month and stay there for about ten days for
the sake of my ninety-year-old grandma. It’s really tiring. I have no other choice,
because I’m the only child in my family,” said Tonwu, a man in his forties and
assistant principal of NECA. He came to this country in the 1980s and is
independently wealthy. “I explain the importance of Chinese to my children this
way: ‘You are Chinese no matter where you are. You are Chinese Americans
when you are in the U.S. If we move to Africa, you become Chinese Africans.’
It’s just that simple.”
“I think Chinese proficiency is very important to the second generation
because it’s our strength. We must maintain Chinese language to keep our
children competitive in American society, because there is no way that we can
compete with mainstream people in English,” said Ruyun, a Chinese language
teacher and NECA parent, with great anxiety.
Parenting and Chinese Education
Of the twenty-seven grassroots activists interviewed in this study, twenty-
three are parents who worked for or volunteered at NECA for their children’s
sake. There are three reasons parents give for their involvement in NECA:
Chinese as a language of efficiency, Chinese as a language of high instrumental
value, and cultural pride.
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Chinese as a Language of Efficiency
An unexpected finding is the gap between grassroots activists’ educational
attainment and their English fluency. Table 8 shows that nearly two-thirds of the
grassroots activists do not consider their English to be sufficient for effective
parent-child communication, despite high educational attainment. These parents
believe their lack of English proficiency is a barrier to effective parenting.
Because they live in ethnic communities and are employed by co-ethnics, these
parents don’t have any strong motivation to improve their English fluency.
Several grassroots activists— including those who received their higher education
in the United States— even believe that their children will outstrip them in
English by the time the children reach adolescence.
Suling, a woman in her late forties, completed her college education in
Japan and immigrated to the United States in the 1980s. She regards ethnic
language as the language of efficiency for parenting:
I’ll feel pretty handicapped if you ask me to use American language to
teach my child. Let me give you an analogy. Hokkienese [the primary
Taiwanese dialect, originally from the southeast coast of China] is my
mother tongue. I spoke Hokkienese with my parents and siblings at home.
However, we couldn’t speak the dialect at school in Taiwan when I was a
child because of the one-language policy imposed by the KMT regime.
Everyone had to speak Mandarin at school. Since Mandarin is not my
mother tongue, I didnot speak the language very well, and I was never
elected to represent my class for speech contests. Mandarin was the
official language and was perceived as a “high language.” In fact,
Hokkienese is a very rich language as well. It’s rich in vocabulary and
interesting idioms. I would do pretty well in a speech contest if I were
allowed to speak in my mother tongue. By the same token, I’ll always do
better in parenting if I use my own l anguage, which is the Chinese
language. That is, if you knew better, you would do better.
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Table 8
Adult Participants of NECA:
English Fluency
Spoken Educational
Subject English Attainment
Huaying Less than very well Bachelor’s degree
Sumei Less than very well Bachelor’s degree
Junru Very well Bachelor’s degree
Lining Less than very well Vocational school
Suling Less than very well Bachelor’s degree
Meiru Less than very well Master’s degree
Yuwen Less than very well Vocational school
Lien Less than very well Bachelor’s degree
Ruyun Less than very well Bachelor’s degree
Fiona Very well Bachelor’s degree
Shanhu Very well Master’s degree
Dana Less than very well Bachelor’s degree
Bob Very well Ph.D. degree
Kaihung Very well Master’s degree
Yishan Less than very well Bachelor’s degree
Tienyou Less than very well Bachelor’s degree
Tonwu Very well Master’s degree
Wushan Very well Master’s degree
Shaoyi Less than very well Master’s degree
Huashan Very well Bachelor’s degree
Ruyi Less than very well High school diploma
Sasha Very well Bachelor’s degree
Shuyao Less than very well Some college
Meili Less than very well Bachelor’s degree
Wei Very well Master’s degree
Aihua Less than very well Some college
Chenta Less than very well Some college
Huaying, a woman in her mid-forties and an accounting supervisor in a
publishing house owned by a Chinese American, immigrated to this country with
her parents in her early twenties. She has a bachelor’s degree from an American
university. She confessed that she knew nothing about parenting when she first
became a mother. Two experiences made her decide to send her children to
Chinese school:
90
I once whacked my daughter with a clothes hanger when she was three
just because I couldn’t get her dressed after I had given her a bath. She
ran around the bedroom naked, and I couldn’t make her stop to get
dressed. She cried and I cried after I hit her. Then I knew that I needed to
learn how to be a parent.… As a working woman, I started to send my
children to day care when they were still very young. My daughter, my
first child, ignored me when I spoke to her in Chinese after she had begun
day care, which was an English -speaking environment. She was only four
years old then. Her attitude really shocked me. What occurred to me then
was, “She is only four years old and she is already ignoring me, what will
I do when she becomes a teenager?” So it’s absolutely necessary for her to
learn my language and respect my culture.
Lacking knowledge in parenting and hampered by her limited English
skills, Huaying resorted to Chinese education as a parenting strategy. She
regarded NECA as a buffer zone between East and West, and viewed other
parents of the Chinese school as her support group.
Shaoyi and Meiru, who are husband and wife, both obtained master’ s
degrees from American universities. They expected that their children would
surpass them in English by t he time they finished elementary school. To ensure
effective parent-child communication for effective parenting and family bonding,
this couple thought it necessary for their children to learn Chinese. Meiru
explained:
Both my husband and I foresaw language as an issue in our family.
Communication will become a big problem when our children surpass us
in English speaking. We also found out that it’s more practical to make
our children learn Chinese than for us to improve our English, because
children learn new languages much easier and faster than adults.
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Some parents fear that their lack of English fluency will attenuate their authority
as parents, and lack of parental authority will become an obstacle to effective
parenting.
Sumei has a bachelor’s degree from an American university. She worked
several years as a computer programmer before quitting to stay home with the
children. After witnessing the difficulties other immigrant parents encountered in
parenting because of their lack of English fluency, Sumei was determined to make
her children learn her native language to keep her authority intact.
Although my English is better than my children’s now, they will outstrip
me [in English] pretty soon. The tricky part is that there is no way that
[immigrant] parents’ English will be better than their children’s; for
example, our English is accented, but our children’s English is
accentless… We parents must surpass our children in at least one thing so
that we can subjugate them [to our authority] and have them comply with
us.… Most children are not mature enough to understand how hard it is for
grown-ups to adapt themselves to a new culture. There is a limitation to
our English fluency as adult immigrants… Making my children learn
Chinese is my way of telling them, ”If you think you are really good, learn
Chinese well. Let’s see if you can speak this language as well as I do.”
They would realize how hard it is to learn a foreign language well by
learning Chinese.
Immigrants’ lack of English profici ency often attenuates their parental
authority. Research literature shows that it is not unusual for children of
immigrants to feel embarrassed by their parents’ poor English. Immigrant parents
lose their authority when their children’s understanding of the American language
and culture outpaces their own. Immigrant parents’ lack of English proficiency
might even lead to a role reversal, especially when the children are comfortable
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with the English language and culture. Role reversal is one of the most poignant
features of immigrants’ adaptation to a new society. It often occurs in working-
class immigrants because of their low level of education (see Portes & Rumbaut,
1996, ch. 7; 2001, ch. 3).
Suling complained about the gap between her expectations regarding her
son’s academic performance and that of the public school her child attended:
Once my son got a C in his report card. I told him that it’s not acceptable,
but he retorted: “My teacher says it’s okay to get a C.” Since my English
is not good, I had to ask my husband to go to the child’s school to
communicate with the teacher.
Chinese parents tend to have high educational expectations for their children.
They commonly expect their children to do well in school because of the cultural
value placed on success through education. They believe that a parent with no
authority won’ t be able to guide the child into accepting parental expectations.
Cultural Pride
Many of NECA’s adult participants committed themselves to ethnic
preservation because of their strong ethnic identity and cultural pride. Ethnic
language and religion, social mores, and cultural values, including the concept of
family virtue, constitute grassroots activists’ collective memory of cultural pride.
Two comments were echoed by many subjects: “The Chinese language is
so beautiful; it’s a form of art.” “Chinese culture is so rich and profound.”
Meili, a woman in her early fifties, is another example of this type. She taught
Chinese at a junior high school in Taiwan before immigrating to the United States
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in the early 1990s. Coming to this country as a single mother, she made a living
by teaching part-time at three different Chinese schools. She explained that her
passion for Chinese language and culture is the driving force that k eeps her in the
field of Chinese education: “Many immigrants change their fields after they come
to this country. I don’t want to give up this job, although I don’t make much
money at it. The Chinese language is too beautiful.”
When asked to describe the merits of American culture, Yishan, a room
father who volunteered in his son’s Chinese class every Sunday morning, said:
American culture? Is there such thing as American culture? Well, I must
admit that there are some other ethnic groups in the U.S. that also
emphasize family values as much as Chinese do; for example, I know
some Irish Americans are very conservative, too. I doubt if we can call it
American culture. Most people would associate American culture with
Californian culture. Unlike Chinese culture, which is profound, the
amusement-park type of culture is boisterous and superficial.
Kaihung, a man in his mid-thirties and an enthusiastic school volunteer,
has a master’s degree from an American university. He is very proud of being a
Chinese Buddhist. He considers Buddhism superior to Christianity because the
former emphasizes inner transcendence and self-salvation. Spiritual cultivation
means unearthing one’s innate Buddhist nature for self-salvation, as opposed to
the outer transcendence emphasized by Christianity, in which one must look to
the Messiah for salvation.
For the grassroots activists, maintaining family cohesion is an important
purpose of Chinese education. They emphasize that it is important to instill
Chinese family values into their children to foster collectivism and family
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solidarity, which in turn will foster family-based altruism to counterbalance
American individualism and egotism. “Americans are overly self-centered” and
“Children in the Unites States have too much freedom” were two of grassroots
activists’ most common complaints about American culture. They considered
filial piety to be the core merit of traditional Chinese culture, in which family
values are emphasized.
Yi-shan calls himself an “overseas Chinese from Laos.” He regarded
himself as a Laotian when he was a child, but he became a Chinese in Taiwan
after 1975. This Taiwanese Chinese became an American citizen in the 1990s.
When asked about the benefits of Chinese culture, Yi-shan replied without
hesitation: “filial piety.” He defined the term:
Filial piety means one must respect his or her parents and not to make
them worry. So a filial child will never go astray because he knows that it
is wrong to make his parents worry… In the past, filial children would also
support their parents financially when they were too old to work. It’s not
an issue now because we all work and have retirement plans. Filial piety is
a very important virtue because it helps to maintain a good parent-child
relationship and makes a family strong.
Yi-shan pointed out that family is an immigrant’s most important social capital:
“Family is the greatest asset of immigrants because we gain the most support
from our family.”
According to Yi-shan’s wife, her husband is very close to his eighty-year-
old mother, who has lived with them since they married. From being Laotian,
then Taiwanese Chinese, to becoming an U.S. citizen, Yi-shan has learned that
family is the most important support for people in the diaspora because it is the
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only thing that remains unchanged in one’s life journey. He also emphasized that,
for him, ethnic preservation as a parenting strategy is more an emotional decision
than one based on rational calculation. He believes that ethnic language
education is an emotional issue for first -generation immigrants, but more the
result of rational instrumentality for second-generation immigrant parents.
Huaying, a woman in her mid-forties and an accounting supervisor in a
Chinese-owned publishing house, explained her view of the importance of filial
piety:
It is important to instill in children filial piety, because a harmonious
parent-child relationship is the foundation of all of human relationships. If
a child knows how to get along well with his/her parents, he or she is more
likely to have a harmonious relationship with his/her boss, friends, and
associates.
Ruyi, an affluent woman in her early fifties, volunteers at NECA as an
administrator. She emphasized that filial piety is the foundation of all virtue. She
is very proud of serving three elders in their latter years:
I am most proud of myself for taking care of three elders in my family—
the mothers of my father-in-law and my mother-in-law, and my father-in-
law— in their latter years until they passed away.
Suling, a woman in her late forties, has participated in NECA as a
volunteer mother for eight years. She emphasized that knowledge of one’s own
culture is a source of dignity for ethnic minorities:
Americans won’t respect us unless we respect ourselves first. In my
experience, we gain more respect when we truly understand our own
cultural roots and follow our own cultural tradition. They see us
differently, and we are indeed different. Look at our skin color. Can we
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change it? The point is: be yourself, or you’ll be lost. I don’t see that
there is a need to be assimilated. It’s just quite impossible to me.
Suling used her husband’s story to prove the importance of “being yourself” by
preserving one’s ethnic cultural values. Suling’s husband is a mailman who
works in a town of mostly white middle-class people. Her husband— a man in his
early fifties— came to the United States in the late 1970s and obtained an MBA
degree from an American university before becoming a mail carrier. She
recounted:
My husband works in one of the post offices in La Canada city. That’s a
very white city. His supervisors are white and all his colleagues are white.
My husband always gets bad shifts in his work and we all know why…
Nobody in his office cared about him until one day his name appeared in
the newspaper. To make a long story short, there is a nursing home in his
work route. My husband is very nice to the old people in the nursing
home. He knows all the old people very well and he cares about them.
Following the Confucian teaching of “respect the elders and the virtuous
(jing lao zun xian),” my husband always tries to help those old people as
much as he can. Touched by his sincere attitude and behavior, one of the
old people my husband had helped called the local newspaper, and the
reporter wrote an article about my husband. He became famous locally
after the report. This incident kind of changed his status in the office. My
husband’s behavior was affirmed because he follows our cultural tradition.
“Be yourself” is the way we get acknowledged and recognized by
mainstream people. And I hope that we can pass these values and virtues
on to our child.
About one-third of the grassroots activists emphasized the importance of
ethnic preservation from a perspective of maintaining family cohesion. Five of
the parents said that it is important for the second generation to be fluent in the
ethnic language so that the children can communicate with their grandparents,
who are too old to learn English well. A common characteristic of this type of
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parent is that they all maintain fairly close relationships with their families in
Taiwan and regard ethnic language as an essential requirement for family bonding.
Suling chose NECA for her son because of the religious background of the
school. She hoped to instill in the child traditional Chinese cultural values,
particularly Confucian values, for the sake of both character training and family
bonding. Suling regarded her son’s American identity as a precursor of an
estranged parent-child relationship:
My son once asked me: “Mom, I’ m an American, why should I learn
Chinese?” He was only seven years old when he asked me this question.
He went to another Chinese school at that time. His words made me very
sad. I think it is okay if my child says this kind of thing to me in the future
because my son was born and raised here in the U.S. after all. But my
husband and I were not. If the cultural gap between my son and us is too
wide, how can we communicate with each other? So I transferred him to
NECA, because I always hope to instill in the child Chinese ethics and
values; a common language and similar cultural values and lifestyle are
the keys to harmonious family relationships, after all.
Suling also emphasized that her son must be able to communicate not only with
his parents but also with his extended family in Taiwan.
Sumei, a volunteer mom in her mid-forties, is a partially assimilated
Taiwanese immigrant: most residents of the city where Sumei lives are middle-
class Caucasians. She regards ethnic language as an important symbol of ethnic
culture and identity, which foster family cohesion. She used her cousins’ story to
illustrate how loss of ethnic identity, particularly in the case of Asians, caused
harm to family bonding:
I have three cousins who grew up in the U.S. They are all very lost. They
looked down their parents and their native language and culture, although
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my uncle is a well-educated man who obtained a Ph.D. from an American
university. My cousins refused to speak Taiwanese at home, and they said
that they wouldn’t marry Asian women because they were all very ugly.
Their derogatory language toward Asians hurt their parents. Ironically,
they all married Asian women with black hair. As far as I’m concerned,
my cousins are very lost, although they all did well at school and they all
have master’s degrees.
Sumei sympathized with her uncle because he has what she considered very
“unfilial” and “lost” children:
My uncle is divorced and lives alone now. He is a lonely old man now
because none of his children lives with him or cares about him. I don’t want
my children to grow up like that. I want them to be proud of Chinese culture
and feel good about their skin and hair color. I want them to think black hair
and yellow skin are beautiful. I want them to reap the benefits of American
culture without forgetting their roots.
Shanhu, a woman in her late forties, is the principal of NECA and a school
parent. She was a career woman before having a child in her late thirties. Her life
now revolves around her child. She described herself as her only son’s
“chauffeur” because she is always busy driving him to extracurricular activities,
including the Chinese school. She explained,
I like to maintain a very close relationship with my child. I always like to
review the Chinese lessons with him. Reviewing the aphorisms that he learns
from the character-training program of NECA in the car is one of my favorite
ways of bonding with him.
Huaying, a white-collar worker and a volunteer mom, pointed out the
importance of ethnic preservation from the perspective of family harmony:
I don’t worry about my children’s English. I only worry that their Chinese
is not good enough, because a harmonious [parent-child] relationship must
be built upon mutual understanding, which must be built on effective
communication. How can we have mutual understanding and effective
communication if my children don’t understand my language and culture?
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Chinese as a Language of High Instrumental Value
Some immigrant parents emphasize the instrumental value of Chinese and
believe that second-language fluency will facilitate the educational and
occupational advancement of their children. “The [economic] market of China is
too huge to be ignored” and “I’m afraid that my child will be disadvantaged [in
the future job market] if (s)he grows up as an English monolingual” are the two
common concerns shared by Taiwanese immigrant parents in this study,
regardless their length of residence in the United States.
Sumei insists that her children must complete all levels of Chinese courses
provided by the Chinese school because she considers this to be an achievement
that will stand out on her children’s college applications.
Kaihung, a volunteer dad with two children at NECA, also regards
Chinese as a source of advantage for his children. This excerpt from an interview
with him demonstrates his belief in the instrumental value of various forms of
cultural capital. He considers cultural capital important because they can be
converted into economic capital:
K: Foreign language ability is important. That’s something you can put on
your resume when you look for a job. My children take piano lessons,
violin lessons, and art classes. But none of these matter more than
Chinese education. You don’t tell people that you can play many different
kinds of musical instruments at job interviews, unless you are looking for
a music-related job. But foreign language fluency is always a plus no
matter what kind of job you look for.
Interviewer: Then how come you let your children take piano lessons and art
class?
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K: Well, they can put those talents in their college applications.
Shanhu, the principal of NECA, pointed out that there are 1.3 billion
Chinese in the world, one-quarter of the total world population. The principal
concluded, “There is no reason for not preserving this language.”
Lien, a financial consultant in her early fifties, came to the United States
with her husband in the 1970. She has two g rown sons and an eight-year-old
daughter. She helped out in her daughter’s Chinese class every Sunday. Lien
insists that she is Taiwanese, not Chinese. Lien and her husband speak only
Hokkien at home, although she is fluent in Mandarin. She stated repeatedly in the
interview that going to Chinese school every Sunday is tiring for her. However,
witnessing the dramatic increase of the Chinese immigrant population in the
Greater Los Angeles area in the past three decades, Lien is afraid that her
daughter will be disadvantaged in the job market if she does not acquire a
language:
We claim that we live in a global village. I think bilingualism will be the
trend. That’s why I think it’s important for my daughter to learn some
Chinese. Frankly speaking, I’m not sure whether we’ll continue [to go to
Chinese school] next year, since my daughter really hates it. I don’t
expect her to do well in NECA. I just want her to have some foundation
in Chinese. I’ve tried my best, anyway. I go to NECA with my child
every Sunday morning for the past three years.
Fiona, a woman in her early fifties in an interracial marriage, is a room
mother at NECA. She is married to a Caucasian, and she, her husband, and their
two teenage daughters speak only English at home. Fiona worried that being
English monolinguals would hurt her children’s chances for success:
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I’m not sure how useful Chinese will be in the future. In fact, who knows
what [kind of knowledge] will be useful in the future? I think it’s safer to
equip our children with certain skills when they are young. It will be too
late for them to start learning a new language when they find it useful,
because it takes a lot of time to learn languages.
Bob, a man in his early fifties, a professor and dean of the medical school
at a local university, was the only Caucasian research participant in this study.
Bob is very supportive of his children’s Chinese education. During my fieldwork
at NECA, I often saw him reading quietly in the patio of the Chinese school while
his sons were in Chinese class. He and his Taiwanese wife have two sons. He
felt very sorry that he, as a second-generation German immigrant, does not speak
German at all, and wanted his children to learn their mother’s language:
My parents came to this country in 1945. They avoided speaking German
here in the U.S. because it was not a good time for them to be too German
then. I grew up as an English monolingual. I wish I could speak more
languages. I think it’s important for my children to learn Chinese or they
can’t communicate with their cousins in Taiwan. They are half Chinese,
after all. The other important reason I want them to learn the language is
that Chinese is a very useful language in Southern California. My first
child aspires to become a surgeon. I even hope that he can learn Spanish.
I think both Chinese and Spanish are very important languages here in
Southern California. It will be a great help to him if he can communicate
with his patients in their native languages.
The Intersection of Chinese and Music Education
Another important pattern in the investigation of the informants’ parenting
strategy is that Chinese education is only one of the several extracurricular
activities that NECA parents arranged for their children. It i s not uncommon to
find a NECA student participating in two to three nonsports-related after-school
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activities, such as music lessons and art classes. In addition to Chinese language
education, music education is common for children in Chinese immigrant
communities. Among the thirty-four children of the twenty-two NECA parents
interviewed in this study (including four couples, thus eighteen families in total),
twenty-nine took private lessons for musical instruments. Piano was the most
popular choice, fol lowed by violin, cello, viola, and a traditional Chinese musical
instrument called guzheng. Consider the following three examples:
Shanhu’s only son had taken piano lessons for several years. She had her
son take the California assessment test for piano skills every year. In March 2005,
two important incidents occurred. The child passed the piano assessment test at
level 5.
14
More importantly, he was admitted to one of the most prestigious prep
schools in the Greater Los Angeles area. Shanhu, NECA’s principal, told me this
good news when she spotted me on the NECA campus one Sunday morning as I
was doing my fieldwork. For Shanhu, exposing the child to a variety of
extracurricular activities and thereby contributing to the child’s cognitive growth
is the key to her son’s academic success. In addition to Chinese and piano, the
child was also good at mental arithmetic, a skill fostered in the child’s abacus
class— another after-school activity— which enabled him to do computation
quickly and accurately without using a pen. The child was also in boy scouts, and
his mother intended to start him in viola lessons the following year. Shanhu
14
The statewide assessment test provides ten levels of test.
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emphasized that efficient use of time was the secret to handling so many
extracurricular activities at the same time:
Not having enough time is not an issue for me. I was trained to make full
use of my time since I was a child. When I was in primary school, I
always did my homework in the school patio while I was waiting for my
dad to pick me up. I usually had finished my homework by the time my
dad showed up to take me home. In my high school years, I commuted by
bus every day. I could do a lot of things by using the bus time: I always
reviewed lessons, did reading, memorized English vocabulary in the bus.
So did my schoolmates.
Dana and Bob had two sons; each played two kinds of musical instrument.
The older child played piano and violin, and the younger one piano and cello.
Dana herself was an amateur guzheng player who had performed in Las Vegas
and at the Hollywood Bowl. A few years ago, the older child won a
championship in a piano competition hosted by the Hollywood Bowl for children
under ten, and had been a violinist in the Pasadena Youth Symphony Orchestra
since 2004.
15
The child also was a member of a prestigious children’s choir in
Los Angeles. However, Dana and Bob did not expect their children to become
musicians. Their older son aspired to become a medical doctor and was admitted
to a prestigious boarding school in Claremont in 2005. Dana emphasized that her
son’s achievement in music was a plus on his application to the boarding school.
Kaihung has a son and a daughter. His son first took piano lessons, then
violin. The daughter took piano lessons only. Although the children did not
really e njoy taking the lessons, Kaihung believed that music lessons, like Chinese
15
Over 70 percent of the members of Pasadena Youth Symphony Orchestra are Asian American
youths.
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literacy, were beneficial to their cognitive development, because extracurricular
activities “stimulate different parts of our brains.” His children had taken art
classes as well. Kaihung emphasized the importance of developing multiple
talents, while his wife considered art and music “high-class stuff” and a way to
“improve a child’s disposition.” Kaihung’s daughter passed the assessment test
for piano performance at level 2 in 2005.
These vignettes are just three of a myriad of examples that show music
education to be a common parenting strategy among middle- and upper-middle-
class Chinese parents. These parents adopted music education as a parenting
strategy for both social and educational purposes. Middle-class and upper-
middle-class Chinese parents, in Taiwan or in the United States, typically believe
that music lessons are a way to cultivate an agreeable disposition, as well as
aristocratic tastes, in a child. One NECA pa rent mentioned that there are two
music clubs in the high school her child attended: a band and an orchestra. The
majority of the band members were Caucasian children, whereas members of the
orchestra were predominantly Chinese American youths. One possi ble
explanation is that Chinese consider band to be pop culture, whereas orchestra
was considered to be high culture practiced by people of high social status. As far
as Chinese are concerned, children’s membership in the school orchestra carried a
symbolic meaning of high social status. That is, knowledge of classical music—
especially performance skill in music instruments— was considered necessary
cultural capital for membership in Chinese middle and upper middle classes.
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Chinese immigrant parents also believe that the development of what
Howard Gardner (1993) called “multiple intelligences” helps a child become well
rounded.
16
For these parents, being well rounded or equipping the child with
multiple talents, such as foreign language ability and musical literacy, increases
the child’s chances of getting into good colleges in the United States. Thus,
private lessons in music, art, and other after-school programs are a necessary
investment in their children’s future. Parents interviewed in this study also
emphasized the importance of Chinese language proficiency and music literacy by
pointing out that since it is hard for ethnic minorities to surpass mainstream
people in English, so minorities must find other ways to make themselves
competitive in America n society. Their native language is always an advantage
for ethnic minorities. Music, especially musical performance, is considered a
field in which minorities can compete with mainstream people because it does not
require English proficiency.
In her study of Chinese immigrant parents’ expectations, strategies, and
investment in their children’s education, Vivian Louie (2001) pointed out that
middle-class Chinese immigrant parents arrange a variety of extracurricular
activities for their children because they do not like their children to have too
much free time. They carefully monitor their children’s after-school hours by
16
Gardner classified the various kinds of abilities, competencies, and skills people use into eight
intelligences: linguistic intelligence (word smart), logical-mathematical intelligence (number
smart), spatial intelligence (picture smart), bodily-kinesthetic intelligence (body smart), musical
intelligence (music smart), interpersonal intelligence (people smart), intrapersonal intelligence
(self smart), and naturalist intelligence (nature smart) (see Armstrong 2000, p. 17–21).
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assigning supplementary homework or signing them up for academic tutoring
programs or music programs to make sure that the learning process extends well
beyond is available in a school setting and to ensure that their children do not
dawdle away their free time. Louie further points out: “Classical music, in
particular, emerged as a key element in the childhood and adolescence of middle-
class respondents” (p. 456). Wasting time was considered to be a great sin in
neo-Confucian ideology, which has a great influence on the Chinese view of
learning and education (Yu, 1987, p. 69).
Middle-class Chinese immigrant parents believe that Chinese education,
like music classes, brings multiple benefits to their children. Ethnic language
fluency benefits the child because foreign language proficiency enriches a child’s
educational profile, which is expected to be advantageous to his/her college
application and future educational and occupational advancement. Moreover, not
only the child but also the whole family benefits from the cultural practice of
Chinese education because the child’s ethnic language fluency fosters family
harmony and enhances family bonding. Also, for Chinese immigrant parents,
making children spend three hours in Chinese school on Sunday morning is much
better than letting them waste the same time watching television, no matter how
much Chinese the child learns during school hours.
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Multiple Functions of NECA
The majority of grassroots activists— parents or nonparents— interviewed
in this study are long-term NECA participants. Many of them had been
volunteering in the Chinese school as administrators, teachers’ assistants, or
volunteer parents for more than five years. Some of them continued to volunteer
in NECA even after their children had left the Chinese school. From the
perspective of NECA’s adult participants, NECA fulfills two important functions
other than teaching Chinese language: it is a desirable social space and a channel
for identity reestablishment and affirmation. In other words, in addition to
parenting support, NECA’s multiple functions account for grassroots activists’
long-term participation in the school.
NECA as a Social Space
NECA operates at very low cost and counts on active parental
involvement for smooth school operation. NECA encourages parental
participation by institutionalizing the practice of volunteering: parents accumulate
community service hours from its parent organization, NEF— a reputable
charitable organization— by volunteering at the school. After accumulating a
number of service hours, school volunteers are encouraged to attend workshops
on charity work and the mission, philosophy, and organizational structure of NEF.
Workshop attendees are encouraged to join NEF. NEF’s religious doctrine is
inner-worldly asceticism — a religious/cultural ethic derived from Chinese Ch’an
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(Zen) Buddhism. Hence, all NEF members are encouraged to contribute to
society through community service.
NEF members are promoted to the position of commissioner after
completing six hundred hours of community service and recruiting twenty new
members for NEF. Fundraising and new member recruitment are the lifelong
missions of all NEF commissioners.
NECA becomes a social space for its adult participants when it allows and
encourages parental participation. The same desirable social space has different
meanings in the eyes of different participants.
In the Eyes of (Affluent) Women
Several of NECA’s female administrators— mostly housewives from
affluent families— described NECA as a place where they feel “happier,” because
volunteering at the Chinese school keeps them busy and gives their lives meaning.
These are school parents or former parents who remain as NECA volunteers even
after their children leave NECA. Most female administrators actively participate
in other charity activities organized by NEF in addition to volunteering at NECA.
Shanhu, the principal, is an example of this type of school volunteer. She was a
career woman before relocating from Texas to California, where her husband
started his own business. She had been working for the same company for fifteen
years as a department manager but quit her job for her family’s sake. Describing
herself as “a person who is not used to having too much leisure time,” Shanhu
tried to keep herself busy with volunteer work after she became a housewife; she
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has been actively volunteering at NECA as an administrator since her son started
Chinese school a few years ago. If ethnic preservation is one of Shanhu’s
parenting strategies, volunteering at NECA is her way of resisting the socially
ascribed role of traditional Chinese women. Like many Chinese or Taiw anese
immigrants of her age, Shanhu is still situated between traditional Chinese and
modern Western culture:
My mother-in-law once made a comment when she found out that I have a
housekeeper: “I don’t understand why a housewife needs to pay someone
else to clean her house.” She isn’t very happy about my active
involvement in NEF and NECA, either [because too many social activities
will affect a woman’s performance as a homemaker]. My standard reply
to my in-law’s complaints is: “I do all this for the sake of my son: I
volunteer in NEF and NECA to accumulate good karma for my son.”
Ruyi, an affluent woman in her early fifties, is also a NECA administrator,
volunteering as the breakfast coordinator. NECA provides free breakfast at the
teachers’ meeting held every Sunday morning. Her job is to recruit volunteers to
provide breakfast for the teachers. If nobody volunteers to bring breakfast on
certain date, Ruyi has to fill in as the meal provider. Ruyi used to be a NECA
parent. She stayed at the school a s a volunteer after her children finished Chinese
school because she likes children. A devoted Mahayana Buddhist, Ruyi must
follow the Buddhist teaching of doing good. For Ruyi, volunteering at NECA is a
way of both filling her time and doing good.
The Chinese place a high value on education. Charity is a common social
activity among the rich. Mothers, especially housewives, are the primary
caregivers for the children, and thus play a very important role in the socialization
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of children. Women are con sidered to be the bearers of ethnic reproduction
(Ebaugh, 2000). Because it provides charity and ethnic education for children,
NECA is a desirable social space for affluent Chinese women. It is a socially and
culturally sanctioned setting where housewives from wealthy Chinese immigrant
families can be socially active.
In the Eyes of Working Parents
From the perspective of busy working parents, NECA is a perfect site for
networking with their co-ethnics because they can socialize with other parents and
stay close to their children at the Chinese school. A mother who volunteered at
NECA every Sunday said: “As a tired mom of two children with a full-time job, I
don’t have extra time and energy. Volunteering at NECA is the ‘two birds with
one stone’ strategy for me. I can watch my kids and socialize with other parents
at the same time.” She also emphasized that NECA is a very important social
space for her: “Frankly speaking, I would feel very lonely if there was no NECA
as a social space for me.”
Lien, a financial consultant, has an eight-year-old in NECA and helps as a
room mother in her child’s Chinese class every Sunday morning. She calls
herself “a tired mom in my fifties.” She has very mixed feelings about NECA.
On the one hand, she wants to quit because it is too tiring for her to come to
NECA every Sunday morning. On the other hand, she is afraid that she might
lose the friends she has made in the Chinese school because of their busy work
schedules, which do not allow them to get together during nonschool hours.
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Some volunteer parents described attending NECA as a Sunday “family activity”
as well as a “warm and sweet experience” to them. This is particularly true of
families in which both parents are involved in the school.
To attract more fathers to volunteer at the school, NECA formed the
Volunteer Dads’ Club a few years ago. The club is generally described by its
members as a place with a lot of fun things to do and good food to eat. The Dads’
Club provides its members with a variety of social activities, including birthday
celebrations, family camping, and a golf tournament. Some volunteer dads told
me that they unexpectedly met some “outstanding people” in the dads’ club, that
the association is a place with “talented and successful people from all walks of
life,” and they are very proud of being part of the organization. A club member in
his mid-thirties said to me, half jokingly, that he was thinking about starting his
own business and the club was a good place to connect with the rich and find
venture capital.
Many volunteers described NECA as an “information center,” from which
volunteer parents gained all kinds of useful information, including ideas for
discipline, summer camps, good piano teachers, swim lessons, and holiday
outings. Volunteering at NECA was also showed parents that they were not alone
in the difficulty and frustration that they encountered in disciplining their children.
In this case, parents themselves functioned as a support group.
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A Channel for Identity Affirmation
For grassroots activists, NECA is a channel for identity affirmation or
reestablishment. The umbrage of identity lacunae— caused by displacement,
gender, or ageism — is a common grievance of grassroots activists.
NECA/NEF as a Spiritual Home
Over half of the parents interviewed in this study were recruited by the
Buddhist NEF organization not long after they became involved in NECA for
their children’s sake. These parents committed themselves to NECA not only as
school parents but also as NEF membe rs.
As a reputable Buddhist charitable organization, NEF often becomes the
symbolic capital through which grassroots activists reestablish their identity. In
sociology, religious faith is viewed as the important spiritual and psychological
anchor upon which new immigrants’ reestablishment of identity is based (Lin,
2000). “This place defines me” and “New Enlightenment [foundation] is my
spiritual home” are two ways that NECA volunteers describe their relationship
with the foundation. A common characteristic feature of these committed
volunteers is that they had tried to join other religious groups before their children
started school at NECA. They settled at NEF/NECA because it was more family-
oriented. Tonwu and Yuwen— a man who came to this country w ith “bags of
money” and a woman of modest social origin— are two typical examples of
“volunteers with commitment.”
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Tonwu, the events coordinator and assistant principal at NECA, completed
two master’s degrees from an American university in the 1980s. He has
volunteered at NECA for ten years, since his first child started school there. He
had tried to join different ethnic associations before his children started at NECA,
but he settled at NEF, ending his identity quest.
Tonwu complained that neither NECA nor NEF had ever funded the
special events— the school opening ceremony, commencement, Chinese New
Year festival, and others— that he coordinated for the school. He always has to
find funding by himself. Although Tonwu coordinates all NECA’s events on a
zero budget, he has continued to volunteer at NECA and NEF because he is “a
volunteer with commitment,” as he puts it. Tonwu attributes his active
participation in NECA/NEF to his religious faith. He regards NEF as his
“spiritual home”— a place that “defines him.”
We Buddhists believe in samsara and retribution. What we do in this life
will determine what we become in our next life. What we are today is the
outcome of what we did in our previous life. I’m fortunate that I don’t
have to work because I have just enough fortune to live on. I’m using the
[moral] credit that I accumulated in my previous life. However, the credit
will be used up sooner or later. The only way to ensure a good life not
only in this life but also in the next life is to continue to accumulate moral
credit by doing good. That’s why I devote myself to the New
Enlightenment enterprise.
A few years ago, Tonwu organized the Volunteer Dads’ Club at NECA to
promote volunteerism among the fathers. He presents himself as a role model for
other volunteer fathers:
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I hope to send a message to all volunteer dads through my volunteer work:
hey, if you want to lead a life like mine [living on inherited wealth], you
must try hard to help others, just like I volunteer at NECA and NEF.
After becoming a NEF member, Tonwu came to value Chinese education even
more. He noted that all documents issued from NEF’s global headquarters in
Taiwan are in Chinese: “If we don’t teach the young generation Chinese, nobody
will be able to read the documents [from NEF] fifty years from now. Also, how
can our children read Buddhist sutra if they don’t understand Chinese?”
Yuwen, a fifty-year-old woman, is a NECA parent of modest social
origins. She graduated from a vocational school in Taiwan and came to the
United States with her husband in 1991. Her husband works as a caregiver in a
city day-care center for senior citizens. Yuwen makes ends meet by babysitting
for friends. She first helped NECA as a room mother, and learned from other
parents that NEF provided a variety of classes and activities for adults. A
Buddhist from Taiwan, Yuwen was attracted to NEF’s religious activities. She
first took a “prayer instrument” class, then a sign language class. After studying
sign language for three years, she joined the team responsible for teaching “Sing
Along in Sign Language,” which is part of the school’s weekly thirty-minute
character-training program.
In 2000, after several years of participation in NEF, Yuwen became a NEF
commissioner. “My life revolves around New Enlightenment,” Yuwen explained.
“Whenever I go to New Enlightenment, I feel at home.”
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A Channel for Self-Affirmation
Participating in NECA is therapeutic not only for those school parents
who believe that ethnic preservation leads to more effective parenting, but also for
aging NECA teachers. Teachers are highly respected in East Asian cultures, and
NECA has inherited this Chinese cultural tradition. The respect that Chinese
teachers are accorded in the NECA subculture is otherwise unavailable to them,
although teaching at NECA is only a part-time, low -paid job. Teachers are given
a luncheon at the end of every school year. Parents take turns to provide hot
breakfasts for the Chinese language teachers every Sunday.
Mr. Wei, who is retired, keeps himself busy by teaching Chinese language.
He emphasized to me that he would only stop teaching Chinese if he becomes too
old to continue: “Teaching makes me feel that I’m still a man of some worth, not
a man waiting to die. If there com es a day I can’t teach, then I’ll feel done for.”
He is often invited to deliver speeches at NECA’s teacher-training workshops and
other school activities. His latest project is preparing a teacher’s handbook of
three hundred pages for NECA.
Junru, a forty-six-year-old woman, is a NECA teacher and parent. She has
two teenage children attending NECA. She works full-time as an administrative
assistant and teaches at NECA Sunday mornings. She explained,
I really enjoy teaching at NECA because I feel that I’m greatly appreciated
and respected as a teacher in NECA. Also I feel that I’m aging when I work
in the office; however, teaching and working with young people make me feel
young.
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Conclusion
In this chapter, I have investigated the cultural beliefs and experiences of
the grassroots activists (the adult participant-stakeholders of NECA) to
understand why they adopt ethnic education as a parenting strategy and what
accounts for their long-term participation in the school. It is clear from the social
profile and the narratives of the grassroots activists that the cultural factors
(habitus) that motivated them to adopt Chinese education as a parenting strategy
involve both social class and ethnicity. The adult participants of the Chinese
school are predominantly middle- and upper-middle-class immigrants. Chinese
middle-class parents arrange a variety of extracurricular activities to ensure that
their children made full use of their after-school hours with activities beneficial to
their intellectual growth. Only middle-class parents are able to afford numerous
after-school programs, such as music class, art class, and Chinese school. Hence
Chinese parents from a middle- or upper-middle-class background, in Taiwan or
in the United States, do not depend on schools to educate their children.
The habitus that motivates Chinese immigrants to choose Chinese
education as a parenting strategy is also a function of ethnicity. Ethnic factors,
such as cultural reverence for learning and scholarly achievements, cultural pride,
and cultural beliefs in success through education, family bonding, and thrifty use
of time, make nonformal Chinese education a common practice in immigrant
Chinese communities.
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An unexpected finding on grassroots activists is the gap between their
educational attainment and their English fluency. The majority of the Taiwanese
parents interviewed in this study are professional or entrepreneurial types with at
least a bachelor’s degree. However, their English fluency and educational levels
are not positively correlated. These parents worry that their lack of English
fluency will become a barrier to intergenerational communication, resulting in an
estranged parent-child relationship. They emphasize the importance of effective
communication as the basis of family bonding and harmony. At the same time,
they fear that their lack of English fluency will attenuate their authority as parents,
and this will become a barrier to effective parenting and child discipline. More
than half of the parents interviewed in this study, including those who went to
college and graduate school in the United States, believe that their children will
surpass them in English fluency by the time the children reach adolescence. Their
solution to this problem is to close the cultural gap between parents and children
by having the child learn the parents’ language and culture through Chinese
education.
The high value placed on family and the cultural belief in success through
education are other important factors that account for Chinese immigrants
employing Chinese language education as a parenting strategy. Filial piety forms
the core of Chinese family values, which enhance parental authority. Moreover,
the high instrumental value of the Chinese language makes immigrant parents
regard Chinese education as a necessary investment in their children’s future.
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China was the first country in the world to institutionalize meritocracy through the
imperial examination system. The imperial (civil service) examination was open
to all men in China starting in the tenth century. Implemented in China for more
than ten centuries, the imperial examination has had a profound influence on
Chinese views of education, instilling a belief that high educational achievement
is the key to social mobility. This has become the most important motivation for
favoring education as the best way of equipping their children with the skills
necessary for future economic and occupational success. Although the imperial
examination was abolished in the early twentieth century, the Chinese have never
lost their cultural reverence for learning and scholarly achievements.
The instrumental value of ethnic language is not the only reason for
Taiwanese immigrants’ collective action in preserving bilingualism in the second
generation. Emotional issues such as family bonding, cultural pride, and identity
defense or affirmation are also important factors that account for the sustainability
of grassroots activists’ collective action. The case of NECA echoes Melucci’s
(1995) argument that collective identity— ethnic identity in the case of NECA —
has an emotional dimension, “which cannot be reduced to cost-benefit calculation
and always mobilizes emotions as well” (p. 45).
NECA’s multiple functions keep its grassroots activists invested in the
Chinese school . NECA is not only a site for education but also a setting with
social function. NECA encourages parent participation, and this participation
makes NECA a social space for new immigrants to network with their co-ethnics.
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More importantly, NECA is social space that allows its adult participants to cross
class boundaries when Chinese immigrants of lower-middle-class volunteers work
side by side with their upper-class counterparts.
For grassroots activists, participating in NECA was more than an issue of
parenting; it was also an identity search and affirmation process. This is
particularly true of those who were proselytized by NEF, the Buddhist
organization with which NECA was affiliated. For those who were recruited by
NEF, NECA is not simply a social space for networking; more importantly, it is a
social space where they gain sense of belonging.
Nonformal Chinese education intended for ethnic preservation and cultural
transmission is the product of grassroots activists’ collective efforts in
(re)constructing ethnicity. How is ethnicity or ethnic identity constructed through
nonformal Chinese education? How are ethnic language and culture transmitted
to the second generation of Chinese immigrants at NECA? What are the
outcomes of the Chinese education provided by the specific Chinese school
selected for this study? These are the questions to be explored in the next chapter.
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CHAPTER 5
THE SCHOOL EXPERIENCE AT NECA
This chapter is divided into two parts: the school process and the outcomes
of Chinese education. I first present the school process by examining the
curriculum and school structure. The school structure covers school
administration, extracurricular activities, parent volunteers, and rou tine practices.
Also, I depict some Chinese classes and a teacher’s workshop as concrete
examples of the cultural transmission process. The second section deals with
changes that NECA participants (both adult participants and students) underwent
after years of participating in the Chinese school.
School Process
Three Major Findings
Formalization of Chinese education, cultural transmission through
language teaching and moral education, and school participation as a family
activity are the three major findings of the investigation of school process.
Formalization of Chinese Education
NECA, though a nonformal school, resembles a formal school in every
way except that NECA classes are conducted on Sunday and it is not accredited.
NECA has formalized the cultural practice of Chinese education. The
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formalization of Chinese education is manifested in two ways: a set of school
rules and norms, and conventional school practices appropriated from formal
schools in the United States and Taiwan.
School Rules and Norms
At the beginning of each school year, each student receives a nine-page
“Parent and Student Handbook,” which details school rules and the obligations of
school volunteers. A u niform requirement is one of the most noticeable school
rules. All NECA participants, students and school staff (including parent
volunteers), must wear a uniform during school hours. Male teachers and
students wear a polo shirt with the NEF logo and the Chinese characters for “New
Enlightenment.” Female teachers wear a white blouse and a blue skirt or pants.
Parent volunteers used to be allowed to wear a uniform with the NEF logo until
an incident of fundraising fraud. They wear a uniform with no NEF logo on it.
School rules and norms are also demonstrated in the criteria for student
assessment. Each student receives a report card at the end of each semester. The
three main components of evaluation are test results, homework, and conduct.
Two midterms, one final exam, and numerous quizzes are administered each
semester. Students can earn extra credit by participating in various community
service programs provided by NEF. Those who earn a high ranking for NECA in
interschool Chinese contests also receive extra credit. Each unexcused absence
deducts 0.25 point, but no more than 2 points can be deducted from a student’s
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final grade. The students who rank first in their class receive public praise and are
rewarded with citations and little gifts at the end-of-school ceremony.
Conventional School Practices
A teacher assembly is one routine practice at NECA. All Chinese
language teachers meet with the principal every Sunday morning for special
announcements. The assembly usually lasts thirty minutes. Teachers eat a
breakfast that school parents prepare for them while l istening to the principal’s
announcements. An early morning assembly is a conventional cultural practice at
schools in Taiwan.
School events also show the institutionalization of NECA. Annual school
events include a school opening ceremony in September, a combined
commencement and end-of-school ceremony in June, Chinese New Year
celebrations, a teacher appreciation lunch, and school placement tests. All NECA
students and staff assemble at the auditorium, which is rented from a local middle
school, twice a year for ceremonies to begin and end the school year. Although
NECA is an unaccredited school, graduates wear gowns and mortarboards with
tassels, and receive a diploma at commencement.
Curriculum for Cultural Transmission
NECA’s school hours are from 9:00 a.m. to 12:20 p.m. on Sunday. The
school day has three components: Chinese language instruction (100 minutes),
humanity or moral education (30 minutes), and life-enrichment programs (50
minutes). All classes are taught in Mandarin.
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Language Instruction
Attaining Chinese proficiency requires the acquisition of approximately
3,500 Chinese characters. NECA students are expected to acquire some 1,300
Chinese characters and to reach a fifth- or sixth-grade reading level after
completing the fifteen levels at the school. The curriculum is designed such that
it takes a child one year to finish each level; hence it takes fifteen years for the
child to complete the coursework. Some parents accelerate this process by hiring
private tutors in the summer or sending their children to Chinese summer schools.
A placement test is held every August for students attempting to skip grades.
Textbooks
Rumbaut and Portes (2001) point out that selective acculturation
empowers ethnic minority children by fostering an ethnic identity built upon “a
clear sense of their roots, the value of fluency in a second language, and the self-
esteem grounded on strong family and community bonds” (p. 316). The written
texts used in the classroom play an important role in ethnic socialization of NECA
students. NECA uses textbooks provided by the Taiwan government, teaches
traditional Chinese characters, and adopts the traditional Bopomofo phonetic
system as opposed to the simplified Chinese characters and the hanyu pinyin
phonetic system taught in Chinese schools established by mainland Chinese.
Each year, NECA receives free textbooks from the Taiwan government
through the Southern California branch office of the Overseas Chinese Affairs
Commission (OCAC), which is a division of the Executive Yuan of the Republic
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of China in Taiwan.
17
OCAC provides over 40,000 copies of free textbooks for
the local Chinese schools and 3,600 copies for individuals in the southwestern
United States, including Southern California, Arizona, and New Mexico
(Overseas Chinese Cultural Center in Los Angeles).
18
The set of textbooks used
in NECA for language instruction comprises twelve primers, which include168
lessons in total. The 168 lessons can be categorized into nine main themes:
• Moral values (19 lessons)
• Heroes and heroic deeds (18 lessons)
• Community (15 lessons)
• Chinese poets and poetry (6 lessons, including 8 poems)
• Chinese idioms and their allusions (6 lessons)
• Chinese language art (6 lessons)
• Holidays (6 lessons)
• Chinese sages (4 lessons)
• Others
Tabl e 9 shows the nine distinct culturally upheld values in the nineteen lessons of
moral significance. Among the nineteen texts with moral messages, three were
intended for the indoctrination of the Confucian value of filial piety. One was
used to teach the Confucian value of benevolence. Industriousness and thrifty use
17
The national (or central) government of the Republic of China is divided into five
branches. Each branch is called a yuan. In addition to the executive, legislative, and
judicial yuan, which function like their Western counterparts, the central government also
has an examination yuan and a control yuan. The examination yuan is responsible for the
selection, employment, and management of all civil servants. The control yuan is the
highest supervisory organi zation of the state, exercising powers of impeachment, censure,
and audit (see http://www.gio.gov.tw).
18
Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, the founder of the Republic of China, who successfully overthrew the
Manchurian regime in the 1911 republican revolution, called overseas Chinese the “mother of
revolution” because they were his major source of funding in his revolutionary career. For this
reason, promoting Chinese language instruction overseas and fostering the ethnic identity of
overseas Chinese in order to maintain cultural ties between the Chinese diaspora and the home
country have become important missions for the Republic of China.
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of money and time are the economic ethics of Chinese neo-Chan Buddhism,
19
neo-Taoism, and neo-Confucianism (Yu, 1987). Confucianism, Buddhism, and
Taoism are the three cultural paradigms of Chinese civilization (deBary, Chan &
Watson, 1960). I translated three texts with moral significance, three on heroes,
and one on a Chinese poet to demonstrate how these texts function as media for
ethnic cultural transmission.
Table 9
Types of Virtues and Corresponding Number of Texts
in Chinese Primers
Virtues Number of Texts
Industriousness 4
Filial Piety 3
Perseverance 3
Courage 2
Family solidarity 2
Thrifty use of time 1
Benevolence 1
Brotherly love 1
Self-support 1
Forgiveness 1
Source: Chinese Language, primers 4 to 12
Confucianism is a humanistic philosophy. Confucius was not concerned
with spiritual beings or life after death. His primary concern was “a good society
based on good government and harmonious human relations” (Chan, 1969). Two
texts in the primer serve to inculcate the Confucian virtues of filial piety and
brotherly love. These texts were intended to promote Chinese collectivism by
teaching the children how to zuoren (“conduct oneself” in society), which is
19
Ch’an Buddhism is better known as Zen Buddhism. Ch’an and Pure Land are the two most
popular sects of Chinese Buddhism.
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crucial to the individual’s awareness of his or her relationships with others in
society.
Tsai Shun, the Filial Son
Once upon a time, a filial son named Tsai Shun lived with his widowed mother. At a time
when the country suffered from political turmoil and famine, Tsai Shun went to look for
food to feed his mother. One day, he picked two baskets of mulberries: one basket of
purple mulberries, the other of green ones. On the way home, he encountered two bandits.
The bandits asked Tsai, “Why did you separate the green mulberries from the purple
ones?” “The purple mulberries are ripe and sweet. Those are for my mother. I keep the
sour green ones for myself,” replied Tsai. The two bandits were deeply moved, so they
let him go (Chinese Language, primer 11, lesson 8).
Kong Rong Yields the Pears
Once upon a time, there was a child named Kong Rong. He loved his brother, and his
brother loved him. The two children had never fought. One day, someone gave Kong
Rong’s father a basket of pears. It happened that Kong Rong was with his fa ther when
the gift was presented to them. The father said to him, “Rong, my son, why don’t you
pick a pear first?” Kong Rong picked a small one from the pears. Puzzled by Rong’s
behavior, the father asked, “Why don’t you pick a bigger one?” Rong answered, “I am
the younger one, so I should eat the small ones. The larger ones are for my elder
brother.” After listening to Rong’ s words, the father smiled and said, “Rong, my son, you
are truly a nice boy, because you understand the virtue of modesty and yielding.”
(Chinese Language, primer 11, lesson 9).
Another text was intended to transmit the traditional Chinese virtue of
industriousness, which is often accompanied by delayed gratification.
Industriousness and Laziness
Both industriousness and laziness like to make friends with humans. Industriousness
helps farmers produce good harvests; it helps workers make products of high quality; it
helps businessmen sell; it helps students do well at school.
However, industriousness brings people both happiness and pain. It often brings people
pain first, and then it brings people happiness. Thus only smart people like to get close to
it.
Laziness is the opposite of industriousness. If farmers make friends with it, they will not
produce a good harvest; if workers make friends with it, they won’t be able to produce
high-quality products; if businessmen make friends with it, they won’t be able to make a
good sale; if students make friends with it, they won’t be able to do well in school.
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Laziness brings both happiness and pain to people as well. However, it often brings
people happiness first, and then it brings people pain. Thus only foolish people like to
make friends with it.
Those who achieve much, whether Chinese or non-Chinese, people from ancient times or
those in our time, all underwent a great deal of hardship and worked industriously before
succeeding. For example, Mr. Sun Yat-Sen [failed ten times before he] founded the
Republic of China; Edison invented the electric light (Chinese Language, primer 12,
lesson 9).
The next text illustrates the Confucian value of jen, meaning
“benevolence” or “goodness.” Jen is a core virtue in Confucian ideology. This
lesson also exemplifies compassion, which is a core virtue of Mahayana
Buddhism.
Sun Shu-Ao Buries the Snake
Sun Shu-Ao was a very kind child. One day, he saw a two-headed snake while playing in
the countryside. It is said that two-headed snakes are a bad omen. Whoever sees them
will die soon. To prevent the two-headed snake from bringing bad luck to other people,
Sun killed the snake and buried it.
Sun returned home and burst out crying as soon as he saw his mother. His mother asked
him what was upsetting him. The boy replied that he had seen a two-headed snake in the
countryside.
“Where is the snake?” asked the mother.
“I was afraid that other people would see it, too, so I killed it and buried it,” said the boy.
The mother held his hand and said, “My boy, you did the right thing. How can nice,
kind-hearted people like you die? It’s nothing but a superstition. There is no need to be
sad.”
Later on, Sun became Prime Minister of the Ch’u State. He was a nice, kind government
official who was loved by the people (Chinese Language, primer 10, lesson 10).
Of the eighteen texts on heroes, seventeen are about Chinese heroes, including
five texts that recount the contributions of overseas Chinese to their host societies
and fourteen texts describing famous political and historical figures, inventors,
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and artists. The next three texts introduce a patriotic Chinese artist, an
outstanding Chinese American, and a famous Chinese poet.
Qi Baishi
Qi Baishi was a modern Chinese artist. He was born into a poor family, and thus did not
start school until he was eight years old. He went to school for four years. When he was
twelve years old, he became a carpenter’s apprentice. However, he had always been
interested in painting and often practiced [drawing and painting] by himself.
He did not return to school or receive formal training in art until he was twenty-seven
years old. He finally became a great artist.
Japanese liked Qi’s paintings very much. Qi refused to sell his art to the Japanese
because they had invaded China during World War II.
In addition to producing many paintings, Qi was also good at the art of Chinese chop
engraving and was known as a famous chop artist.
(Chinese Language, primer 9, lesson 9)
Liao Zhen-Guang
Liao Zhen-Guang was born in Guangdong province. He grew up in the United States. He
was only twelve years old when he came to the United States. After he grew up, he spent
a lot of time improving fruit trees. He improved apples, cherries, peaches, and so forth.
He was awarded a medal because of his efforts in improving oranges ( Chinese Language,
primer 7, lesson 12).
Du Fu
Du Fu [712–770] was a great poet during the Chinese Tang dynasty [618–907].
He was a patriotic poet, and his poems showed an intense sympathy for the populace.
Chinese revered him as the “Historian of Poetry” and the “Saint of Poetry” because he
recorded the decline of the Tang dynasty in his poems.
The poet told us that we must “read ten thousand books or more” in order to “write as
though inspired by the muse”. He achieved much in poetry because he was a studious
and industrious man.
Approximately 1,400 poems by Du were passed down after he died, and people today
still like those poems very much (Chinese Language, primer 10, lesson 1).
By presenting the poet as a studious and industrious man, the text demonstrates
the cultural values of hard work and respect for learning.
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Interestingly, primers 1 through 6 contain no moral lessons; the lessons are
concentrated in the more advanced levels (especially primers 9 through 12).
However, moral education— an important component of the Chinese education
provided by NECA— is an important component of NECA’s classes at every level.
Moral Education and the Aphorisms
NECA’ s educational objectives are twofold: the school offers ethnic
language education but also promotes the culture of NEF through moral education
(the terms “humanistic education,” “moral education,” and “character training”
are used interchangeably in this study). The purpose of NECA’s moral education
is to cultivate well-behaved citizens with an altruistic attitude by instilling
students with the culture of NEF. The ultimate goal of NEF’s character-training
programs is social harmony. According to an internal NECA document, moral
education is the school’s top priority:
With love, compassion, joy, and total dedication, we will cultivate the
students’ benevolent nature and altruism. In addition, we will teach the
students Chinese culture in order to broaden students’ minds and vision
and cultivate students’ thinking and tolerance.
M oral education began as a five-minute mini-lesson on the Aphorisms— excerpts
from the sermons of NEF’s charismatic leader, a Buddhist nun— and was
developed into an independent class in 2003. The Aphorism s are simple slogans
using everyday language. The curriculum design for moral education centers on
the moral codes of “contentment, gratitude, empathy, and tolerance”— the “NEF
spirit.” NECA transmits these moral codes through drama, storytelling, puppetry,
debates, the art of sign language performance (which means children perform
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songs accompanied by sign language), visits to a neighborhood nursing home,
lessons on environmental protection, and study of the Aphorisms. Volunteer
parents were recruited and trained to oversee curriculum design and teaching for
the moral education program. NECA successfully mobilized approximately
seventy parents to help with humanity education in NECA’s twenty-two Chinese
classes every Sunday morning. A lesson from the Aphorisms illustrates the core
values promoted in NECA’s moral education:
• In the world there are two things for which we cannot wait: to be filial
and to do good.
Filial piety is considered the building block of all virtues in Confucian ideology,
and compassion is the core virtue of Mahayana Buddhism. This aphorism
demonstrates that NEF culture follows the cultural tradition of Chinese neo-Ch’an
Buddhism, which is a syncretism of Confucianism and Buddhism.
20
Filial Piety. The virtue of filial piety is emphasized in NEF/NECA culture.
Each June the Chinese school holds an end-of-school ceremony combined with
commencement. Traditionally, a play performed by NECA students formed the
20
Neo-Ch’an Buddhism is a sect of Chinese Mahayana Buddhism. Neo-Ch’an Buddhist culture is
inner-worldly, as opposed to Hinayana Buddhism, which is otherworldly. Buddhism underwent a
great transformation when it migrated to China. Indian Buddhism is characterized by its
otherworldliness. In this view, this world and all worldly attachments are barriers to spiritual
cultivation, which must be renounced before one can attain enlightenment. This religious view
conflicts with Confucian ethics, which emphasizes worldly obligations and clearly defined social
roles (see Ch’en, 1973). Characterized by its secularization and emphasis on inner-worldly
asceticism, neo-Ch’an Buddhism was instituted in China in the seventh century, closing the gap
between Indian Buddhism and neo-Confucianism (Yu 1987). In neo-Ch’an Buddhism, the way to
enlightenment is through unearthing one’s innate Buddha nature, which is achieved through
fulfillment of one ’ s secular obligations. Hence, religious practices such as reading scripture,
making offerings to the Buddha, reciting his name, and even joining the monastic order are
unnecessary for spiritual cultivation (Chan, 1969).
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grand finale of the ceremony. NECA used the performance for the indoctrination
of filial piety in two consecutive years. The play presented in 2004 was adapted
from a Buddhist sutra entitled Fumu en zhong nan bao jing (“Parental Love Is
Difficult to Repay”). In 2005 the play was Gui yang tu (“Picture of the Kneeling
Lamb”), a mini-musical. A lamb receiving milk from a kneeling ewe has become
a symbol of filial piety in Chinese culture. The theme song, “Picture of the
Kneeling Lamb,” was written by NEF members:
Filial piety is the ethic upheld by all saints and sages.
It is fundamental to all virtues.
Therefore, we should respect our parents like Buddha,
And fulfill the meaning of life.
Our parents’ love is as great as the mountain to us;
We cannot forget where we came from.
People need to think of their origin,
And be grateful toward their parents.
A little lamb kneels down to receive milk from its mother.
It closes its eyes to drink its mother’s milk.
The little lamb is grateful to its mother
For nurturing and caring.
It kneels down
As if it is kowtowing to its mother.
The little lamb
Knows the right thing to do from birth.
Filial piety in the human world
Will be fulfilled without any delay.
When a bird matures,
It feeds its parents in return and does not abandon them.
When one’s father is sick,
It is because he is exhausted from caring for his child.
When one’s mother is worried,
It is because she is worried about her child’s future.
Numberless children, to fulfill their own dreams,
Have left their homes to go to faraway places.
Their parents sit by the window,
Waiting for their children to return.
Years pass by, and wrinkles accumulate;
The parents are getting old and feeble.
Don’t wait until too late
To repay and look after your parents.
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As a child,
We need to think about where we came from.
To have a fulfilling life
Is to perform our filial duties with no regrets.
Dear children,
No matter where you are,
Please tell your parents
That you are grateful for all they have done for you.
Chinese believe that filial piety is the basis of virtue. A harmonious
parent-child relationship is the basis of a harmonious family, which is the basis of
social harmony. Kenneth Ch’en (1973) illuminates the relationship between filial
piety and Chinese society:
The traditional Chinese social system was based on the family, not the
individual, and to preserve the family, Confucian ideology insisted that filial
piety… be the foundation of its ethics. To the Chinese, family existence, clan
harmony, social peace, and the preservation of Chinese culture all rested on the
proper observance of this virtue (p. 14).
According to the Classic on Filial Piety, filial piety involves three levels
of filial conduct: first, we must take good care of ourselves and keep ourselves
unharmed, because we received our body, hair, and skin from our parents; second,
we must be respectful to our parents; third, we must glorify our parents by passing
their name on to later generations. The same classic tells us, “Filial piety is the
basis of virtue” and “Of the three thousand offenses included under the five
punishments, none is greater than unfilial conduct” (cited in Ch’en, 1973, p. 14).
Thus the ethical discourse of filial piety places Chinese parents in the higher
position in the parent-child hierarchy.
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The ultimate goal of NEF’s character training is social harmony, echoing
Confucius’s view of the ideal society. Another aphorism demonstrates the NEF
founder’s teaching on the moral paths to social harmony:
• If we have a satisfied heart, then we will understand gratitude; if we have
gratitude, then we can empathize; if we empathize, then we can embrace
all things.
This aphorism can be summarized in four words: contentment, gratitude, empathy,
and tolerance. These moral codes are the four main themes of NECA’s moral
education.
The philosophy of contentment promoted in NECA’s moral education is
based on the Four Noble Truths, which are common to all schools of Buddhist
thought. The Four Noble Truths are: (1) All life is inevitably sorrowful. (2)
People’s sorrow is due to craving (or desire). (3) Sorrow can only be stopped by
eliminating craving. (4) Eliminating craving can be accomplished through
carefully disciplined and moral conduct, culminating in a life of concentration and
meditation led by a Buddhist monk (deBary, Chan & Watson, 1960, pp. 266–267).
Thus, according to Buddhism, desire— both material and nonmaterial— is the
source of suffering and must be minimized for the sake of spiritual cultivation.
Neo-Ch’an Buddhist Inner -Wordly Asceticism. NECA’s moral education
is based on the teachings of NEF’s leader, whose sermons demonstrate the
influence of Chinese neo-Ch’an (Zen) Buddhism, which is inner-worldly oriented.
NEF culture is family-centered and community-oriented. In her teachings on the
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philosophy of contentment, the charismatic leader promotes a lifestyle of inner-
worldly asceticism characterized by self-sufficiency, thrifty use of money and
goods, and hard work. Thrift and industriousness characterize neo-Ch’an
Buddhist economic ethics (Yu, 1987).
NEF’s leader is admired by her followers as a living example of inner-
worldly asceticism. She insists on the neo-Ch’an Buddhist tenet Yiri buzuo; yiri
bushi (“no work; no meal”). The Buddhist spiritual leader and her disciples are
known for raising their own vegetables and making handicrafts, so that all
donations to NEF can be saved for charity use. NECA administrators recount that
when they asked the charismatic leader’s opinion about starting a Chinese school
in the United States ten years ago, the Buddhist master simply blessed them with
these words: “Achieve self-sufficiency by making full use of local resources.”
Although the Chinese school is a division of the well-funded NEF, it has never
received any financial support from the foundation. NEF uses most of its funds
for charity purposes. To put the NEF spirit of frugality into practice, NECA
teachers are encouraged to make use of recycled paper for class handouts. As a
part of their moral education, students learn how to use recycled materials to
make artwork and paper.
Sinologist Ying-Shih Yu ( 1987) points out that neo-Ch’an Buddhist inner-
worldly asceticism is conducive to the accumulation of wealth. He uses neo-
Ch’an Buddhism as the example to refute Max Weber’s assertion that inner-
worldly asceticism is unique to Calvinist Protestantism. According to Weber, the
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Protestant ethic— specifically, its Calvinist branches— which are characterized by
hard work, honesty, seriousness, and the thrifty use of money and time, was the
cultural origin of modern capitalism (Collins, 1996). Weber associated the spirit
of capitalism with the Protestant ethic of inner-worldly asceticism and argued that
there is no similar ethic in Chinese culture. In fact, the neo-Ch’an Buddhist ethic
of “no work, no meal,” which has been a popular Chinese saying for hundreds of
years, is very similar to the Calvinist ethic “If a man will not work, neither shall
he eat,” which was borrowed from St. Paul. Thus both Chinese Ch’an Buddhism
and Protestantism promote inner-worldly asceticism, which defines and sanctions
an ethic of everyday behavior conducive to wealth accumulation and economic
success. Arguing that inner-worldly asceticism is a unique to Protestantism, and
that this “spirit of capitalism” is unavailable in Chinese culture because of its lack
of inner-worldly asceticism, is one of the most serious mistakes Weber made
about Chinese religion (Yu, 1987).
A song composed by NEF members is intended to indoctrinate the cultural
value of thriftiness. The song is used in the moral education for NECA’s younger
students (level 1 to 4).
The Little Squirrel and the Chestnuts
The autumn wind blows, and the leaves fall.
The naughty little squirrel plays around the acorn trees.
One! Two! Three! Four! Five! Six! Seven!
The chestnuts are thrown into the pond.
“Little squirrel, little squirrel!
Winter is approaching.
You cannot survive the winter without food and warmth.
Be sparing with what you have!
Cherish what you have.”
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Life-Enrichment Programs
In addition to Chinese language education, every student in classes of
level 4 or above must participate in one of the life-enrichment programs provided
by NECA: arts and crafts, calligraphy, Chinese painting, Western painting,
Chinese checkers, Chinese macramé, abacus, Spanish, martial arts, basketball,
orchestra, or percussion instruments. The array of courses was determined by top
NECA administrators
School Participation as a Family Activity
Attending NECA on Sunday morning is a family activity for many NECA
participants. As a nonprofit organization operated on a low budget, NECA relies
heavily on the human resources provided by school parents. Women play a very
important role in ethnic reproduction at NECA. The obligations of female
volunteers include three components: housekeeping, financial and social
responsibilities. They help teachers with all kinds of classroom ch ores: calling
roll, collecting homework, maintaining classroom order, recording students’
grades, and so forth. In addition to working in the classroom, room moms take a
turn once a month to clean the school office and the NEF meeting hall. Female
volunteers generate income for NECA through garage sales. Once a month they
sell items donated by school families. The head room mom of each class is also
responsible for coordinating regular potlucks for school families. The majority of
NECA’s male volunteers perform menial labor at NECA. In addition to acting as
school janitors and crossing guards, male volunteers also teach environmental
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protection in NECA’s character-training program. They clean a neighborhood
street on behalf of NECA/NEF once a month, because NECA/NEF participants
regard themselves as contributors to the community and the host society.
Interestingly, male volunteers (mostly the parents) who perform menial labor at
NECA come from all walks of life, including business owners, bank managers,
and engineers.
Snapshots of Three Classes and a School Event
I observed seven different levels of Chinese language classes over three
semesters (Spring 2004, Fall 2004, and Spring 2005). Most are complete class
sessions; in a few, I left the class early for a special school event, such as a
teacher-training workshop or a parenting workshop. In all, I observed seven
Chinese language teachers. Here I present three classes taught by three different
teachers. The teachers’ names are pseudonyms.
Meili’s Class
This is a higher level Chinese class in NECA. Students are expected to
read at a fifth- or sixth-grade level after taking this class. It takes place in one of
the regular classrooms rented from a local middle school. At 8:50 a.m., the
teacher came into the classroom and attached a press clipping to the white board.
There are fourteen teenagers— all in uniform— in the class; thirteen are girls. The
oldest student is a seventeen-year-old boy. Students cluster into six small groups
of two or three students. The room mom, a very friendly woman in her early
fifties, is wearing the NEF volunteer uniform.
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Meili begins the class with a brief introduction to Chinese acupuncture,
which is the teacher’s supplementary teaching on Chinese culture. She uses a
miniature model of a human body covered with black dots to show the students
that a human body has many acupressure points connected by blood and energy
vessels, and that different parts of the body are connected and related to one
another. She concl udes her mini-lesson on Chinese medicine by cautioning the
students not to have their ears pierced before they reach fourteen, because it
stimulates the acupressure point in the earlobe and can harm one’s health. The
room mom works on the attendance record while the teacher talks about Chinese
medicine. The students listen to the teacher quietly.
Then the teacher points to the press clipping she has brought for the class.
It’s a story about an American detective in Long Island known for his Chinese
language fluency and his knowledge of Chinese culture. The teacher uses the
news report to encourage the students to learn Chinese well. “Chinese will be the
most important language in the world thirty years from now,” Meili says
confidently. The students are still quiet. No one responds to the news.
After finishing the story of the detective, she writes three Chinese
characters— ai (love), rang (yield), and ge (elder brother)— on the white board.
She explains why these characters are examples of ideograms. These three
characters are vocabulary for the new lesson. Then the teacher reviews the
previous lesson by guiding students to recite the text, which is a story about how a
child escaped danger by impressing two robbers with his filial conduct.
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The next activity is a sentence construction drill. Meili gives the students
some phrases and asks them to use them to make sentences. The students
construct the sentences. Then the teacher guides students in reciting the text of
the new lesson, which is a well-known Chinese story about a boy who saved the
bigger pears for his elder brother.
While the students are reciting the text, Meili writes eight Chinese
characters on the white board: fu ci (father loving), zi xiao (son filial), xiong you
(elder brother kind), and di gong (younger brother respectful). Meili tells her
students that the eight-character phrases constitute the Chinese family ethics,
which is the foundation of all human relationships.
Two female volunteers show up with a 2’ x 3’ display on character
education at the beginning of the third class period. The theme for the day’s
humanity education is an introduction to Confucius through storytelling. Basic
information about Confucius is shown in the display. The two volunteers adopt
an American comedy style to convey Confucius’s political, educational, and
philosophical thought. Only two students pay attention to the presentation. Most
of them don’t even maintain eye contact with the volunteers. One student is
dozing; one plays with her pen; one is reading a book; one is looking out the
window, probably daydreaming; one is playing with her hair; the rest are busy
writing. Many make full use of the time to finish their homework before school
ends.
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The volunteers proceed to recap after they finish the storytelling. They
review their presentation by asking questions. They take out some bookmarks
and lollipops from a bag to reward those who answer the questions correctly.
Some students are galvanized by the recap and become enthusiast ic. To my
surprise, the students answer all the questions correctly, though most of them
didn’t pay much attention to the presentation. The students leave for life
enrichment programs. During recess, I discuss the students’ behavior with Meili.
She explains that the students have already learned about Confucius in their
regular Chinese class, so they are able to answer the questions even though they
were not attentive during the presentation.
Susan’s Class
This class is designed for five-year-olds, NECA’s youngest student group.
It takes place in a spacious music classroom rented from a middle school. Around
8:45 a.m., a group of male volunteers bring in twenty-eight sets of plastic desks
and chairs and arrange them in a U shape in the music room. Twenty-two children
show up around 9:00 a.m. There are two sets of twins and two mixed-race girls in
this class. Parents and siblings are allowed to observe the class; twelve parents,
two grandparents, and three younger siblings stay in the class. A young couple
sits in the back of the classroom with their eight-month-old baby. The father
carries the baby most of the time.
Susan begins the class with a brief talk about the disastrous tsunami in
South Asia. Then she hands out donation forms to the children. She reminds the
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students to put the forms in their homework folders so their parents won’t miss
them. Donations go to NEF. Later, Susan asks the students to open their
textbooks and guides them to read aloud lessons 1 to 3. The children follow the
teacher’s instruction well, except one boy who refuses to follow directions and
keeps shaking his head while the others recite. The boy’s parents are in the class.
His father sits next him and tries to calm him whenever he becomes restless and
tries to leave his seat. After the class finishes reciting the texts, the boy rushes to
the teacher, asks for her microphone, and recites the last lesson by himself. The
teacher explains to me during the break that the boy has Attention Deficit-
Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and needs special education. After reviewing
old lessons, Susan takes out flashcards to teach the children two new Chinese
phonetic symbols, one consonant and one vowel.
21
Then Susan moves on to
cutting and pasting. Parents help pass out scissor s, glue, crayons, and practice
sheets. Students are asked to cut many small pictures from one paper and glue
them in the right spots on the other piece of paper. Several children don’t
understand the activity and need their parents’ help. Some children color the
pictures after they finish cutting and gluing. The hands-on activities keep both the
parents and the children busy. Most parents sit quietly at the back of the
classroom when their children don’t need help. Some chat throughout the class.
Children get in line for drinks and snacks during recess, while parents are busy
21
NECA uses the Bopomofo phonetic system imported from Taiwan for Chinese language
teaching, as opposed to the pinyin system imported from China.[You already said this, and I’m not
sure what follows is important to your study.] NECA’s students spend two years mastering the
Chinese phonetic symbols before learning to write Chinese characters.
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socializing in the hall with parents from other classes. A group of female
volunteers in uniform show up in the third session to present a lesson on moral
education. The day’s theme is “contentment.” These female volunteers teach the
children to act out a song using sign language. The whole class— including most
of the parents— follows the movements of the volunteers to perform the song.
They repeat the song five or six times.
A birthday cake is brought in during the last part of the class. The head
room parent prepared the cake for Susan’s birthday. Everyone gathers around the
teacher to sing the birthday song. Class is dismissed after everybody eats some
cake. Parents and children are asked to stack their plastic desks and chairs to
make it easier for volunteers to put them away.
Mr. Wei’s Class
This is the highest level Chinese class at NECA. Students are expected to
be at a sixth- or seventh-grade reading level in Chinese after taking this course.
There are twelve students (seven girls and five boys) and two room moms in the
class. Students’ ages range from fourteen to seventeen: three seventeen-year olds,
five sixteen-year-olds, two fifteen-year-olds, and two fourteen-year-olds.
The teacher begins the class by talking about the final exam, which will
be held in three weeks. Mr. Wei announces that it will be an open-book exam and
reminds his students that in addition to questions taken directly from their Chinese
textbook, there will be an essay question on the Iraq War, and students must
incorporate both mainstream and nonmainstream views in their answers.
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The teacher reviews two Chinese idioms after talking about the final exam.
Mr. Wei is quite erudite. He frequently analyzes both English and Chinese words
by tracing their roots. One room mother takes notes attentively whenever the
teacher explains English words. The teacher hands two piles of paper to the two
room mothers and asks them to staple the papers. The room moms chat quietly
while stapling. They finish quickly and keep chatting.
The teacher changes the topic to college applications. He first writes the
address of a Web site on the white board— destinationU.com — and tells the
students that this Web site contains important information on college applications,
including application forms for universities worldwide. He suggests that students
visit the Web site. “All Chinese Americans go to college,” he insists. He also
talks about the SAT test, mention ing that there is another important standardized
test, called the ACT. “The ACT is important because it is required by many Ivy
League universities,” emphasizes the teacher. Some students listen to the teacher
attentively and take notes. After the introduction to college applications, the
teacher talks about occupation choices. He talks for a long time. Most students
sit quietly. Only two vivacious boys chat during the class.
The teacher gives me a copy of the stapled handouts and passes the rest
out to the class after finishing his talk on occupation choices. The handout is a
special assignment for Mothers’ Day. It is a week before the holiday. Wei uses
the assignment as a supplementary material for humanity education. The theme
of this year’s character education is “gratitude.” Students are asked to read ten
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examples of mothers’ love and mothers’ grievances from the handouts, then write
thank-you letters to their mothers, listing things for which they thank their
mothers or apologizing to them for things they have done that hurt her. The
handout begins with an aphorism from the charismatic leader of NEF: Taiyang
guangda, fumu enda (“The sunlight is strong; parents’ love is great”), followed by
ten facts about mothers’ love that Mr. Wei found on the Internet. Here are five
examples:
• This is for all mothers who sat up all night with sick toddlers in their arms,
wiping up vomit laced with Kraft dinner and Wieners, birthday cake, and
cherry Kool -Aid, saying, “It’s okay, honey, Mommy’s here.”
• This is for all the mothers who have shown up at work with spit-up in their
hair and milk stains on their blouses and diapers in their purses.
• For all the mothers who bite their lips until they bleed when their fourteen-
year-old dyes her hair green.
• For all mothers who ache in their hearts when they watch their son
disappear down the street.
• This is for all mothers who feel terror in their hearts at 1 a.m. when their
teenager with a new driver’s license is an hour late getting home.
Mr. Wei has his students take turns reading the examples. Mr. Wei relates each
point to his personal experience as a son and father. None of the students speak in
the class. They all sit and listen passively.
A room mother approaches the teacher during the break. She tells the
teacher that her husband had a minor car accident and asks for legal advice. The
teacher advises her to go to small claims court with a petition to settle the case,
because it’s just a minor accident. (Mr. Wei has a law degree from an American
university.)
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Mr. Wei continues to go over the special assignment for Mothers’ Day
after the first recess. He gives more college application tips after finishing his
long talk about the special assignment. We hear a baby crying in the hall while
the class is in session. Looking through the classroom door, we see a young
father holding and comforting a crying baby. Mr. Wei’s class is not affected by
the noise at all. The teacher mentions that a student in the class, the seventeen-
year-old boy, has been admitted to several colleges. The teacher suggests that the
student share his college application experience with the class, but he continues to
talk without giving the student a chance to speak. In all, Mr. Wei talks about
college applications three times in the class.
The class is like a one-man show. The teacher comments a lot on current
affairs and does all the talking during the class session. None of the students asks
questions or speaks in class. The only interaction between teacher and students is
through eye contact. There is no small group discussion. The students sit still
and listen passively to the teacher. The only time I hear students’ voices is when
the teacher asks them to take turns reading the handouts out loud.
A Teacher-Training Workshop
I describe a teacher-training workshop to illustrate how NECA promotes
NEF organizational culture through its character-training program. NECA’s
teacher-training workshops are designed to train “seed teachers” for its humanity
education but not for regular Chinese classes.
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The majority of the seed teachers are school parents. The complete
teacher-training curriculum comprises eight two-hour workshops held during
school hours. I observed the final workshop of the eight-week series. Workshop
participants were asked to make group presentations presenting a lesson and
teaching activities to promote the virtue of gratitude, which is one of the four
moral codes that characterize the NEF spirit (contentment, gratitude, empathy,
and tolerance). Inform ation on the curriculum design of the character-training
program is only available for contentment and gratitude, because character
education is a new thirty-minute program first implemented at NECA in the
school year of 2003–2004. The curriculum design centers on a different theme
each year.
The group presentations take place in a conference room. NECA’s former
principal and his wife were invited to be guest speakers at the workshop. All
workshop participants except for the former principal and his wife are in uniform.
After this couple is seated, the workshop hostess invites a woman in a navy blue
dress to deliver a short speech. The speaker, a woman in her fifties, is a NEF
commissioner. Commissioners commit themselves to NEF through their long-
term financial support of the foundation. The blue dress is the uniform for female
commissioners. The skirt is made from eight pieces of cloth, symbolizing the
Noble Eightfold Paths all Buddhists must follow.
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Three women make the first presentation. “Gratitude” is the common
theme for all presentations. One woman writes an aphorism from the founder on
the white board:
We must be aware of our indebtedness to our parents and repay them
with a grateful heart.
They hand out five beach balls to five people i n the audience, and ask them to
place the ball under their clothes. The team leader asks the audience to feel what
it’s like to move around with a “baby” in their tummy. The team leader concludes
the activity by asking the audience to reflect on some questions:
a. What are the differences in mobility between having and not having the
ball?
b. How can one sleep with the ball?
c. Do you take medicine when you are sick? Raise your hands if you do.
Why?
d. Do you know that many mothers with babies in their tummies avoi d
medicines when they are sick? Do you know why?
A group of nine male parent volunteers make the second presentation. They
have designed an activity called “Food Chain.” Except for the team leader, each
represents a kind of animal, plant, or sea creature by wearing a white sign with the
name of the animal or plant. There are eight dads representing eight different
kinds of land and sea creatures and plants. They introduce themselves one by one,
showing the audience their signs. The audience reads “strawberries,” “corn,”
“seaweed,” “fish,” “mice,” “eagles,” “deer,” and “foxes” from the signs. The
eight dads sit down. Then the team leader takes out three scarves of different
colors (green, red, and black), and gives them to three of the dads. The team
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leader explains that green indicates health, red indicates illness, and black
indicates death or extinction. The seaweed gets the black scarf, mice get the red
one, and deer get the green one. Then the team leader asks the audience to
describe what will happen to other animals when seaweed dies out and mice get
sick.
The team leader concludes the activity by urging everyone to be grateful
for what Mother Nature gives us and states that environmental protection is
everyone’s responsibility. Some dads leave the workshop for other school chores
after they finish their presentation.
A man and a woman present a puppet show for the third presentation. The
story is about how a rat repays a sea turtle that once rescued it. The woman acts
out the story with hand puppets and the man does the narration and dialogue.
The commissioner invites the guest speakers to give an informal
evaluation of the presentations. The commissioner invites Mr. Wei, a well-
respected NECA teacher, to be the first commentator. Instead of making any
comment on the presentations, Mr. Wei tells a joke. Before he steps off the
podium, Mr. Wei unexpectedly suggests that the commentator invite me to
comment on the presentations. The commissioner invites me to “say some
words” about them. I briefly explain what my research is about and tell the seed
teachers that they are doing meaningful work and that I admire their hard work.
Mr. Wei leaves the workshop right after my comment. NECA’s former principal,
a retired schoolteacher from Taiwan, and his wife are the third and fourth guest
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speakers. At the end of the workshop, the hostess invites the guest speakers to
stand at the front of the classroom while participants sing a thank-you song. I stay
in my seat as the other two guests move toward the front of the classroom because
I don’t think I deserve such formality. The hostess invites me to join the other
guests, but I shake my head. Seeing this, the commissioner whispers to me in a
solemn tone: “Please go up there, this is what we do at NEF all the time.” I go up
and join the other two guests. I feel a little embarrassed as the group of adults
thank me with a song made up by NEF members.
Outcomes of Ethnic Language Education
I present the outcomes of NECA’s Chinese education from two
perspectives: changes in the students and changes in the grassroots activists.
Changes in Students
The outcomes of Chinese education for NECA students involve two
dimensions of change: the acquisition of Chinese language and behavioral
changes.
Bilingualism
Promoting selective acculturation in immigrant Chinese communities is
the main goal of NECA’s Chinese education. As far as the linguistic outcome,
selective acculturation is characterized by fluent bilingualism among the second
generation (Portes & Rumbaut, 1996/2001; Rumbaut & Portes, 2001). However,
there is no clear-cut definition of “fluent bilingualism” in sociological literature.
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Some scholars define bilingualism as the ability to speak, understand, read, and
write both the ethnic language and English well (Portes & Rumbaut, 2001).
Some scholars adopt a more lax definition of bilingualism. Min Zhou (2001)
defines a bilingual as someone who can speak, understand, read, and write
English well, and speak and understand his/her ethnic language well. If we assess
the learning outcomes of NECA students using Zhou’s definition of bilingualism,
the majority of NECA students achieve bilingualism. Among the twenty-two
parents (including four couples, thus eighteen families in total) interviewed in this
study, eighteen (fifteen families) identified Mandarin as their home language.
Among the four parents (Bob, Dana, Fiona, and Lien) whose children are still
English monolinguals after years of receiving Chinese education, three of them
are in interracial marriages (Dana’s husband, Bob, is Caucasian, and Fiona is
married to a Caucasian as well). Lien and her husband do not speak Mandarin at
home, although they are both immigrants from Taiwan. The couple
communicates in Hokkien— a Chinese dialect spoken by most Taiwanese— in
their daily life. With very limited exposure to the language taught at the Chinese
school, Lien’s children are still English monolinguals.
Change of Behavior
Several parents reported behavioral and attitudinal changes in their
children as a result of Chinese education. A common characteristic of these
parents is that they insist Mandarin be spoken at home. Suling has been the room
mother of her only son’s Chinese class for seven years. She has never
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volunteered in her son’s American school because she doesn’t think her English is
good enough, so she “makes up by helping out at the Chinese school .” Suling
compared NECA to a “bridge that connects her world and her son’s world: ”
After volunteering in my son’s Chinese class for so many years, he is
realizing that I really care about him. Children know it. He really affirms
the efforts that I made in his Chinese education. He used to hate Chinese
school, particularly doing Chinese homework, because he regarded
himself as an American… He’s changed. He began to like Chinese school
when he made friends there. He still hates doing Chinese homework,
though. Sometimes I threaten that I won’t take him to Chinese school if
he doesn’t behave, and then he begs me not to do that… It takes years for
the change to happen. This is a long-term effort, which is impossible
without parents’ insistence.
Both Huaying and Sumei reported that their children became more considerate to
them after years of exposure to Chinese education. Sumei explained:
My children really care about what I feel and what I think. Whenever they
see me angry, they try hard to appease me and say, “Mama, please don’t
be upset, I’ll do whatever you want. It’s bad for your health if you get
upset [about me].”
Huaying sai d:
At least my children listen to me now. I can make them help me with
simple housework. For example, I can ask them to remove laundry from
the dryer. This was impossible before. They would just pretend that they
didn’t understand what I said and ignored my request before. They can’t
do it now, not only because they understand Chinese, but also because
they know it’s not proper to ignore their parents’ words. So the teaching of
the Aphorisms really works.
However, parents of NECA students who speak English only at home—
that is, parents in mixed marriages— reported that Chinese education had no
obvious influence on their children’s behavior.
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Changes in Grassroots Activists
For NECA’s adult participants, the outcomes of participating in NECA
include two dimensions of change: social and psychological.
An Enrichment of Social Life
According to grassroots activists, one major change in life was that they
became much busier after participating in NECA because of the social networks
they established through the school. As mentioned in the previous chapter,
NECA encouraged parent participation and thus became an important social space
for its adult participants. The adult participants’ social interactions extended
beyond schools hours. On the average, there was a potluck social event at least
once a month for each class. The social events kept the adult participant-
stakeholders really busy. The majority of the grassroots activists considered their
participation in NECA to enrich their social life.
Psychological Gains
The adult participants also stated that they felt “happier” after participating
in NECA. Participating in the Chinese school enables the adult participants to
make more friends and enhances their self-esteem as newcomers to the host
society. The majority of the school parents view their participation in the Chinese
school as a “meaningful thing” for two reasons. First, NECA provides immigrant
parents with an opportunity to become directly involved in their children’s
education. Some parents who were actively involved in NECA had never
volunteered in their children’s public schools because of their limited English
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ability. Secondly, NECA encourages parents to volunteer not only at the Chinese
school, but also in a variety of community service programs provided by NEF,
such as street cleaning or donating books to needy school districts in Los Angeles
County. Considering themselves contributors to the host society, NECA’s adult
participants thus demonstrated high self-esteem.
Interestingly, among the twenty-two parents interviewed in this study,
eleven of them have been proselytized by NEF. Among the eleven proselytized
parents, four (Yuwen, Shanhu, Tienyu, and Shu-yao) have become commissioners,
and two (Kaihung and Suling) are on their way to becoming commissioners (see
Table 10).
22
Meiru volunteers at the NEF kitchen every Wednesday morning, in
addition to helping out in her sons’ classes every Sunday. Huaying has decided to
continue volunteering at both NECA and NEF after her two children complete
their Chinese education. Junru plans to continue to teach at NECA after her two
children graduate from the school. Ruyi is a former parent volunteer who
continued to volunteer as an administrator after her children graduated from
NECA. Tienyu became a NEF commissioner in 2004. He stated in the interview
that his two sons were leaving NECA for another Chinese school closer to his
home so that they would not have to rush to Chinese school on Sunday morning.
However, he planned to stay on at NECA as a volunteer even after his sons leave.
22
The title of commissioners is conferred on NEF members who successfully complete six
hundred community service hours and recruit twenty families as long-term patrons of
NEF.[You’ve already said this.]
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Table 10
Demographic Features of Adult Participants of
NECA
1
Role in Years of Proselytized
Subject NECA participation by NEF
Huaying Class Helper
2
8 Yes
Sumei Class Helper 8 Yes
Junru Teacher/Parent 10 No
Lining Class Helper 4 No
Suling Class Helper 8 Yes
Meiru Class Helper 4 Yes
Yuwen Teacher/Parent 7 Yes
Lien Class Helper 4 No
Ruyun Teacher/Parent 8 No
Fiona Class Helper 7 No
Shanhu Principal/Parent 5 Yes
Dana Class Helper 8 No
Bob Parent 9 No
Kaihung Administrator/Parent 2 Yes
Yishan Class Helper 4 No
Tienyou Seed Teacher/Parent 5 Yes
T onwu Administrator/Parent 10 Yes
Wushan Seed Teacher/Parent <5 No
Shaoyi Class Helper/Parent 4 No
Huashan Administrator/Parent 9 No
Ruyi Administrator >5 Yes
Shasha Seed Teacher 2 No
Shuyao Teacher/Former Parent 8 Yes
Meili Teacher >5 No
Wei Teacher <5 No
Aihua Teacher 8 No
Chenta Former Principal 8 No
1
Demographic features from 2004
2
All class helpers are also parents.
Two common comments of proselytized grassroots activists are: “I feel at
home at New Enlightenment” and “I am very proud of being part of New
Enlightenment.” Grassroots activists are particularly proud of the Confucian and
Buddhist values that characterize NEF culture and are manifested in NECA’s
moral education. The adult participants feel at home when they participate in
NECA/NEF because NEF’s religious discourse, which is built upon Confucian
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and Buddhist ideologies, strengthens their ethnic identity. Ethnic affirmation is
another factor that accounts for grassroots activists’ high self-esteem.
In addition to enhancing self-esteem, participating in NEF also has a
therapeutic effect for the proselytized grassroots activists. Participating in the
charity activities organized by NEF made grassroots activists believe that they
were truly fortunate compared with those who received help from NEF. For
example, Shu-yao is a NECA teacher proselytized by NEF not long after she
began teaching at the Chinese school. She donates her paycheck from NECA
back to NEF every month. In order to become a “true NEF member,” she actively
involves herself in various NEF affairs, including visiting nursing homes, working
at a free clinic for people of low income, distributing food and clothes to the
needy, giving books to schools in low-income neighborhoods, and praying at
deathbeds (the Buddhist version of Extreme Unction). She was promoted to the
position of commissioner a few years ago. She commented:
I didn’t realize how fortunate I was until I participated in NEF and
witnessed the misfortunes of the people we helped, particularly the dying.
I learned from those experiences that life is brief and fragile. It’s not
worth it to waste our time being upset about trivial things in our life.
Witnessing people’s misfortunes through charity work has a therapeutic effect
similar to catharsis. The cleansing effect might be more powerful in the case of
charity activities promoted for religious purposes because of the emotional impact
of direct contact with unfortunates.
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Conclusion
In this chapter, I examined the school process, and then presented the
outcomes from Chinese education. The school curriculum comprises three main
components: Chinese language education, moral education, and an enrichment
program. Chinese language instruction is based on textbooks provided by the
Taiwan government. Moral education is based on the sermons of the charismatic
leader of NEF. A discourse analysis of the texts used in the classroom shows that
the school process is intended to indoctrinate Confucian and Buddhist ideas. A
textual analysis of some texts used for language instruction shows how cultural
values of filial piety, industriousness, and cultural reverence for learning and
scholarly achievement were instilled in the students. A discourse analysis of the
texts used for moral education demonstrates that the Confucian virtue of filial
piety and the neo-Ch’an Buddhist economic ethic of thriftiness are emphasized in
NECA/NEF culture.
It should be noted that NECA has mobilized a large group of volunteer
parents (approximately seventy volunteers) to teach moral education, which is
intended to promote NEF’s religious discourse. The ultimate goal of the moral
education is to cultivate altruistic citizens for society. Moral education centers on
the four codes of conduct that characterize NEF culture— contentment, gratitude,
empathy, and tolerance — which are developed from the philosophy of neo-Ch’an
Buddhism. Long-term exposure to religious discourse led to the proselytization
of volunteer parents. Half of the parents interviewed in this study were recruited
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by NEF after years of participating in NECA. Volunteering in NECA or NEF’s
other community service programs made the adult participants believe that they
were contributors to society. This belief enhances the adult participants’ self-
esteem as newcomers to American society. For those who are proselytized by
NEF, participating in NECA is an identity affirmation process. Thus, in addition
to the students, the school parents also benefit from the Chinese education.
Examining the school process using Bourdieu’s theory of practice, the
Chinese education provided by NECA can be conceptualized as a field of
contestation using both macro- and micro-level analysis. On the one hand, the
teaching of such traditional Chinese cultural values as collectivism and thrift,is
intended to resist American cultural values and popular culture, particularly
individualism and consumerism. On the other hand, Chinese parents enhance
their power and authority in parent-child relationships by means of indoctrination
of the culturally upheld value of filial piety. Thus NECA functions as a site of
resistance and domination simultaneously, and deliberate cultivation of ethnicity
can be viewed as a self-empowerment tactic for Chinese immigrant parents.
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CHAPTER 6
CONCLUSION
Selective Acculturation as a
Tool for (Self-)Empowerment
I began this dissertation by emphasizing the reason for the emergence of
nonformal education (NFE): NFE emerges when the formal educational system
fails to provide the type of education needed by the public. Nonformal ethnic
language education appears because existing bilingual programs do not meet the
needs of minority groups. Most immigrant groups need true bilingual education,
in which the languages of both dominant and minority groups are taught.
Research shows that maintenance bilingual education, which is based on an
additive approach to acculturation, empowers minority students. It reinforces the
children’s cultural identity, which in turn boosts their self-esteem and facilitates
academic success. A full definition of empowerment in terms of educating
minority students must consider both academic/cognitive and social/emotional
components. Yet the existing remedial bilingual programs, which were intended
to replace minority students’ heritage language with English, disempower
linguistic minority students, because these programs are based on a subtractive
approach to acculturation. This study of NECA— a case study of nonformal
Chinese education— shows how a group of Chinese immigrants united to promote
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biculturalism and bilingualism for self-empowerment. In this concluding chapter,
I review the case of NECA from the perspective of empowerment.
NECA: A Case of (Self-)Empowerment
The school missions of cultivating “altruistic” citizens and broadening
students’ cultural horizons through Chinese education make NECA, a weekend
Chinese school, a textbook example of the mechanism for selective or additive
acculturation. Since NECA was established by a group of Chinese immigrants for
the purpose of selective acculturation, the Chinese school must be considered a
self-empowerment tactic of Chinese immigrants.
Sources of Empowerment
Sources of empowerment are the resources that make possible the
establishment and maintenance of NECA. According to Bourdieu (1989),
individuals and groups draw on a variety of cultural, social, and symbolic
resources in order to maintain and enhance their position in society. He
conceptualizes such resources as “capital” when they function as a “social relation
of power,” that is, when they become objects of struggle as valued resources
(cited in Swartz, 1997, p. 73). Establishing a school requires a variety of
resources, including social, cultural, and economic capital.
Social Capital
NECA’s social capital comes from NEF— the Buddhist organization with
which NECA is affiliated— as well as from ethnic networks. NEF is a
nongovernmental charity organization with its global headquarters in Taiwan.
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Ethnic networks include the Taiwanese government, local business owners, and
grassroots activists. These account for the sustainability of the Chinese school.
NEF evinces an alternative way of seeing Chinese education. NECA was
founded as a NEF community service program because of the high demand for
Chinese education in the community. NEF later used the Chinese school as a
channel for indoctrination into Chinese Buddhism. A highly reputable charity
organization in Chinese communities worldwide, NEF also functions as symbolic
capital for NECA. Whenever NECA administrators solicit in-kind donations
from local business, the name of their parent organization facilitates the
transaction.
The Taiwan government supports Chinese cultural transmission by
providing free textbooks for nonformal Chinese schools overseas. Over five
hundred students enroll in NECA each year. These students obtain free textbooks
and workbooks published by the government of the Republic of China in Taiwan.
NECA is located i n the San Gabriel Valley “ethnoburb” (ethnic suburb).
The ethnoburb has been developed into an ethnic “economic enclave”— a region
with a broad range of highly differentiated entrepreneurial activities. The local
businesses owned by Chinese Americans and immigrants are an important source
of in-kind donations for NECA. NECA administrators often solicit in-kind
donations, including school supplies such as book covers, paper, folders, and so
forth.
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NECA’s adult participants comprise immigrants of three socioeconomic
origins: the lower middle class, the middle class, and the upper middle class. As
an informal school lacking economic capital and operating on a very low budget,
NECA relies heavily on the human resources brought in by its adult participant-
stakeholders, especially parent volunteers. Cultural pride, reinforced by the high
instrumental value of the Chinese language in the global economy, leads Chinese
parents to consider ethnic language education a necessary investment in their
children’s future.
Research shows that Asian American parents are more likely than
Caucasian parents to use their resources to enhance their children’s education by
such means as assigning additional homework tasks, investing in private lessons,
and supervising activiti es outside of school (Kao 1995; Schneider & Lee, 1990).
This parenting style accounts for Chinese immigrant parents’ active involvement
in NECA.
Cultural Capital
Cultural capital covers a variety of cultural resources (including verbal
facility, personal style, taste, manners, and education credentials used for social
distinction and selection), which are unequally available to people of different
class origins. In other words, cultural capital is originally a class product because
it is something embodied in a person’s habitus, or class disposition. Cultural
capital in this study includes both cultural objects (e.g., the Chinese textbooks
supplied by the Taiwanese government) and ethnic capital.
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Ethnic capital includes ethnic language, culture, and attitudes, which
support nonformal Chinese education and the cultural values taught at the school.
A cultural belief in success through education leads to the Chinese cultural
reverence for learning. In chapter 4, I mentioned that middle-class Chinese
parents typically arrange a variety of after-school programs for their children— for
example, private music lessons, art classes, instruction in mental computation, and
Chinese or Spanish lessons— to make sure the learning process extends well
beyond the formal school setting. Chinese parents are more likely than parents of
other ethnic origins, or than their working-class counterparts, to invest in their
children’s education, because they believe that sensitizing a child to cultural
distinctions pays dividends with schools, which favor students with large accruals
of cultural capital. That is, cultural capital is both an ethnic and a class product in
the NECA case.
Discourse analysis based on curriculum (i.e., content analysis of textbooks)
and hidden curriculum (e.g., school events) shows that the school process was
intended to indoctrinate Buddhist and Confucian ideas. Filial piety, thrift (thrifty
use of money and time), and industriousness— the building blocks of Chinese
virtue— are the three most important codes of conduct for the school. The
Chinese Buddhist economic ethics of thrift and industriousness promoted in
NECA’s moral education are similar to the Protestant work ethic, which is
believed to be conducive to economic success and social mobility (Landes, 2000).
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Economic Capital
The annual tuition of $300 dollars per student is NECA’s only income.
Although affiliated with NEF, which is well funded, NECA has never obtained
any funding from the NGO. NEF supports NECA only through the provision of
cultural capital. NECA’s moral education is based on the aphorisms— excerpts
from the sermons of NEF’s charismatic leader, who is a Buddhist nun.
Who is Empowered?
Nonformal Chinese education built upon grassroots solidarity can be seen
as a self-empowerment tactic of Chinese immigrants. Self-empowerment
involves two levels of meaning in this study. As an important mechanism of
selective acculturation for Chinese immigrants, nonformal Chinese education
empowers the second generation by fostering cultural pride and self-esteem based
on family and community bonds. Moreover, grassroots activists— NECA’s adult
participants— are empowered as parents and as immigrants searching for identity
affirmation. Chinese education for ethnic maintenance empowers immigrant
parents because fluent bilingualism among the second generation preserves the
channel of communication across generations, regardless of parents’ level of
English proficiency. Children’s study of their parents’ language and culture
facilitates understanding between parent and child. Children’s ethnic identity,
which is fostered in the process of ethnic maintenance, prevents them from
feeling embarrassed about their parents’ poor English, which in turn prevents a
role reversal caused by parents’ low level of English fluency. In this study,
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Chinese immigrants strengthened their parental authority by inculcating in the
young people the traditional Chinese value of filial piety. Thus both immigrant
parents and their children are empowered by NECA’s Chinese education.
As mentioned in chapter 3, I described the adult participants of NECA as
grassroots activists because nonformal education— a common cultural practice in
immigrant communities— can be seen as a new social movement. It can be
viewed as a new social movement because nonformal Chinese education is the
product of Chinese immigrants’ collective action in ethnic (re)construction.
Social movements in contemporary societies shift their focus from class and race
issues to the cultural ground, and the activists’ grievances link with issues of
identity.
We learn from grassroots activists’ narratives that their grievances fall
under the umbrage of the identity lacunae caused by ageism, gender expectations,
and displacement. The stories of two NECA teachers, a retired man in his late
sixties and a woman in her mid-forties, reveal that teaching at NECA— a
social/cultural setting in which teachers are highly respected— and working with
children relieve the anxiety associated with aging. In the principal’s case history,
we saw how a woman resisted traditional Chinese gender expectations— that
being a successful housewife means being a frugal “stay-at-home mom” and
sacrificing personal ambition for the sake of the family’s welfare— built a new
identity outside the home by becoming an active member of an educational
organization.
165
Identity lacunae caused by displacement are a grievance common to all
grassroots activists. In fact, total assimilation rarely takes place for first-
generation Asian immigrants, beca use of the cultural differences between the East
and the West, and because of their skin color, which is a conspicuous social
marker distinguishing them from mainstream people. Many Asian immigrants
complain of a sense of rootlessness or loss of identity caused by an inability to
assimilate. This grievance is particularly keen for immigrants who came to this
country with “bags of money” and those with great cultural pride, because of the
mismatch between their economic status and their cultural capital, and because of
the gap between their perception of ethnic culture and the mainstream perspective
of the subculture. Some grassroots activists first volunteered at the Chinese
school for the sake their children, and then were recruited by NEF— a charity
organization with an excellent reputation in Chinese communities. They are
empowered by their association with NEF because its culture, which is based on
traditional Chinese Confucian and Buddhist thought, strengthens their ethnic
identity. For the grassroots activists recruited by NEF, the organization is not
only a place for making new friends, but also a social space where they gain sense
of belonging. Volunteering at NECA and being recruited by NEF is an identity-
affirming process for many grassroots activists.
How Self-Empowerment Is Achieved
From an analytical perspective, the NECA case shows how a group of
Taiwanese immigrants have achieved self-empowerment by mobilizing and
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converting a variety of social and cultural resources to (re)construct ethnicity. It
is clear from the school process that the transmission of ethnic capital— both
ethnic language and cultural values— is the main purpose of NECA’s Chinese
education. The transmission of ethnic capital is achieved through the teaching of
Chinese language and the indoctrination of Confucian and Buddhist thought.
Long-term participation in the Chinese school resulted in successful
indoctrination for both children and adults. While providing ethnic socialization
for children, the school process can also be viewed as a proselytizing process for
adult participants. Many parents joined NEF after years of participation in NECA.
The process of capital conversion and generation in NECA can be
summarized in four steps:
From Social Capital to Cultural Capital
Social capital refers to the ethnic solidarity built on densely knit networks
that converged at NECA. NECA’s Chinese education for the transmission of
ethnic cultural capital is impossible without the support of a variety of kinds of
social capital, i ncluding the Taiwanese government (which supplied textbooks
and workbooks for students and teachers), local business (for their in-kind
donations), and human capital immigrants (for their active involvement and
volunteer work). Ethnic solidarity is important because it enables NECA to
provide quality education on a low budget.
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From Cultural Capital to Symbolic Capital
Cultural capital was converted into symbolic capital when they gained
symbolic recognition through the cultural practice of institutionalization, which is
manifested in a variety of school rules and routine practices, such as midterm and
final exams, a uniform requirement, and report cards. According to Bourdieu,
symbolic systems perform three interrelated but distinct functions simultaneously:
cognitive, social/communicative, and political (Swartz, 1997). In the cognitive
function, fields such as mathematics, art, music, and religion are composed of
different symbolic systems, which represent distinct ways of comprehending the
world. The social or communicative function of symbolic systems means that
familiarity with a single symbolic system enables people of different socio-
cultural origins to communicate efficiently.
What interests Bourdieu the most is the political function of symbolic
systems, which is the mechanism of legitimization and social control . Symbolic
capital is a form of power that is perceived not as power but as a legitimate
demand for recognition, deference, obedience, or the services of others (Swartz,
1997). Symbolic systems/capital is the most economic mechanism for social
integration and social control. Symbolic systems are often manifested in words,
objects, and action.
Language or Words
Making children learn their parents’ native language is an important way
to strengthen immigrant parental authority, because ethnic language is an essential
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constituent of ethnicity and reinforces ethnic identity. It is an established
sociological principle that the more individual identifies with a certain group, the
more likely the group norms will constrain and shape behavior (Johnston, Larana,
Gusfield, 1994, p. 17). The power of group norms works through the mechanism
of collective identity (which is the ethnic identity (re)constructed in the school
process in the case of NECA). The inculcation of the Aphorism s (excerpts from
the sermons of NEF’s charismatic leader), which is intended to transmit
traditional Chinese cultural and religious values, legitimates immigrant parents’
culture.
Objects
NECA is the only nonformal Chinese school in the Greater Los Angeles
area that requires school participants to wear uniforms. Dress codes are part of
the symbolic system that legitimizes the cultural practice of Chinese education at
NECA.
Actions
The cultural capital transmitted in the school process was converted into
symbolic capital when they gained symbolic recognition, achieved through the
formalization of the Chinese education. In the case of NECA, formalization
refers to such ritualistic performances as midterm and final exams, report cards,
the school opening ceremony, and commencement, which encouraged both
parents and children to respect the school and the Chinese education it provided.
169
Reinforcement of Social Capital through Symbolic Capital
Children’s acceptance of their parents’ language and culture as symbolic
capital enhances the authority of parents, who are conceived as the children’s
most important social capital in the conceptual framework of selective
acculturation. In other words, the symbolic capital of ethnic language, culture,
and identity serves to reinforce the children’s social capital.
From Nonformal to Formal Education
After the success of NECA, grassroots activists saw two possible paths for
Chinese education in the United States: to demand true English/Chinese bilingual
education in the public school system, or to develop private bilingual schools in
Chinese immigrant communities. Chinese immigrant parents favored the second
option. “They [mainstream people] will not necessarily give us what we want, for
example, filial piety,” explained one NECA parent.
Currently, NEF is in the process of establishing a formal private bilingual
school in Los Angeles County. The preschool -kindergarten program will begin in
fall 2007.
Promoting NFE for the
Empowerment of Minority Students
This study demonstrated that nonformal education is an economical and
feasible alternative to true bilingual education. Although the grassroots solidarity
that produced NECA’s success is amazing, it should be noted that these grassroots
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activists— the people who supported NECA through their volunteer work— are
middle-class immigrants with high human capital. In fact, it is the financially
disadvantaged minority groups rather than their middle-class and upper-middle-
class counterparts who are critically in need of selective acculturation.
Working-class immigrants are unable to move into good school districts,
and settlement in urban areas exposes their children to the inner-city subculture.
Selective acculturation helps their children resist the negative influence of inner-
city youth culture, which is detrimental to educational aspiration and achievement.
Working-class immigrants are less likely to establish their own schools or ethnic
language classes without external assistance because of their lack of economic
resources; underclass groups still rely on the state or NGOs to provide this service.
The state can promote or provide native language education for minority students
through nonformal channels, even though formal channels have been blocked
following passage of Proposition 227. In fact, the federal government has always
been generous in sponsoring foreign language teaching at the level of primary and
secondary education. For the past fifteen years, the federal government has
supported foreign language teaching and education by providing school districts
with substantial grants through the Foreign Language Assistance Program (FLAP).
The Senate overwhelmingly approved $25 million for FLAP in July, 2005, a $7.1
million increase. The increase is to go to “school districts with poverty rates of 15
percent or more, to help the highest need elementary schools within such districts
establish foreign language instruction programs" (Joint National Council on
171
Languages). Two school districts in Southern California (Hacienda La Puente
and Palos Verdes Peninsula) successfully applied for the grant in 2004. Hacienda
La Puente Unified School District, in the East San Gabriel Valley region, received
approximately $520,000 over a three-year period. The school district used the
money to implement a Chinese language enrichment program in four elementary
schools in the district.
In sum, resources are available to promote additive acculturation. The
question becomes: “How can this best be accomplished?” I submit the following
policy recommendations for the promotion of true bilingual education through the
nonformal route.
1. Pass the message of the benefits of selective acculturation and true
bilingual education to organic intellectuals for consciousness-raising.
23
The first step to empowering dominated groups is consciousness-raising, which
means awakening the disadvantaged groups’ critical understanding of their
surroundings through education. Consciousness-raising here refers to education
for minority parents, which would enable them to visualize alternative realities
advantageous to their children’s assimilation outcome. Empowerment will only
occur if the disadvantaged groups realize that alternative realities exist and they
believe that they need to be empowered. For example, the NECA parents
presented in chapter 4 were highly aware of their disadvantage as immigrant
parents, caused by their cultural marginality, and thus considered deliberate
23
Antonio Gramsci used the term “organic intellectuals” for the adult educators who help
empower the proletariat (see Mayo 1999: 85).
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cultivation of their children’s ethnic language fluency to be critical to preserving
parental authority. Without this critical knowledge on bilingual education,
minority groups would not make use of resources, even when they are available.
Change will not occur if there is no dem and from below. No empowerment is
more effective than self-empowerment, after all.
2. A successful nonformal education (NFE) program that aims to empower
language minority children through the additive approach to bilingualism
must provide services other than native language instruction in order to
keep the children and their parents invested in this cultural practice.
Keeping minority students and their parents motivated is one of the greatest
challenges facing NFE programs intended to foster bilingualism . Cultivating
bilinguals should be a long-term process and requires long-term efforts and
collaboration among schools, students, and parents for desirable outcomes to
occur. However, the student attrition rate in NFE is high because it is not
mandatory. The NECA study demonstrates that a NFE program with functions
beyond language learning keeps minority parents invested in the cultural practice
of native language education. NECA is not only an educational site for cultural
transmission, but also an important social space where grassroots activists gain a
sense of belonging. School districts with federal grants for foreign language
instruction might consider combining a language enrichment program with
extended care to make it multifunctional and more appealing to the parents.
In conclusion, this study has shown why and how a group of Chinese
immigrants united to mobilize a variety of resources and establish a nonformal
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Chinese language school — a school intended for ethnic maintenance— for their
children. Analysis of the grassroots activists’ social profile shows that the vast
majority of NECA’s adult participants are middle-class immigrants with
substantial human capital. This finding contradicts the stereotypical thinking that
has stigmatized bilingual education as an educational practice needed only by
underclass immigrant minorities.
The NECA experience exemplifies partial assimilation, which accounts
for the new American ethnic mosaic. More importantly, this study contributes to
enriching the literature that aims to deconstruct the myth of assimilation: total
assimilation is not the only path for immigrants and their children to “make it in
America” after all.
174
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APPENDIX
Interview Questions
I. The basic questions
1. Age
2. Country of origin
3. Educational attainment
4. Occupation
5. Marital status
6. Number of children
7. Home language
8. English fluency
9. Length of time spent in the United States
10. Length of time participating in NECA
11. Role in NECA
II. Questions regarding cultural beliefs
1. What are the strengths of American culture?
2. Which parts of American culture don’t you like?
3. Which parts of Chinese culture are you most proud of?
4. Which parts of Chinese culture don’t you like?
III. School experiences
1. Which parts of the foundation or the Chinese school do you
like best? Why?
2. Which parts of NECA don’t you like?
3. Have you observed any positive influences Chinese education
has had on your child? Please provide specific examples.
4. Any negative influences?
IV. Parenting
1. What parts of parenting do you enjoy?
2. What parts of parenting don’t you enjoy?
3. How can your child/children benefit from Chinese education?
4. How can your child/children benefit from the Chinese program
offered by NECA?
5. What language do you use with your child at home?
6. Are you for or against bilingual education in the public school
system? Why?
188
7. Do you volunteer at your child’s public school regularly?
8. What kind of extracurricular activities do you arrange for your
children?
9. What are the possible negative consequences for your child of
not learning Chinese?
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Chinese immigrants united for self -empowerment: Case study of a weekend Chinese school
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Stromquist, Nelly (
committee chair
), Chen, Peiying (
committee member
), Da Rosa, George (
committee member
), Knotts, Gregory (
committee member
), Lin, Irene (
committee member
)
Permanent Link (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c16-455139
Unique identifier
UC11336900
Identifier
3237107.pdf (filename),usctheses-c16-455139 (legacy record id)
Legacy Identifier
3237107.pdf
Dmrecord
455139
Document Type
Dissertation
Rights
Liu, Gwendolyn Ching-Yao
Type
texts
Source
University of Southern California
(contributing entity),
University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses
(collection)
Access Conditions
The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the au...
Repository Name
University of Southern California Digital Library
Repository Location
USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus, Los Angeles, California 90089, USA
Tags
education, bilingual and multicultural
education, sociology of
sociology, ethnic and racial studies