All posts by megan.gavrillen

“El Futuro is Now:  Is Catholic higher education ready for the growing Hispanic community?”

Media Reflections, Uncategorized

This article considers the state of Catholic higher education in the United States in regard to the growing Hispanic/Latinx population and makes the assessment that Catholic higher education is unprepared for and oblivious to the demographic shift.

By the year 2036, Bravo believes that 30% of the high school graduates in the United States will be Hispanic.  Pointing out that of the 226 Catholic colleges and universities in the US, 32 are classified as Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSI) and 36 are classified as emerging HSI, he poses the question, “will we respond and be intentional about welcoming, integrating and celebrating our growing Hispanic student population?”

Public discourse on Catholic identity is often exclusive and “fails to include a multicultural, multiracial, panethnic people of God,” he asserts. The anti-Hispanic sentiment and lack of representation in education deserves reflection and a thoughtful response.  A culturally responsible ministry and representation within the classroom is needed.

This article echoed some of the discrimination outlined in this week’s readings involving immigrants’ experiences of exclusion and marginalization due to race, language, and social policy.  Bartlett (2011) discusses findings that immigrant children often attend lower quality schools and shares that the language hierarchy and language education policy makes a difference in the effectiveness of education for immigrants. Haitian students living in the Dominican Republic shared the difficulties of obtaining documentation and fees to access education, and they also suggested that their race and language accents affected their treatment within the schools (Bartlett, 2011).  This discussion correlates with the discussion of prevalent xenophobia within South Africa expressed in the Al Jazeera video.  

At the heart of Catholic Social Teaching is the belief that every human being is made in the image of God.  We know that education greatly impacts one’s ability to live a good, right life.  Bravo calls on the Catholic Church, and Catholic colleges and universities in particular, to consider who we are and whose we are, asking, “will we continue to passively allow the demographic shifts to shape higher education, or, will we meet this moment intentionally?”  

Al Jazeera (n.d) Migration Inside and Outside of Africa.

Bartlett, L. (2011) ‘South-south migration and education: The case of people of Haitian 

descent born in the Dominican Republic’. In Compare: A Journal of Comparative Education 

Vol.42 No.3 [pp.1-22].

Module 5 Collective Takeaways

M5 Collective Takeaways

Anthropology of Transnationalism

Group 4 Synthesis Laura (Nicole), Elizabeth, Megan
  • How does transnationalism differ from assimilation theories you learned in the last week? Reflect on what it means for children to keep flexible identities as they enter schools in different countries. 

According to Louie, (2006), transnationalism refers to “immigrants maintaining connections to their country of origin and using a dual frame of reference to evaluate their experiences and outcomes in the country in which they have settled.” This is different from assimilation, which in the previous module was described by Greenman as the “process through which immigrants gradually shed the cultures and customs of their home countries and adopted the language, expressive habits, and eventually the spatial distribution and socioeconomic characteristics of ‘mainstream’ Americans – usually defined as white middle class Protestants” (Gordon, 1964, as cited in Greenman, 2011, p. 32). To break that down, transnationalism is different from assimilation because rather than assuming or even insisting that a person fully takes on the culture and language of the receiving country as in assimilation, it is the ideology that a person can maintain important aspects of the sending country while adopting aspects from the receiving country. The theory of transnationalism takes a broader perspective and considers a more complex and symbiotic look at cultural identity and family context.  However, both theories of transnationalism and assimilation highlight the many challenges immigrants face in moving to and settling in their new homes.

For children attending schools in different countries, it is important to have flexible identities as it allows those students to not only adapt to their school’s surroundings and expectations, but it may provide them the opportunity to use what they know from their own backgrounds to inform their learning. Children who are able to maintain a transnational identity can compare who they are in one school/place to who they are in another. However, in thinking about flexible identities, it seems that requiring a student to have a flexible identity highlights how schools may not be changing to support their students but are having students change to excel at the school. If schools are going to “nurture a growing number of complex skills, competencies, and sensibilities in students to equip them to engage in the globally linked economies and societies of our time,” then schools have to make sure they are flexible in working with students from all over the world. Schools and communities cannot operate in a monolithic society, and in a world that is continuously more interconnected, it is harmful to assume that people must assimilate to a single culture or language. 

One school in New Orleans, Louisiana has embraced the ideology of transnationalism, creating a newcomer academy that offers a year of intense immersion while also offering a significant amount of language support in Spanish. Las Sierras Academy currently works with 40 newcomers in high school in the New Orleans area; however it is assumed that there are currently over 700 newcomers in the area. This program welcomes students from Latin America and the culture, traditions and languages they already speak add value to the school, and it essentially functions similar to the dual language immersion schools (similar to the video on the blog) that are emerging across the country in elementary settings but is targeted for older students.

  • What is the meaning behind the assumption that to assimilate is also to succeed? That assumption is not always the truth and can be problematic for teachers and educators in the global community.

Many people believe that assimilation leads to success for several reasons. They believe that not only understanding the dominant language and culture but fully operating in them will lead to greater success on standardized testing and give students a greater opportunity for post-secondary education and entrance into the job market. Also, the differences that students bring from other cultures are many times seen as a deficit rather than a wealth of knowledge and experience. To succeed, from this perspective, immigrants must assimilate, erase their original cultures, and adopt the culture of the new, receiving community.  This viewpoint does not honor the full dignity of the immigrant, and insists on a change in order to be accepted. Although the assumption that to assimilate is to succeed is not as widely held as it once was, there are a variety of ways in which our society functions that still require people to walk, talk, and look the part of what the dominant society sees as a successful person. Assimilation is to succeed is definitely a biased idea since no matter where you are, the dominant society that you are engaging with is going to see itself as having the most desirable qualities. For someone who wants to succeed in that society, it can be hard not to assimilate (at least to an extent) when that might be what is needed to achieve the goals one is aspiring toward. This is unfortunate, but it happens everyday. In America for example, learning English can be a big part of reaching success as it allows one to communicate using the dominant language, which may provide more opportunities compared to if one didn’t speak English. However despite all of this, it is important to keep in mind that everyone has a different idea of what success looks like. Educators should keep this in mind and encourage students to achieve whatever they set out to do

References

Greenman, E. (2011). Assimilation choices among immigrant families: Does school context matter?. International Migration Review, 45(1), 29-67.

Las Sierras Academy. G.W. Carver High School. (n.d.). Retrieved February 20, 2022, from https://gwc.collegiateacademies.org/about/las-sierras-academy

Louie, V. (2006). Growing up ethnic in transnational worlds: Identities among second-generation Chinese and Dominicans. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, 13(3), 363-394.

Media Reflection 5.3

Media Reflections

The state of Latinx education: A fast-growing future workforce, systemic barriers, and la lucha by Rupen Fofaria

Media Reflection by Megan Gavrillen Group 4

This article by Fofaria discusses the state of education in my state of NC through the lens of Latinx immigrants.  

Currently in her senior year at UNCG, Celeste Cervantes shares her experiences as the daughter of Mexican immigrants in the US.  Citing factors such as vast differences between the schools in Mexico and in the United States, the language barrier, and the lack of communication between her parents and her school, she says she was lucky to achieve her goals because caring adults and teachers were able to guide her.  She acknowledges that other classmates were not as lucky.  In particular, she recounts a young man who pretended to struggle with English so that he could be assigned “easier” curriculum through ESL status.

According to the article, one in six children through age 17 in North Carolina is Hispanic, and while “more than half of all North Carolina high school graduates enroll in postsecondary….less than 40% among our Hispanic graduates.” 

This module’s readings highlight patterns of marginalization among immigrants in the education system.  The focus on high-stakes testing, which requires academic language proficiency, and reform initiatives which often “ignore and avoid engaging new immigrant students” are some of the obstacles outlined (Suarez-Orozco, 2011, p. 313).  The separation “experienced by immigrant-origin language learners… results in unequal resources, lowered expectations, and insufficient exposure to high-level academic content and critical-thinking skills” (Suarez-Orozco, 2011, p. 317). 

Another interviewee in the article, Carlos Ramirez, shares that as a student in California, he felt like “ my language … was erased and … we were taught to be less than.”  The perspectives in this article correlate with the “othered” position outlined in our reading (Vigil, 2002, as cited in Suarez-Orozco, 2011, p. 317).  This “erasing” also connects to the exploration of transnational identities in the module.

Suárez-Orozco, M. M., Darbes, T., Dias, S. I., & Sutin, M. (2011). Migrations and schooling. Annual Review of Anthropology, 40, 311-328.

Afghan Refugees in North Carolina

Media Reflections,

Link to article.

This is an article from September 2021 discussing the arrival of about 1,169 Afghan refugees into my home state of North Carolina. When I began searching for media to include in this assignment I was overwhelmed by how unaware and disconnected I am about current issues of migration and globalization. This article piqued my interest because it concerns the state in which I live and connects to the recent US withdrawal from Afghanistan. After the withdrawal and subsequent Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, the subject has not been as prevalent on cable news programs or national newspapers.

In this article by Will Wright of The Charlotte Observer, some lines that stood out to me are, “in 2015, then-Gov. Pat McCrory, who is now running for U.S. Senate, was one of about two dozen governors who asked the federal government to halt the settlement of Syrians to their states. Saying at the time that his ‘primary duty as governor is to keep the citizens of North Carolina safe,’ McCrory said he wanted to halt the flow of Syrian refugees until he was satisfied with the vetting process. Although the request was condemned by human rights advocates, other North Carolina politicians, including U.S. Sen. Richard Burr, also called for halting the refugee program for Syrians.”

I am thinking about those kinds of statements regarding safety, which plant seeds of fear and separation in the hearts of listeners and readers. Why is their an assumption that welcoming refugees threatens our safety?