Attitudes Toward Education: Voluntary and

Involuntary Immigrants from the Same Families

KATHERINEG . HAYES
Judrez and Associates, Inc.

This article discusses the explanatory model developed by John Ogbu particu-
larly as it pertains to Mexicans and Mexican-Americans. Ogbu addresses mi-
nority school failure by looking at whether or not immigrants came to the
United States voluntarily or involuntarily. Sample students, although exhib-
iting some characteristics of involuntary immigrants, share the educational
ideology of their voluntary immigrant parents. Essential elements of an alter-
native explanatory framework are presented. MINORlW EDUCATION,
EXPLANATORY MODELS FOR EDUCATIONAL UNDERACHIEVE-
MENT, MEXICAN-AMERICANS

Nosotros 10s mejicanos necesitamos We Mexicans need money to study,

dinero para estudiar, trabajamos we work to make money, but I see
para sacar dinero, per0 yo veo que ninety percent of the Mexican stu-
el noventa por ciento de 10s estu- dents are leaving school. They don’t
diantes mejicanos e s t h saliendo de finish their studies because they
la escuela. No terminan sus estu- lack resources.
dios por falta de recursos.
[Efrain Lopez, interview with author 19861

Although his statistics may be somewhat inflated, Mr. Lopez, the fa-
ther of seven children, correctly perceived that Mexican-American stu-
dents’ failure to finish high school is a major educational and social
problem. In 1981, an analysis of 18- to 19-year-old Latinos1found that
36% were high school dropouts. This figure is more than double the
national average (Steinberg et al. 1984). Recent data indicate that
35.78%of 16- to 18-year-old Latinos have dropped out of high school.
This compares to 12.66%of Anglo-Americans and 14.87% of African-
Americans in the same age group who have dropped out of high
school (Schick and Schick 1991).
This article (1) discusses the educational achievement model of John
Ogbu particularly as it pertains to Mexicans and Mexican-Americans,
(2) presents data on a specific group of Mexican-Americans, and (3)
critiques Ogbu’s model when applied to this group.
John Ogbu has been considered an authority on issues relating to
the educational underachievement of minority group members in the

Katherine G . Hayes is a senior associate at Judrezand Associates, Los Angeles, Califor-

nia. She also teaches anthropology and education in the graduate school of education
at the University of California, Los Angeles.

250
Hayes Attitudes Toward Education 251

United States at least since 1974, when his first book was published
(Ogbu 1974). His contribution to the field is well recognized, and his
work, although controversial, is widely cited. Known as the cultural
ecological approach, caste theory, or the secondary cultural disconti-
nuity model, Ogbu’s work has several elegant and well thought out
features.
Ogbu’s strongest argument is his insistence that good ethnographic
research must be based on an understanding of the historical, political,
economic, and social context of a group of persons under study. He
criticizes micro-ethnographic research when applied to studies of mi-
nority achievement because he believes that micro-ethnographic re-
searchers focus only on what goes on inside the classroom and exclude
the wider context.
Proponents of the micro-ethnographic approach* argue that, al-
though the global context is very important, one must also examine
classroom interaction and educational processes very closely to better
understand the experiences of minority group children being taught
by majority group teachers who speak English and embody white
American middle-class values.
They further state that differences between majority and minority
cultures lead to cultural conflicts interfering with minority children’s
ability to perform well in school. Majority group children come to
school equipped with the language, culture, and values of the school,
and minority group children do not. This has a direct and often neg-
ative impact on minority children’s school success. The cultural differ-
ence model has been applied in micro-ethnographic studies focusing
on African-American students (Erickson and Schultz 1982; Heath
1983; Ludwig 1981), Hawaiian students (Au and Jordon 1981; Galli-
more et al. 1974), Native American students (Phillips 1983), and Mex-
ican-American students (Delgado-Gaitan and Trueba 1985; Diaz et al.
1986; Moll and Diaz 1987).
Few anthropologists take exception to Obgu’s call for the macro-eth-
nographic approach. In fact, anthropologists usually approach a re-
search problem from the global to the specific. My critique of his model
relates more to his typology, which I find too simplistic given the cur-
rent and major Latino influx and experience, particularly in southern
California urban areas.
One-fourth of the foreign-born people in the United States live in
California, and of these, one-half live in Los Angeles County. More
than half of the immigrant population living in Los Angeles today is
from Mexico or Central and South America (Ong 1989). These immi-
grants do not constitute a homogeneous pool. The background, edu-
cation, and skills that they bring to this country are not the same for
all immigrants. They may have come from urban or rural areas and
they may be political or economic refugees. Some stay, others do not;
many frequently go back and forth between their home country and
252 Anthropology B Education Quarterly Volume 23, 1992

California. Obgu’s theory, however useful when applied to the gen-

eral phenomenon of minority underachievement, does not reflect an
in-depth understanding of the diverse nature of the Latino population
in the United States today.
The next section presents a brief overview of Obgu’s model. Three
of the major features of the model include discussions relating to type
of minority status, primary and secondary cultural differences, and
adaptive behavior.

Ogbu’s Model
Type of Minority Status
According to the Ogbu model, an important factor in determining
the school adjustment and academic performance of minority children
is their minority type, voluntary or i n v o l ~ n t a r yVoluntary
.~ minorities
come from those groups who have moved to the United States in
search of greater economic and educational opportunities. To support
his argument, Obgu often cites studies in which voluntary minorities,
such as Chinese (Ogbu 1974), Punjab Indians (Gibson 1987), and Cen-
tral Americans (Suarez-Orozco 1987), may experience difficulties be-
cause of language and cultural differences, but are not subject to dis-
proportionate school failure.
Involuntary minorities include members of a minority group who
have suffered slavery or colonization and who have later been denied
true assimilation. Examples include American Indians, African-Amer-
icans, native Hawaiians, and Mexican-Americans. Generally speak-
ing, involuntary minorities usually experience greater difficulty in
school adjustment and demonstrate more academic failure than do
voluntary minorities.
Ogbu further argues that the extent to which minority students are
successful in school has little impact on their future in the job market.
The class or caste to which these students belong precludes their oc-
cupying any portion of the national economy above the lower strata
(Bowlesand Gintes 1976; Matute-Bianchi 1980; Ogbu 1974,1978,1981;
Spener 1988). Therefore, involuntary minorities are not as strongly
motivated to persevere in their school work as the voluntary minority
students because they know their opportunities in future employment
are limited.
Primary and Secondary Cultural Differences
Ogbu states that there are two distinct types of linguistic or cultural
differences that may be compared to white American or Anglo-Amer-
ican culture. Primary cultural differences are those that existed before
any two specific cultural groups came into contact. Voluntary minor-
ities often continue to practice and maintain their own customs even
after contact.
Hayes Attitudes Toward Education 253

Secondary cultural differences, on the other hand, arise after two

groups come into contact, and often develop as a response to contact
in which one group dominates the other. Ogbu believes that it is im-
portant to distinguish between the two types of cultural and language
differences because they are qualitatively different.
Most descriptions of cultural differences between involuntary minorities
and white Americans emphasize differences in the style of cognition, com-
munication, interaction, and learning. In contrast, descriptions of primary
cultural differences emphasize differences in the content of cognition. com-
munication and so on. [Ogbu 1990:148, emphasis added]

Adaptive Behavior
Ogbu (1981)affirms that many minority students are aware that the
system works to their disadvantage. They don’t adopt the behaviors
necessary for school success because they reject the white American
societal values that those behaviors embody. The cognitive, linguistic,
motivational skills and attitudes that involuntary minorities take to
school, which lead to failure in school because they are so different
from attitudes and skills held by the dominant culture, are adaptive to
the adult roles they will play in occupations largely limited to semi-
skilled and service industries.
The explanatory model put forward by John Ogbu falls short when
we try to apply it to studies that focus on Hispanic educational under-
achievement. It does not hold true for this population, I believe, be-
cause of the historical, political, economic, and social context of Lati-
nos in the United States today, and of the Latino immigrants in south-
ern California.
In 1978, Ogbu reported that Mexican children in Stockton, Califor-
nia, exhibited attitudes and school behaviors that more closely resem-
bled those of other immigrant minorities (Chinese, Japanese, Filipi-
nos) than they did the attitudes and school behaviors of local Mexican-
Americans (Ogbu 1978). Obgu contrasts Mexican-Americans (invol-
untary minorities) with Mexican immigrants (voluntary minorities).
In 1990, Ogbu tried to clarify his position regarding Mexicans and
Mexican-Americans. He stated that voluntary minority group mem-
bers do not perceive their presence in the United States as forced upon
them by white Americans; however,
Mexicans who later immigrated both legally and illegally were usually de-
fined and treated by the Anglos in terms of status of the conquered group.
And the immigrants were often forced to live and work among members of
the conquered group, with whom they developed and shared the same
sense of peoplehood or group identity over the course of time. [Ogbu
1990:1461

In discussing the differences between Mexicans and Mexican-Amer-

icans, Ogbu’s arguments are somewhat unclear, and I believe this is
254 Anthropology & Education Quarterly Volume 23, 1992

because he does not account for diverse acculturation and binational

experiences of many Mexican-Americans. When does a Mexican be-
come a Mexican-American? When does a voluntary minority become
an involuntary minority?
The Mexican immigrant families upon whom this research is fo-
cused do not easily fall into either minority “type” defined by Ogbu’s
model. Sample parents (voluntary immigrants) held a strong belief in
American education as the avenue for success and well-being. In con-
trast, their adolescent children, schooled in the United States since
Head Start or kindergarten, sometimes claimed that school offered
nothing to them. Their classroom behavior suggested that their values
toward education more closely resembled involuntary minority values
in which students reject the symbols, behaviors, and ideals of Anglo-
American society. Furthermore, they called themselves “Mexican-
Americans,” “Chicanos,” or “cholos.” The transformation was not
quite complete, however, as sample students still believed in the
power of the high school diploma to improve their standard of living,
and most graduated, albeit with few academic skills.
Setting and Sample
The research took place in a southern California suburban commu-
nity with a local reputation for good public schools. The local high
school served approximately 2500 students representing the ethnic di-
versity found in the city. Latinos made up 16% of the student body,
and whites accounted for approximately 68% of the student popula-
tion.
The sample for this research consisted of 12 teenagers between the
ages of 15and 18. They all called themselves Mexican-Americans, and
they all attended special education classes at Seaside High. There were
five males and seven females. I followed these students through their
school and workdays for approximately one year, observing and in-
terviewing them, their parents, their teachers, and their employers.
All of the sample members either were born in the United States or
immigrated before age five. All students but one came from working-
class families. They had between two and fourteen siblings. All of the
students lived at home, and most had frequent contact with extended
family members. Only two sets of parents from the entire sample
spoke fluent English; they were also the only parents who had at-
tended high school. Table 1depicts the demographic characteristics of
the sample families.
Sample members shared similar educational histories. Despite in-
telligence test scores that fell within the normal range, most of these
students consistently scored four or more grade levels below the norm
on reading and mathematics achievement tests, and were therefore la-
beled “learning disabled.” Psychological examiners of sample stu-
dents often questioned the validity of their verbal IQ scores because
they lacked English verbal skills or because they suffered from “cul-
tural deprivation.” Students’ psychological reports contain such re-
marks as the following:
Hayes Attitudes Toward Education 255

Table 1.
Demographic Characteristics of Sample Parents and Families

Years
Number in
Age Education Profession of Children U.S.A.
Student name
Ana
Mother: 38 5th grade seamstress 5 15
Father: 39 8th grade maintenance 15
Arturo
Mother: 35 9th grade elderly care 3 18.5
Stepfather: 33 9th grade gardener
Bobby
Mother: 44 H.S. grad retail manager 3 2dgen.
Stepfather: 38 11th grade retail manager 1

Carmen
Mother: 55 2nd grade factory worker 18 22
Father: 65 4th grade construction 23
Gloria
Mother: 45 3rd grade housewife 3 17
Father: 57 5th grade factory worker 6 25
Gracie
Mother: 43 3rd grade housewife 9 16
Father: 45 No school disabled laborer 16
Inez
Mother: 46 2nd grade housewife 8 31
Father: 51 No school gardener 20 +
Maritza
Mother: 35 6th grade housewife 15 17
Stepfather: 35 6th grade landscaper 8
Monica
Mother: 37 H.S. grad office worker 3 2d gen.
Father: Divorced machinist 2d gen.
Santos
Mother: 35 8th grade stuffs newspapers 7 12 +
Father: 35 4th grade delivers newspapers 12 +
Sergio
Mother: 35 6th grade housewife 15 17
Stepfather: 35 6th grade landscaper 8
Tomas
Mother: 39 6th grade housewife 6 20
Father: 42 6th grade business owner 20

Mean age of mother: 40.5 Mean age of father: 44.1

Mean years of schooling for mother: 6.1 years
Mean years of schooling for father: 5.3 years
Mean number of children in family: 8
Mean years living in the U.S.A.: 18.03years
256 Anthropology 6 Education Quarterly Volume 23, 1992

Language and cultural factors may be a reason for his absenteeism and low
academic achievements.
Her bilingual background has created problems in receptive and expressive
language.
This is not believed to be an accurate estimate of intellectual functioning . . .
due to inadequate motivation, . . . is from a bilingual background with per-
haps limited resources and possible early sensory deprivation; and . . .
Due to her dominant Spanish background, she has trouble with verbal tasks
where she must comprehend and then recall information that was pre-
sented in English.

None of the students in the sample had ever been tested with Spanish
or culturally sensitive materials.
A review of school records documented high absenteeism for nine
of the twelve sample members throughout their school years. Two stu-
dents repeated kindergarten; two were referred to Resource (RSP)4
rooms during second grade, two during third grade, one during
fourth grade, one during sixth grade, and one during seventh grade.
Once labeled and placed in the RSP room for extra academic assist-
ance, not only did sample students remain in special education classes
for the rest of their academic careers, but eight of them spent their high
school years in the more restrictive Special Day Class (SDC) as well.5
Because of their tenure in special education classes, these students
make up a unique group; however, their histories of academic failure
are not unlike those of many Mexican, Mexican-American, and other
Latino students in public high schools today, particularly those who
ultimately drop out of school.
Methods
This research is part of a larger study examining social competency
of mildly handicapped Mexican-American students at school and on
the job. The methods consisted primarily of participant observation
and ethnographic interviews. Information regarding parent and stu-
dent perceptions about education was gathered through in-depth in-
terviews in which informants were asked to describe each student's
educational history. Parents and students also provided their opinions
about the quality of the educational experience, the importance of ed-
ucation, and the kinds of lives they wanted for their children.
Findings
In this section, I first discuss the social and economic context for the
families in this study, and then I address parent and student attitudes
toward education and roots of failure.
Ethnically speaking, Los Angeles differs markedly from the United
States as a whole. It has proportionally more Latinos, and those Lati-
nos primarily come from Mexico. For the most part, these Mexicans
Hayes Attitudes Toward Education 257

are recent immigrants. “In 1980almost two-thirds of the Mexican-born

population in Los Angeles had arrived since 1970, more than half of
these since 1975” (Ong 1989:107).
Many Mexican families are quite poor. Poverty among recently ar-
rived Latinos was high throughout the 1970s and worsened in the
1980s. In 1970, slightly more than 10% of the Mexican immigrants
were below the poverty level. In 1980, that percentage more than dou-
bled. Mexican immigrants are also not well educated. Over three-
fourths of Mexican immigrants in both 1970 and 1980 had not gradu-
ated from high school. The Central and South American immigrants
are generally better educated when they arrive in the United States. In
1980, 45% of the Central and South American immigrants had not
graduated from high school when they came to the United States (For-
syth 1989).These characteristics well represent the sample families in
this study. Although most of the parents had immigrated to southern
California during the 1960s, most had poorly paying jobs and few had
finished high school (see Table 1).
Parent Attitudes Toward Education
Clearly, sample parents wanted their children to be better educated
and to have better jobs than they themselves had. Despite their chil-
dren’s placement into special education, they envisioned jobs for them
in the fields of law enforcement, electronics, mechanics, secretarial
services, banking, cosmetology, and transportation. Most understood
that some formal training is necessary for these careers and urged their
children to continue their studies.
Despues de tener a su hijo, me gus- After she has her child, I would like
taria que ella estudiara un afio o her to study one year or something
algo corto en el colegio, para que short in college so that she can work
trabaje en un lugar en el que gane someplace where she earns more or
mis o menos y que no se mate mu- less good wages and where she
cho porque solamente asi puede won‘t kill herself working. Only in
ayudar a su esposo. this manner will she be able to help
her husband.
Although Gracie didn’t really need a job (her husband had his own
business), both Gracie and her mother looked to the local community
college as the means for Gracie to help her family. Carmen’s mother
also urged her daughter to enter some kind of training program so that
she would have a career.
Yo digo a mis muchachas, yo no s6 I tell my girls, I don’t know how to
leer ni escribir, per0 aqui estan ust- read or write, but I tell them that
edes, de mod0 que ganen su dinero here you are and you can make
para todos 10s gastos porque si ust- money for your expenses because if
edes estudian, el dinero se hace you study, the money makes itself
despues con una carrerita, aunque with a little career.
sea chiquita.
258 Anthropology & Education Quarterly Volume 23, 1992

Sample males’ parents also urged their children to study. Arturo’s

mother says she knew he could never earn much working at a restau-
rant.
Yo le trato de meter mds en 10s es-
tudios. Yo quiero que vaya a1 Cole-
gio. Como yo le digo, “Mds tarde tu
puedes tener tu vida ya que tienes
algo que ofrecer. Si tfi te casas ahora
con una muchacha vas a ser como
nosotros, viviendo nada mds que
con lo que tienes.”
I have tried to involve him more in
his studies. I want him to go to col-
lege as I tell him, “Later you can
have your own life when you al-
ready have something to offer. If
you get mamed now, you’re going
to be like we are, living with no
more than what we have.”

These quotes illustrate sample parents’ beliefs in the power of educa-

tion to improve one’s station in life. They expressed those beliefs to
their children. Sample members seemed to share their parents’ beliefs
about the importance of education. Eleven of the twelve sample mem-
bers graduated from high school.
Student Attitudes Toward Education. That they did finish high school at
all attests to sample students’ beliefs that the high school diploma was
worth the price. Unfortunately, that price was t h e e years of boredom
in dead-end classrooms. The actual day-to-day learning environments
for these students left much to be desired. Teachers, believing special
education students to be capable of little else, assigned countless mi-
meographed work sheets, showed outdated filmstrips, had students
copy verbatim from encyclopedias for their science reports, or gave
“free time.” In one SDC classroom, more than 50% of all English, Gov-
ernment, and Vocation Education periods observed were devoted to
“free time.”
Most sample students didn’t like school, they were often absent,
and when then they did attend, they spent most of their time avoiding
academic activities. Some had lower achievement scores when they
finished high school than they did when they started because they re-
ceived so little practice in academic skills. At the same time, these stu-
dents wanted a high school diploma and claimed that education was
important to them.
Sergio, Tomas, and Ana were outspoken about the importance of
”an education.” Sergio stated,

I think education is important. Ahorita [right now] I realize it’s really im-
portant, I think I cannot miss school. . . . All those classes I missed in ninth
grade, I coulda used them.

Sergio worked hard at his RSP and regular classes in the hopes that
he could someday be promoted out of SDC. Tomas advised Maritza,
a fellow sample member, to stay in school so she could ”learn and be
educated.”
Hayes Attitudes Toward Education 259

Ana felt strongly motivated to graduate so she could prove herself

to her family, and she seemed to believe in education for education’s
sake. She expressed her beliefs when she stated, “The most foolish
thing I ever did was not going to school because that’s the most im-
portant.” When asked what was the one thing in life Ana was
ashamed of, she replied, ”I can’t read.’’
Sample students knew a high school diploma was important be-
cause it signified that they had finished high school. It signified very
little else to some of them. Arturo said he wanted to finish school be-
cause he was the oldest of his siblings and cousins and he wanted to
be a good influence on them. When asked what made him the most
proud about his life, Arturo stated, “I almost dropped out of school
and I came back.”
Bobby’s account indicates that he was unsure about the value of an
education.
I came this far. What’s the use? . . . I know I got learning ability. I’m only
in special ed ‘cuz I was ditchin’ a lot. I wish I was in regular classes, learning
something. I gotta go [to school] anyway. I might like it better if I was in
regular classes. I hate it. . . . You don’t really havta know nothing from
school, do ya? Depends on what you want to be though.

Sample students were ambivalent about their school experiences for

good reasons. Although they talked about the importance of educa-
tion, their day-to-day experiences contradicted their words. Another
factor influencing student and parent perceptions about schooling
was their membership in a linguistic, or ethnic, minority group.
From the parents’ point of view, language was a barrier between
them and their children’s schools. Several sample parents complained
that they couldn’t really help their children at school because they
didn’t know English. They couldn’t help with homework, nor could
they talk to teachers about student progress. One parent remarked
that “the teachers don’t pay attention to the Mexicans, anyway.” An-
other cited racial discrimination as contributing to her daughter’s ac-
ademic and emotional problems.

Roots of Failure
Students generally attend special education classes because they
have failed in their regular education classes. They are embarrassed
because they study in the ”dummy class” and are sometimes the tar-
get of unkind remarks by other students. Both parents and students
had developed their own theories to explain placement, but they did
not always share the same views about how the student first entered
special education.
Although parents sometimes attended school meetings held to de-
termine placement, generally they simply signed the paperwork the
student brought home. Students were often the parents’ only source
260 Anthropology & Education Quarterly Volume 23, 1992

of information about school and student progress. And students gen-

erally told their parents very little. This led to an extreme lack of un-
derstanding between the home and school systems. School personnel
accused parents of not caring, and parents viewed the academic world
as truly foreign to their own.
Cuando 61 tenia ocho aiios, me di- When he was eight years old, they
jeron que 61 tenia un problema y told me that he had a problem and
que habia que darle clases espe- had to have special classes. I didn’t
ciales. Yo no reaccione mucho por- react much because these were
que el problema era de la escuela y problems of the school not of the
no de la casa. home.
According to Mrs. Jimenez, Arturo never brought homework to
their home. She stated that she often asked him why he had no home-
work and that he said the teachers didn’t give them any. Teachers af-
firmed that they didn’t give homework because students refused to do
it. Mrs. Jimenez also believed that most of the time Arturo did not even
remember he had a “learning problem.”
Arturo said that he entered special education in seventh grade be-
cause he couldn’t read well, and that he was “demoted’ into SDC
from RSP because he was ditching so much in the tenth grade. His
school records indicate that he was evaluated during third grade, and
because his ”achievement was about two years below grade level in
all areas,” he was placed in RSP. Teachers complained about his fre-
quent absences as early as fourth grade. These absences continued
throughout the rest of Arturo’s school life. He told school officials that
he had to care for his younger siblings. Mrs. Jimenez denied this as-
sertion, but stated that he had been working since he was 14. When
Arturo temporarily dropped out of school in his junior year, he missed
several weeks of school before his mother inadvertently found out.
Clearly, the lack of communication between Arturo’s mother and his
teachers contributed to his school problems.
Gracie’s parents claimed her only problem was that she left school
during the tenth grade to go to Mexico. It was upon her return that she
was placed in special classes. When asked if she had a learning dis-
ability, Gracie replied, “What’s a learning disability?” She agreed with
her parents that she was placed in special education because she left
school.
Ana’s cumulative records support her view that her parents were
largely unresponsive to calls from the school. Ana was first given psy-
chological tests in the first grade. Teachers reported that they had re-
quested permission to test her further, but her parents had refused.
Her parents also denied teacher requests to retain Ana during fourth
grade. Her sixth grade teacher complained that Ana‘s parents did not
come in for conferences. Ana’s Head Start records revealed that her
grandparents seem to serve as family heads. . . . All family members are
struggling for basic existence, but attitudes of adults toward the community
Hayes Attitudes Toward Education 261

and school would seem to reinforce the possibility of grandchildren’ssuc-

cess in school. Very anxious to contribute time and effort to help school and
program.

Ana‘s parents probably did miss a number of school conferences. As

she states, her parents were “always working.” Ana also perceived
that her teachers really didn’t notice her at all. She reports that her
elementary teachers were all nice to her but that they
would always leave me behind and they would pass me. . . . They never
flunked me and they should have. I never took my homework, I would say
I forgot it, I lost it, I got lazy.

Ana has had academic difficulties since she started school. Her
teachers called her ”a sweet, quiet child.” Her timidness and low self-
esteem prevented her from asking for the help she needed. The lack
of communication between parents, students, and teachers exacer-
bated Ana’s problems.
Santos stated that he was placed in special education classes in the
seventh grade because he didn’t understand how to do Roman nu-
merals. His parents had a somewhat different view of Santo’s educa-
tional problems.
We changed schools within the district and he started to fall behind. . . .
Santos knows he’s in special classes because he is lazy and doesn’t want to
study. He knows that he doesn’t have mental problems.

Based upon cumulative records, Santos had problems listening to

instructions as early as the first grade. In the second grade, he was
described as a hard worker, in the third grade, as an eager student
with a short attention span. He was placed in RSP for reading in fourth
grade, and both his fifth and sixth grade teachers cited his slow aca-
demic progress. According to school records, the reason given for San-
to’s original evaluation in grade seven was ”He doesn‘t follow direc-
tions verbal or written. Forgets to bring materials.”
The remaining families in the sample had similar descriptions of
their children’s entrance into special education. For the most part,
they didn’t perceive their children as having learning disabilities;
rather, they cited the following reasons for placement: “lazy and
doesn‘t want to study,” “intimidated by the other children who called
her names because she was fat and dark-skinned,” ”he was not be-
having well at home and at school,” and, most commonly, ”she never
liked to go to school.” Students tended to blame school absence more
than any other factor for their academic problems.
That parents knew so little about their children‘s academic lives was
reflected in their evaluations of their children’s schooling. Sample par-
ents, for the most part, stated that they were satisfied with their chil-
dren’s education. When their children did poorly at school, parents
262 Anthropology 6 Education Quarterly Volume 23, 1992

tended to blame themselves, their poor English skills, their “stupid-

ity,” or their poverty. Only one immigrant parent complained that
Mexican children do not get the attention they need in school. Inter-
estingly, the two parents most dissatisfied with the quality of educa-
tion that their children received were those who had been to high
school themselves. These parents were more likely to question the ed-
ucational experiences of their children because they knew the kinds of
variables to evaluate.
From sample parents’ point of view, their children were not dis-
abled.6They helped around the house, they worked to help support
the family, and they stayed in school. Literature relating to the special
education of Limited English Proficient (LEI‘) students emphasizes the
potential or actual detrimental effects of labeling, documents the num-
ber of children misdiagnosed and misplaced (Mercer 1973), describes
confused diagnostic practices (Cummins 1984), discusses the rela-
tively slow academic progress of these students (Grossman 1983), and
asserts that minority students are ill served in both special education
and regular education settings (Macmillian et al. 1988). Whereas LEP
children were previously classified as mentally retarded (MR) in dis-
proportionately large numbers (Mercer 1973), the learning disabled
(LD) category seems to have become the favored avenue for special
education inclusion in recent years (Argulewicz 1983; Bernal 1983;
U.S.Department of Education 1983). The purpose of this research was
not to expose widespread misdiagnosis of Latino students, The extent
to which any except the four more severely disabled students were
“truly learning disabled’ will not be discussed in this article. The stu-
dents were underachieving or non-achieving Latino youth. Despite
their failures or the failures of their teachers, these students perse-
vered because they believed in the power of education to make their
lives better .

Conclusions
These examples illustrate that what Ogbu calls voluntary immigrant
parents and involuntary immigrant children can live in the same
household and often share the same ideology about the importance of
a “good education,” particularly in improving one’s lot in life. Invol-
untary immigrant children may act on those beliefs by staying in
school despite their poverty; the fact that their school may have few
resources and that their teachers are disinterested or ”burned-out,”
the discrimination that they and their families suffer at the hands of
the wider society, and a host of other factors are usually the causes of
premature high school attrition.
In addition, involuntary minorities are said to have cognitive, lin-
guistic, and motivational skills that promote academic failure at school
but that serve them well in their future occupations below the job ceil-
ing (Ogbu 1981). As I looked at the skills and attitudes that sample
Hayes Attitudes Toward Education 263

immigrant parents were teaching to their children, I found that was

also the case for the voluntary immigrants. Although these skills and
attitudes tended to ensure success in the workplace, they did not nec-
essarily lead to academic achievement. The jobs that students and
their parents held (below the job ceiling) did not call for the kinds of
skills schools were ostensibly teaching. The link between school suc-
cess and economic opportunities proved very weak for my sample, yet
parents and adolescents believed very much in that link.
Ogbu has given us insights into the psychological effects of discrim-
ination and has provided us with an explanatory framework-a rough
heuristic for understanding why members of some minority groups
tend to excel in school and members of others do not. For that, we are
all grateful. However, we cannot fully understand the reasons for La-
tino educational underachievement without a more highly developed
explanatory framework. Many voluntary and involuntary Latino im-
migrant children are leaving school with no degrees, few skills, and
few hopes for the future. To understand and better help these families
it is our responsibility as educational researchers to offer alternative
explanatory models or frameworks that then can be converted into in-
terventions designed to empower minority students.
The following variables, or elements, should be included in the al-
ternative explanatory framework focusing on Latino educational un-
derachievement .

The age at which the child immigrates, what schooling he or she

has had in his or her home country, and what skills he or she
brings to the U.S.
Minority students from dominated groups who immigrate relatively
late (about ten years of age) often have more successful academic ex-
periences than do similar students born in the receiving country, de-
spite the marked difference in language skills (Skutnabb-Kangas and
Toukomaa 1976). Cummins attributes that phenomenon to the fact
that immigrant students did not experience depreciation of their self-
image in the social institutions (schools) in their home countries (Cum-
mins 1984,1986). In addition, children who learn how to read in their
first language generally do much better academically than do children
who are forced to read in a language other than their home language.

0 The educational background of the parents of the immigrant

child.

Immigrant parents of Central and South American children tend to

be better educated, as reported in the 1989 data presented by Forsyth.
One might expect the children of those immigrants, then, to be more
successful academically than the children of Mexican immigrants who
have had relatively little schooling.
264 Anthropology 6 Education Quarterly Volume 23, 1992

For example, the immigrant parents in this study extolled the vir-
tues of a ”good education’’ and expected their children to obey their
teachers, but, thanks to their own educational inexperience, were
largely uninvolved in their children’s formal education and learning
experiences. They did not know how to teach their children how to be
students.
0 The extent to which immigrant families maintain ties with the
home country.
Many immigrant families travel frequently to Mexico, sustain their
connection with their extended families, and continue practicing their
traditional rituals and customs long after they have moved to the
United States. Given this psychological support, children tend to feel
good about themselves and their own culture, and may be better able
to deal with less than ideal school conditions. The ability to travel back
and forth from the home to the host country is also dependent on a
family’s socioeconomic status, which also has an impact on children’s
academic achievement.
0 The interaction of the Latino with societal institutions, such as the
school.
Cummins (1989) highlights four institutional characteristics of
schools that have a positive impact on the educational success of mi-
nority students. The first relates to cultural and linguistic incorpora-
tion. For minority groups who have suffered disproportionate
amounts of academic failure, the degree to which the students’ home
languages and cultures are incorporated into the school program is a
significant predictor of academic success. Second, Cummins (1986)ar-
gues that when educators involve minority parents as partners in their
children’s education, parents develop a sense of efficacy that results
in increased academic performance of their children.
Third, Cummins advocates pedagogical approaches that empower
students by encouraging them to set their own learning goals and to
work collectively to achieve those goals. This creates a ”culture-fair”
curriculum in which all students are actively involved in expressing,
sharing, and amplifylng their experience within the classroom.
Finally, and this characteristic is germane to the population upon
which this article is based, minorities are more successful in schools
where professionals who are involved in assessment become aware
that a student‘s academic difficulty may be a function of interactions
within the school context and not of a “learning disability” within the
student.
Ogbu’s model can be a very powerful explanatory tool. Its power
lies in its focus on wider social, political, and economic issues in ad-
dressing why minority students tend to fail in such disproportionate
Hayes Attitudes Toward Education 265

numbers. Less useful is the general analytic typology that Ogbu and
his colleagues employ to explain why different kinds of minorities per-
form differently in school. In attempting to explain and understand
the academic failure of Mexican immigrants and the academic failure
of their children, I have presented some other essential elements of an
alternate framework.
Notes
1. Of the entire Hispanic population in the United States, 62.6%are of Mexican
origin, 11.6% are of Puerto Rican origin, 5.3% are of Cuban heritage, 12.7%
are descendants from Central or South Americans, and 8% classified them-
selves as “other Hispanic.”
2. Also known as the context specific model or cultural difference approach.
3. Involuntary immigrants are also known as castelike (Ogbu 1978; Ogbu and
Matute-Bianchi 1986).
4. Resource Specialist Program (RSP) or Special Day Class (SDC) refer to the
two types of programs in which sample students are placed. RSP is a less re-
strictive placement that students attend for a maximum of two periods a day.
Students with more severe difficultiesare placed in SDC classes, which run all
day.
5. Some mobility was observed, however, as four students were “promoted‘
from SDC into Resource Classes during high school.
6. Parents of the more severely disabled students, like Tomas, Inez, Maritza,
and Gloria, were exceptions.

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