Posted on 11/17/2009 8:22:20 PM PST by Bob017
A forthcoming study on Hispanic children’s cognitive skills underlines the challenges the country faces in aspiring to close the achievement gap between these children and their white and Asian counterparts. Hispanic “children fall behind their peers in mental development by the time they reach grade school, and the gap tends to widen as they get older,” reports the New York Times. “The drop-off in the cognitive scores of Hispanic toddlers, especially those from Mexican backgrounds, was steeper than for other [low-income] groups and could not be explained by economic status alone. . . . From 24 to 36 months, the Hispanic children fell about six months behind their white peers on measures like word comprehension, more complex speech and working with their mothers on simple tasks.”
This new study, from the University of California–Berkeley, may be unusually blunt in its assessment of Hispanic cognitive development, but it is hardly unprecedented. A 2004 study by the California Legislative Analyst’s Office found a similar decline in Hispanic students’ ability to keep up with their peers in learning English. Children from Mandarin- and Spanish-speaking households begin kindergarten with similar levels of English proficiency, but their paths quickly diverge. The Mandarin-speaking students make continuing progress in mastering English, while the Hispanic students’ advance stalls out in the second and third grades as the demands of California’s English-proficiency test grow more difficult. Mandarin kindergartners establish oral skills in English in one year, the legislative analyst found, and by the beginning of second grade, they have begun developing a mastery of reading and writing, unlike Hispanics. The widening English-proficiency gap between Asian and Hispanic students may reflect parental willingness to expose children to English at home, but the gap occurs in math as well.
(Excerpt) Read more at article.nationalreview.com ...
*sniff*
We just stop worrying about Black American children for some reason?
Tonight I was trying to explain to one of the mothers that the Asian and Jewish moms that my husband and I knew through our professions would not allow any computer or video games or Ipod or phone (etc.) unless their children finished **all** their work promptly and **perfectly**! The weekly DVD had to be **earned**! This Spanish mom was amazed.
It is my experience that these kids are quite bright. After all it takes considerable planing, saving, aggressiveness, and organization just to make into the U.S. This is true whether they are here legal or illegally. A person needs to be smart if they are going to pull this off and the kids are indeed smart.
Another problem that I see in the tutoring program is that the local government schools absolutely DO NOT TEACH PHONICS! I don't care what the schools say. If they do teach any phonics it is haphazard and scattered over many years. The children are clueless, frustrated, and many have given up hope.
All the kids in our congregation speak English perfectly.
This Thurs I am taking a Spanish speaking mom to the library to get a library card and to help her check out the “Hooked on Phonics” program. ( I hope this county's library has it. The library where we lived before did. )
See, it's cool to speak spanglish. Hey esse, that vato, esta loco, he thinks he's cool, pero me vale.
As I tell all my minority friends, you will not succeed until you stop acting to the stereotype.
Now why in the world would we aspire to do any such thing?
What any student, or group thereof, achieves is NOT the business of our government.
Having had a lot of experience with the Vietnamese community here, from when I went among the first ones in the tents at Eglin hoping to find acquaintances, what I have found linguistically is that the families that insisted on English only in the home raised children who learned English but carried heavy accents and could not communicate with their grandparents. Those who spoke only Vietnamese in the home raised children who learned English playing with the English speaking neighbor children and in school. Those children grew up with only the local accent in English and could speak household Vietnamese also and are not cut off from their grandparents. They also dominated the annual Honor Roll lists in the schools for two generations.
The study is politicized science. Hispanic kids do in fact fall behind, but that happens much later.
Shoot, listen to interviews of college athletes sometime. Many of them can’t produce a coherent, grammatically correct sentence. Government schools are floundering dinosaurs that ought to be put out of their misery.
That would be the best possible thing that could happen to them. No more pity, special treatment, excuses, blame for others, etc. Eventually the huge number of non-performers in this group would have to get off their asses and do for themselves w/o excuses. Then they'd catch up with everyone else. Special treatment & excuses = FAIL!
“As an American of Hispanic origin, living in SoCal, I can say that it is a cultural thing and not a lack of educational opportunities.
See, it’s cool to speak spanglish. Hey esse, that vato, esta loco, he thinks he’s cool, pero me vale.
As I tell all my minority friends, you will not succeed until you stop acting to the stereotype.”
As a native of SoCal, starting my 7th decade, and having known many Hispanic origin people, I agree with you.
I have Hispanic friends that are Lawyers, CPAs, etc. They stepped out of the “norm” to become fully assimilated. And while doing so, gave up nothing of their heretige.
My wife is the daughter of Italian (proudly legal) immigrants, and the norm for them was immediate assimilation.
I remember when we were very young, and I was courting my wife to be. I made jokes about how I bet they knew the Mafia. I got silent rejection, as if to inform me they rejected such an awful association.
And here in SoCal we have all observed the industrious and studious Vietnamese dig right in, and turn out scholars, doctors, dentists, etc. in one generation.
Immigration from Mexico goes back generations, and those not in border states don’t understand it very well.
Too many in the political right make disparaging and disrespectful comments about Hispanic people. The result is: Fewer votes for the GOP. Sadly.
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