Wow, tons of great debate in 48 hours, and I missed it all!
Just some additional thoughts and insights I have on things already discussed...
New York vs Prov immigrant population:
While Prov's is probably higher by percentage as has been noted, New York has neighborhoods (Elmhurst, Queens pops immediately to mind) where 80-90% of the population has arrived in the U.S. in less than 10 years! The diversity of new arrivals is also much higher in NYC than in Providence, where a high percentage of our immigrant population is from only 3-4 nations, or 1-2 regions. Again, in Elmhurst, when I did some training in the hospital there in medical school, I think they had translators on call for like 40 or 50 different languages!
NY vs Prov public school experience with immigrants:
I think the big difference here is that NY has been dealing with this issue for about 30-40 years, especially with Spanish and Chinese language populations, while this is still a relatively new issue for Providence (and most municipalities). I can tell you that NYC spends an ung-dly amount of money on language instruction and has huge, highly developed language programs and bilingual instruction. NYC's money budgeted towards this is probably much higher by percentage than Prov's and, by now, their staff is more highly organized, trained, and effective.
Immigrant Assimilation:
I think it's very hard to compare the recent wave of Hispanic immigrants to previous generational waves for several reasons. First, the numbers coming each year are much, much higher than before with no end in sight. Second, the percentage of illegal aliens is much much higher. Third, many of these immigrants aren't coming from across the world in an age of telegraph, they are coming from neighboring nations in an age of internet and cable TV.
My understanding, at least, is that U.S. born children of hispanic immigrants are learning English at levels that are actually equal to if not higher than previous generations of immigrants. However, I think sociologists feel that assimilation trends are going to be hard, if not impossible, to predict, since never before has the US had such a wave of immigrants where it's so easy for the immigrants to travel to the mother country, keep up family contacts, and be immersed in the homeland's culture (internet, TV, media, etc.).
If you've been to Miami or parts of California, Arizona, Texas, etc. with enomous and entrenched hispanic populations and neighborhoods, it's easy to understand how you could be immersed, from birth in the US to death in the US, in only hispanic culture without ever coming into contact with any other American ethnic group's culture or even the mainstream culture (of course, you can be white in South Western Minnesota and have the same experience in reverse). That's still hard to do in Providence, which has small, ghetto-ized neighborhoods and everyone pretty much has contact with everyone else (to a degree).
My own personal experience as a physician treating mostly hispanic patients is that most adult arrivals within the last 10-15 years speak no English at all and their children near universally speak English quite well unless they were over age 16 at arrival.
Culture is a different story, and a touchy issue, since many tend to equate (quite wrongly, in my view) culture with race. While what I'm about to say may sound like a sweeping overgeneralization, I wouldn't mention it unless I hadn't read it in multiple academic sources... In general, many Central and South American cultures (especially from poverty stricken nations) don't have a history of robust educational systems or a cultural history of advancement in society though education, especially in "lower" classes. The emphasis tends to be on a more generalized work ethic more than a specific educational ethic, and education hasn't been highly valued. This differs, for example, from some Asian cultures where education hasn't been widely available, but the attainment of educational achievement is near deified. India pops to mind here as a example. These cultural trends are, of course, not reversed the moment someone steps foot in the U.S.
And before someone slams me here for these overgeneralizations, I'll be the first to say that a lack of educational ambition is rapidly becoming an "American" cultural problem too. Thomas Friedman just wrote a fantastic editorial about that this week in the NYT. I think we are approaching a new age of American "Know Nothingness" as being acceptable. Just when we need our greatest scientific, technical, mathematic, psychological, and sociological focus, America is slinking back to a toxic mixture of intellectual laziness combined with a theologic zeal and lowest-common-denominator popular culture. Everyone read about the recent Korean advance (amazing stuff, actually) in stem cell reseach? Get used to it, because more and more of our scientific future won't be done here unless we refocus...
School quality:
I've brought this up before, but it's not just Providence. New England as a region trails other areas quite badly, especially the neighboring mid-Atlantic states. And it's not just socioeconomic either, as comparing RI public schools to their socioeconomic equivalents in NY, or NJ, or PA they still come up far short in direct comparisons in almost every measure you look at. We usually rank with such chronic unachievers as Arkansas, Louisiana, and Georgia. My mother (and many other friends and relatives) are in public education, and they report back to me that New England public schools are held, in general, in fairly low regard nationwide.
My question is: why? Is anyone here educationally knowledgable and knows the history of why, despite good funding and high levels of affluence and stability, New England as a region underachieves in this regard?
- Garris
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